This is what the tourists travelling down the Tarkine will see. This Blackwood Swamp is on the way to the South Arthur River where the Arthur River tourist loop road begins. The coupe is near the Montague river.
So much for Forestry Tasmania’s plans for supplying special species timbers . It appears that only the absolute best logs are carted out and the rest are left to be burnt. This coupe is so wet that the machines can’t work on all of it to clean up the slash.
There are dogwood fence posts laid out ready for making a fence. My guess is that FT plan to make this a fenced Blackwood Plantation.
The question is why cut down perfectly good blackwood trees then leave them on the ground in order to grow new ones.
Of course these logs are not first grade they are small and bent but still there is plenty of wood for artisans and woodworkers to make use of. The site is so wet that it stinks, smells very sour and acidic.
Under the surrounding Blackwood forest are plenty of Tree ferns and swamp vegetation.
Surely selectively logging some of the Blackwood trees would have saved the need to fence in a whole coupe, left some trees to grow on saving 30 or 40 years of time growing seedlings to the stage of the logs wasted and also left the landscape intact.
The remnant Blackwood forest there is beautiful but it is only a remnant now, a thin veneer to fool the tourists.
Shame on the woodchip industry.
Download:
Tarkine_show_for_TT.doc
Tarkine show for TT.doc
