Schools For a Sustainable Future

Story

Not so green, less than clean
Landclearing - Logging
by Claire Miller
Environmental Reporter

Australian species are being wiped out by introduced species and pollution, but the main threat is landclearing. Australia is still clearing more than 500,000 hectares a year, 80 per cent of it in Queensland to provide marginal grazing for cattle. Clearfelling for timber is also taking its toll by removing the old trees that have developed hollows; more than 30 per cent of Australian fauna depends on hollows for breeding, shelter and prey.

Even in Victoria, which has lost two-thirds of its forest cover since white settlement, remnant patches continue to be cleared as farms switch from grazing to intensive horticulture or timber plantations, and towns spread. Once-extensive ecosystems such as northern Victoria's box ironbark forests have been reduced to scattered degraded fragments that are proving too small in the long term to sustain their unique suite of birds, animals and plants.

The result is a serious ecological imbalance. Around Canberra, for instance, there are persistent plagues of lerps, a tiny sap-sucking insect. Small native birds once kept the lerps under control, but the birds disappeared when their bushy habitat was cleared for grazing. The lerps are weakening the few remaining trees, already stressed by rising water tables and disease. Without these trees in the paddocks as natural pumps, salinity will worsen.

Green     Salinity    Biodiversity Loss    Water
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The Age Publication
1st November 2000