Eurobodalla Greens have been very active in various guises in the 12 months ending September 2023 in the forest conservation space. These activities have been conducted under the auspices of Coastwatchers Association, Friends of the Forest – Mogo (FoF) and Knitting Nannas for Native Forests. This includes fostering of relationships with like-minded groups and local media plus daily keyboard action on social media.
Logging in Eurobodalla has been largely restricted to the very north of the shire. In Boyne State Forest a Spotted Tailed Quoll latrine site was discovered by community members on a pre-logging tour led by FoF. This resulted in a 12 hectare logging exclusion zone near Big Bit Lookout.
Eurobodalla Greens forest activists have concentrated on the southern Shoalhaven Shire where the bulk of the mid-south coast logging is occurring. They have been instrumental in various Forest Embassy actions undertaken on the Highway at East Lynne and various tours of logged forest landscapes to acquaint people with the reality of the damaged ecosystems.
They have also focussed on showing people Big Spotty the world’s tallest Spotted Gum standing in a forest which was slated for logging for September 2023. Our participants have included Teal and Labor candidates for the NSW State elections, Greens councillors from neighbouring Shires, 5 NSW upper house MPs, ACF members, Senator Mehreen Faruqi with Shoalhaven Greens plus a Knitting Nannas expedition on World Environment Day.
They co-drafted 2 successful motions which came before Shoalhaven Council urging it to advocate for the permanent protection of Big Spotty’s 250 ha compartment in North Brooman State Forest. Forestry Corporation responded by firstly promising a 1 ha exclusion zone and then removing that forest from the logging schedule for the next 12 months.
They have developed a set of on-line tools and a PowerPoint for citizen scientists called BreachWatch. The aim of BreachWatch is to empower ordinary people to monitor their local State Forests due to be logged and record features that may result in more exclusion zones being included in the “harvest” plans. It also demonstrates what breaches to look for when auditing a logged forest. Nature Conservation Council has picked up the idea and is currently promoting it strongly.
They have conducted numerous Breach Patrols or post-logging audits. They have participated in 3 treesitting non-violent direct actions which have stopped work for a day in Currowan and Shallow Crossing State Forests.
Lastly they have helped blow the whistle on destructive Greater Glider habitat logging in the glider hotspot of Tallaganda State Forest in August 2023. They called for Stop Work on that operation a week before Wilderness Australia got involved and made the same call. The EPA duly applied a Stop Work Order which is currently still in place.