Yes this – Coupe CC104B – is a working forest … but despite all the media hype Forestry Tasmania has not changed its Forest Practices Plan and the 10m buffer along 200m of track still stands and will stand if FT starts work this week in Mutual Valley near Derby.
Forestry Tasmania has an unofficial policy not to cut coupes of regrowth that are less than 90 years since last harvested.
The truth of the matter is that CC104B was logged in the 70s and the E. regnans which the coupe is mostly comprised of is still immature as far as sawlogs go.
Some of the trees classify as sawlogs but it would be much more sustainable to leave them another 50 years to gain greater thickness. As it is now they will be harvested as peelers and there goes the jobs your sons will want. Pretty much as they have been doing for the last 40 years when FT chipped immature sawlogs.
Much of the coupe is situated on slopes as much as 25% over the landslip threshold.
Directly below one of the steepest parts of the coupe and directly below where logging is due to start in a day or three there exists a house which is in danger of being obliterated should this section of coupe slide off the hill.
The emergency access track to this coupe is not up to FPC standard and has not been graded for 10 years.
It doesn’t even have a gravel surface.
Nor does it have one culvert over the last 3Km.. There is an alternative emergency access which is up to FPC standard.
Pity the poor bushman or machine operator lying at risk of death, after an accident, waiting for the ambulance puttering along at 40Km dodging ruts and potholes.
It would be a bugger of a ride on the way back.
There have been no extra reserves put in place on the class 4 stream which acts as the domestic supply downstream of the coupe.
There is also a class 4 stream described as a drainage depression.
During the building of an access road, through a reserve into the coupe, the road was made around 20m wide despite the FPP saying it should only be 10m wide with allowance to 15m where batters were needed on the few steep spots.
A tree has been pushed into the reserve resulting in major damage to trees in that reserve.
It also seems that little supervision has occurred in the coupe during roadmaking because FT has failed to deliver the details which would prove that supervision had been adequate.
So the argument over CC104B is not just about whether the bike track buffers are good enough.
It is the thoroughly unprofessional way this coupe seems to have been planned and managed up to now; and the concerns for how it will be managed should work proceed.
If this is the way FT operates when it is trying so hard to gain FSC approval then methinks it might be a long wait.
https://www.facebook.com/TasmanianForestSaviours/
• John Powell in Comments: JL methinks you protesteth too much! You more than anyone on TT know that FT fib, obfuscate, and cover up their slight (LOL) modifications to any FPP in order to achieve the greatest damage to the coupe and their profitability. Interesting debate on twitter today re FT versus Tourism. If the latter had the subsidy of FT we would have two Spirits of Tas (free of freight) a Bruny Island ferry service that works, and infrastructure services that will serve the incoming invasion from China etc. Suspect you and Bob Gordon should have a seance ! LOL
