I'm sure some of you have heard at least a little of what is going on down in the beautiful hardwood forests of Tassie?
If not here's a short rundown on an extremely threatened area called the Styx valley Forrest...
The Styx Valley contains the tallest hardwood trees on Earth. Many of the trees are taller than a 25-storey building, over 400 years old, and up to five metres wide at the base. The Styx is only 70 kilometres west of Hobart and is on the edge of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area – one of the great temperate wilderness areas on Earth.
The Styx also contains large areas of unlogged rainforest. These forests are home to many native species of wildlife, including the majestic Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Eastern Pygmy Possum, the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, owls and rosellas. Other features that occur in the valley include limestone caves, tannin-stained Styx River, and several waterfalls. Now to the bad news…
Most of the giants of the Styx are threatened by logging. Between 300 and 600 hectares of the Styx Valley are logged each year. The main form of logging is clear felling and burning. The logging operations proceed by cutting down all the large timber and bulldozing the rest. The useful timber, primarily destined for woodchips, is removed and the area is then bombed from the air which ensures the whole area burns.
Most of these trees will be sold as woodchips overseas for about $15 per tonne. After the logged area is burnt it is reseeded 1080 poison is laid down to kill animals who may feed on saplings. 1080 poison does not kill our native animals by putting in a relaxing sleep, it puts them through a long, agonising death, and it may take hours or even days of suffering for these native animals to die.
What is at stake you may ask? Is the loss of some of Australia's, and the worlds, oldest hardwood trees for the sake of some measly woodchips a good enough argument, I certainly think so. The tall trees of the Styx are of international botanical importance. Their tourism potential has yet to be realised. They provide a point of contact with the past that once gone, is gone forever. Tall trees are also important for a sense of environmental continuity for future generations.
Just reading this makes me feel sick. Our government says that we cannot stop logging because of job loss.
can actually leave more space for new trees. Also, cutting down trees gives more multiple resources to contribute for our needs. One tree can produce many things to help we humans and cutting them down can be more of a benefit than a disadvantage. Trees can be very beneficial and be used as many resources through education and basically everyday life. The Truax has a more realistic view on the environment and how we are using it.
The main character in John Steinback’s short story: The Chrysanthemums, is a married woman named Elisa Allen. She is a hardworking diligent young woman. In the opening chapters of The Chrysanthemums, Elisa is seen heartily in a great degree tendering to her gentle flowers. Powerful she is – gentle and conservative with her strength. She knows her weakness. Like the gentle calm flow of water embedding itself into layers of strata – which forms the highest peaks and grandest canyons.
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After World War 2 the Australian economy was booming and timber was in demand.... ... middle of paper ... ... Private land owners do not want to pay for energy generators and are selling their land back to the government. The government has been slow to act and past government parties have been in favour of cutting the rainforest down. I think that the efforts to save the Daintree forest have been good, but the government will have to keep buying back that land to make up for what happened to the forest before it was World Heritage listed.
A single moment, a single movement, a single protest against the system is the first step to finding change. For every parent that says “leave my child intact”, it would be one day closer to a time when it will be socially appalling to cosmetically alter an infant child who is incapable of consent or comprehension. The fluidity, complexity, and ambiguity of human sexuality extends far beyond sexual preference and onward into gender and sex. Accepting that some things will never fit within a textbook definition, and celebrating difference rather than condemning it, would fulfil the dream of many minds such as Fausto-Sterling and Butler as well as the author. Only time and individuals that dare to reject the flawed system can ease the binds of ignorance that tie society so tightly to an outdated Victorian mindset of sex and gender.
John Muir once said, “Where one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” His understanding of the connection of nature to the world would be helpful regarding today’s ethical issue of clearcutting happening in Tongass National Forest. Firstly, this practice involves completely clearing an area of trees, regardless of the shape and usability. Then, the remaining scrub and brush are just burned off which leaves smoky haze for several days. Tongues Nation Forest is considered the “crown jewel” of America’s forest because it is the home to 800 years old trees, black and brown bears, wolves, bald eagles, Sitka black-tailed deer, moose, humpback, whales, orcas, sea otters, Steller sea lions. However, Sealaska, the largest private land owner in the Southeast Alaska wants to invade the forest through clear cut logging.Clearcutting or clearfelling can have serious environmental impacts. Abrupt removal of shady shield trees will
Trigger warnings? Some may say necessary while others think of it as people being weak. Imagine sitting in a class and the topic at hand is the war. The professor without giving any warning decides to show a video of the gruesome war. Little did they know in their class sits a student who has just returned from the war and wanted to push their life forward. By not giving this warning, the student freaked out and caused a whole disruption. They managed to calm him down and tired to continue the lesson. Now would you be comfortable to continue the lesson after a huge disruption, or do you think that even a little warning in the beginning of class could have prevented this? Trigger warnings help even in the smallest ways. Trigger warnings are
This practice is a quick and economically inexpensive method or clearing land for grazing or raising crops. It is accomplished by cutting down all the trees and brush in an area, as fast as possible (Slash) and then setting fire to the area, to get rid of all of the mess (Burn). It has proved to be a quite efficient way to pointlessly destroy the forest, because the land shortly becomes arid and barren without the trees there to maintain it's former richness. This is compounded by the lack of crop-rotation, which only speeds up the process of dry des...
The history of logging goes back to the vast ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau in the 1870’s and 1880’s with the harvest of railroad ties and other products for construction of the transcontinental railroad. At first, the companies only wanted the big, high-grade ponderosa pine trees. They soon realized that the big trees run out and are hard to transport. In the 1920’s, new technology including chainsaws, bulldozers, and logging trucks allowed the logging companies to harvest at a much greater rate. By the depression, there were m...
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We were surrounded by old trees and spotted lots of cacti. We would also see a few squirrels here and there. Our trail had a view of the other side of the mountain which was stunning. We
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