Reforesting Australia?

Reforesting Australia?
by Omaxa bin Eartha
8th January, 2010.
Eucalyptus plantation remnant,
east of Wandong, Victoria.

I'm back in Victoria, and revisiting the forested areas I frequented, and often camped or lived in, in the years passed.

It's about eleven months since the devastating bushfires which ripped across the forests, reforests and plantations north and north east of Melbourne, and which killed some 200 Victorians.

Used to death, of people near and unknown to myself, it nevertheless hits a little “emotional spot” in my Soul when I think that it's likely some of the deceased were people I'd had some interaction with, in the months and even decades of either riding my motorbike through the mountain roads, or from when I was “dwelling” in the forests hereabouts.

Soon after the tragic fires, I scribed and published to my blogsite, and emailed to a number of media outlets, an article which went to those fires and deaths. I've republished it today with this e-ssay, with updated editing, titled “Bushfires: The Price of Irresponsible Misuse of the Land” The essence of it was that the fires were caused by bad management of the regions, by government, developers and plantation owners and operators.

Bad management which extended back as far as the earliest days of white invasion to Victoria.

Since then, I wrote and actually recorded a “talking-head” video of myself reading, an article about the condition of our nations “bushlands”, with the focus of that e-ssay on the western regions of New South Wales.

In it, I castigated the governments, the rurals, and the media for ignoring the carnage of our rainforests and other bushlands since white occupation, and reiterated my dismay at the utterly terrible FACT, that since the 1780s, the northerners from Britain and Eurape have destroyed over 95% of Australia's rainforests.

The figure of 95% was first heard by me some 20 years ago now, so in 2010, the likelihood of that figure increasing to WHAHHH?!?!?! 98, or 99% is too much to contemplate.

But it has to be said, for what ANY recent attempts at reforesting are actually, environmentally worth, that the last 30 or 40 years, perhaps more, have seen our authorities replant some eucalypts and other native plant species, in basically futile attempts to repair or redress the damage.

I say “futile” because ALMOST ALWAYS the reforestation, or replanting, has an economic value attached to it, a fiscal value which seems to completely overlook the FACTS that BIODIVERSITY is essential, and that a far more comprehensive botanical approach has to be taken if any benefit, financial or environmental is to be expected.

Also, a more in-depth approach is necessary for replenishing the lost FAUNA, including the very enemies of Christian pyschopathics – SNAKES and SPIDERS, as well as goannas, skinks, wallabies, 'roos and the rest.

But a full-bodied biodiversity will, I suggest, reduce the chance of bushfire.

This, I suggest, in two ways.....: one is that a proper restoring of biodiversity will restore the hydrological systems inherent in native forests, which will keep the temperatures lower.

But this is the call from here-forward on a GLOBAL SCALE, because the British East India Company didn't only rape Australia of 95% of her forests – the BEIC has been at it wherever they plundered for over 400 years!!!

I repeat what I maintained for years now, that this errant-nay-evil behavior by the Brits et al, is what is causing so much of today's climate change, sea-level rise, etc! The Mutha Eartha NEEDS her forests, and so a most comprehensive GLOBAL PLAN is the call to all governments, of reforestation and re-biodiversification!!!!

Our chicken-shit politicians and statisticians and financial advisers repeat the call that the economy must take first place, over the environment.

Well...., to some degree, I agree! But not in the way they see it.

I, informed and guided by the Wisest Economists and Philosophers on Earth, put it that the environment is suffering because we, aka the west, aka the Eurapeans and right-wing Americanas have been utterly UNeconomical in how they have abused and wasted the Planet's resources – aka - the ENVIRONMENT!

Were Humanity to get ourselves together ECONOMICALLY, that is EFFICIENTLY – we would NOT over-stretch the environment, and thus, we would NOT be in the very REAL AND PRESENT DANGER of losing a major percentage of the Human population over the next 100 or so years.

But..., we are forced to wonder, whether a large reduction in the global population is not a bad thing, all things considered?

Perhaps the real question here is “how we reduce our population to sustainable levels?”

CARNAGE? Or Wise Consideration and Correction of our current and future ways?

After much contemplation on these issues, it has to be conceded that, the land, is our sustenance, and our sustenance, in a properly organized Peoples, becomes an issue centralized around how we manage the land, and that is, how we manage the productivity of the land.

Therefore, there has to be the debate, a scientifically, and Ethically, and Impartial debate, about how humans go about extracting the stuff we need from the land, while placing as our Primary tenet, the ability of the land to reproduce our needs, into perpetuity. FOREVER, AND FOREVER, AND, FOREVER..., ARRRR-FECKING-MEN, and women and kids. An theirs, and theirs,

AND THEIRS! Etcetera!

