Logging starts in Meribup

Meribup forest, east of Manjimup, is now being logged (October 2011) The majority of the wood will end up as firewood, railway sleepers and charcoal. The Forest Products Commission will be lucky if they profit from the exercise once all the management costs and subsidies are taken out of the equation.

Meribup is a very high conservation value area; much of the block is old growth and local group Bridgetown Greenbushes Friends of the Forest (BGFF) put in a community nomination in October this year for the forest to be assessed so that all the old growth is properly protected.

The Conservation Commission has now completed their assessment of the area (Nov 2011) and discovered that 125 hectares of the forest FPC was ready to log does is in fact meet the criteria for old growth forest and it has been protected from logging.

It is good news for this area that it won't be logged but a very sad indictment of the State's logging and forest protection agencies that once again an unfunded community group run by volunteers has had to find and fight for an old growth forest. It is illegal for old growth logging to occur in WA. The FPC should be making sure that they are not logging any old growth and there should be penalties when they are caught not protecting it.

The parts of Meribup that don't meet the narrow definition of old growth were lightly logged before woodchipping started in WA. The forest is critical habitat and none of it should be being logged. WAFA is very happy to have been able to a part of discovering and protecting this area of the forest but sad to see the rest of Meribup being logged.