It was once possible to walk the 1500 kilometres from Melbourne to Brisbane enclosed in native forest. Today Australian forests have been pushed to the margins, surviving as scattered islands, logged around and through. In most states this continues, enabled by expedient myths about forest’s resilience and replaceability that have become entrenched in popular wisdom. These range from “logging is good for fire safety” to “wildlife can simply scuttle away to another tree as soon as one is felled”.
Many myths rely on a neoliberal lexicon where native forests are “resources”, or “green capital” and logging can be “sustainable”. It assumes the fungibility of nature, as if one tree were as good as another. The author explains that native forests are complex ecosystems that have developed sometimes for hundreds of years, with ancients that cannot simply be bulldozed and replanted by saplings in another cycle.
Attempts to regulate have been underfunded and politically compromised. In one instance the author meticulously investigates violations of logging boundaries and gradient guidelines, then submits the analysis to regulators, only to have his findings contradicted. Through an FOI request he discovers their results are nearly identical to his, entering a Kafkaesque netherworld.