In the last week, nearly four thousand people have supported a CCWA online action to save WA’s endangered black cockatoos, asking the WA Environment Minister to place a hold on logging in several areas of critical cockatoo habitat in the Southwest.
One of those areas is the beautiful Warrup forest near Bridgetown.
The Warrup forest is the last extensive, intact, mixed old-growth and high conservation value (HCV) forest in the region that has not been protected in a nature reserve or national park. Nearly half of the area has been identified as old growth forest. The area was originally planned to be included in the Greater Kingston National Park but an administrative error at the time allowed the WA Government to keep the area as State Forest and to allow access to its high quality sawlogs by the logging industry.
Last week, with the Minister for the Environment on leave, we were advised by the Forest Products Commission that logging in the Warrup forest would be brought forward to start immediately.
After hearing that trees were already being felled in Warrup , we decided to visit the area ourselves to have a look at the damage.
Last time we visited Warrup the forest floor was covered in diggings where native mammals were digging for roots and fungi. A wide range of endangered ground-dwelling mammals live in this forest, including the Numbat - WA’s endangered State emblem and CCWA’s logo. These animals would not fare well once the chainsaws and bulldozers move in.
At this stage, a lot of large trees have been felled, and a huge road has been bulldozed through the forest block, but the loggers have not started removing the sawlogs yet. Many of the trees on the floor were very large mature Jarrah trees, the likes of which are seen on only a very few places.
Even more concerning were the large number of Marri or Redgum trees that had either been felled for sawlogs or simply pushed over by machinery. These Marri trees provide critical habitat for WA’s iconic and endangered black cockatoos. They provide a food source – each cockatoo requires over 100 large marri nuts per day – and also nesting hollows where the cockies can rear their young.
To see these beautiful trees, some are hundreds of years old, heaped up in piles by bulldozers is heartbreaking for us, but literally devastating for the cockatoos that are already fighting for survival.
So much of our Southwest forest areas have recently been burned by DEC prescribed burns, impacted by drought and forest diseases, cleared or logged that our native wildlife, including our iconic black cockatoos are in crisis.
Rather than felling these beautiful trees, the State Government should be protecting these last remaining high-conservation Jarrah and Marri forests as habitat for endangered native species, as tourist attractions, and as carbon banks that continue to take carbon pollution from the atmosphere.
Instead, the WA Government continues to subsidise the forest logging industry – actually using taxpayers money to pay for the logging of our last remaining high conservation forests.
There is a lot that can be done to help in the campaign to stop logging in the Warrup forest, and other high conservation areas in the Southwest.
- Please support the online action on the CCWA website and send it to your friends via email, facebook or twitter. The more people who take action the stronger the message that will get through to the WA Government.
- If you can, please donate to the campaign. We need to build a fighting fund for our forests and every contributing will help save these unique areas for our children.
- Messages and phone calls to the Premier’s officealso help a great deal. You can usually leave a message or occasionally you will get to speak to a policy advisor. Ask them to pass a message to the Premier that you do not support the logging of critical habitat for endangered animals like our black cockatoos. Ph. (08) 9222-9888 wa-government@dpc.wa.gov.au
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Finally, if you can, visit the Warrup forest. About 10km south of Bridgetown, turn left from the main highway into Seaton Ross Road and then follow this until you reach Edwards Road on your right. This will take you through the Warrup forest.
