Part of Senator Janet Rice's speech in support of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Save The Koala) bill before the Senate of Australia.
Full speech here: www.aph.gov.au...
Senator RICE (Victoria) (10:02): "Recently I joined a koala habitat tree-planting day with the Koala Clancy Foundation. It was industrial-scale tree planting. As far as the eye could see, trees were going in the ground. There were about 50 volunteers on the day I was there, and over a period of a couple of weeks the Koala Clancy Foundation was planting out I think 50 or 100 hectares with thousands and thousands of trees. It's a fantastic contribution to try to create habitat for koalas. However, the day I was there, as I was planting these trees in the ground, my mind kept going off to the fact that less than 100 kilometres away, in the Wombat State Forest-soon to be Wombat National Park-the Andrews government is logging koala habitat....
It's not hard to understand what needs to happen to save the koala and our other precious wildlife. If there were kids in the gallery they would understand it. Koalas, greater gliders, Leadbeater's possums and other forest dwelling animals need trees and they need forests. That's where they live. And if you destroy those forests they don't have homes to live in. Logging, just like clearing, destroys their habitats. Some species that don't
need hollows in old trees might come back within 10 or 20 years, but other species like the greater glider, the Leadbeater's possum and the owl actually need the hollows in the old trees to live and to breed. That means that after a logging operation that bit of forest is not going to be of any use to them to live and to breed in for over a hundred years.
If we are going to save the koala, if we're going to save the greater glider and if we're going to save other species we need to be protecting their homes and we need to be protecting their forests."
10 сен 2024