Clearly, in Australia, the last 222 years of white occupation and carnage HAS NOT, taken such Highly Ethical and Perennially WISE Factors into consideration.



Therefore, I will be launching a Law suit against the International Monetary Fund (previously the “British East India Company”) for their destruction of 99.999% of the natural Australian environment and the ensuing disruptions to the climate, disruptions which they, the IMF, have effected, and which the IMF are solely responsible for, RIGHT ACROSS THE PLANET!

Hohohoho.......

This is of course a minor conundrum for myself, as I am the “heir apparent” to that same mega-corporation's leadership chair?

Pooh!

But, in regard to here and now issues, and getting back to the bushfires of last February here in Victoria, and on where I am right now, scribing and recording this text and video, looking around my ute, I'm both heartbroken, and, somewhat lifted in Spirit, from what I see.

Here, I'm in the remains of a Eucalypt plantation, which was devastated. Row on row of plantation gum trees stand, perhaps 40, perhaps 60 feet tall, as eerie reminders and indeed as some sort of memorial to what occurred, and to the lives lost, and to the BAD foresting practices implemented over the last 222 years.

The haunting sadness rises with the row-on-row of tree tops - dead sticks from about 10 to 20 feet above the ground, blackened by the bushfire heat - dead.

Across the track here, it seems the trees were not plantation, for they are in-the-main, typical eucalypts of a more natural forestation - randomly rooted and spread across the hills, and most are some years older, showing typical gum tree signs that they've endured periods of wet and drought, with branches resulting from bursts of growth and stagnation. So, as in the spookiest movies of “haunted forests” they are now eerie, twisted and black-black-black trunks and branches, devoid of leaves and thus of signs of life - as-we-know-it - Jim.

Further down the track, I can see where the humans have been at it AGAIN - where they have brought in the heavy machinery to clear the burnt hillsides of ALL growth - alive, dead, regrowing - whatever.

And this brings me consternation?

Back where my ute is hiding, in the “eucalypt plantation”, after 11 months, and no doubt some fairly significant rainfall, the plantation trees, in typical Eucalypt fashion, are sending up regrowth from around the trunks' bases, varying from ground-level to 10 feet to 30 feet up the trunks.

As you may be able to see, it really is a bright and wonderful sight, for it shows the tenacity and endurance of the gum trees, even after those extremely hot fires. (Apologies for the references to “seeing” etc. I wrote this with the intention of doing a video, “talking-head” doco on this issue. But..., IT'S TOOO F-ING HARD – JIMMIE!)

Yes, in some areas, both large and small pockets, from here on the western fringe, where the fires started, right over to the eastern most areas, some hundreds of kilometres away, the heat from these last bushfires was so intense that it killed millions of these eucalypts stone dead, and even they are unable to send out new shoots from their roots systems and trunks' bases.

Australia has always been a continent which has grown and regrown through the regenerational effects of forest fires, and many if not all of it's floral species are perfectly adapted to such incidences.

Elsewhere east in the alpine forests et al, from here, where I recently camped, the burnt-out areas have already blossomed prolifically with ground-level regrowth of ferns, and of the innumerable other native plants since the fires.

And, again, as the Gods blessed Victoria with plenty of rain since then, the forests, while still somewhat “eerie”, for the blackened tall treetops, were in Spring, replete with glorious floor-coverings of native, new flowers and plant and shrub growth.

Very heartening. So, all is not lost for our precious reforests. “Reforests”, because that is exactly what most of Australia's forests are today.

There are only a few pockets of unraped forest left in Australia which have not been logged over the last 2 centuries, so wherever one might travel, and camp, in a “forest” the trees are usually not even half - not even a QUARTER of the height of those which lived here before the invasion.

Off the Licola-Jameson road last month, I camped in a spot which had been “cleaned” of all trees, post-bushfires, and next to a tree stump. I counted the rings and satisfied myself that it was 150 or so years old.

WOW!

A “youngee”!

But in post-invasion terms, an “oldee”?

Few places remain on the continent where an whole forest has trees over 200 years old, let alone 500, or 800! But I am not the expert, so even the giants, may not have lived for 800 years.

In fact, most of the forests in Australia stand a heartbreaking and pathetic 20, 40, 60 80 and perhaps occasionally 100 feet tall now.


It has to be 10 years at least now, that I've been bashing the ears of media and other groups about how important forests are to keeping the GLOBAL environment cool and at stable temperatures.

It has always astounded me that the powers-that-should-not-be, whether in government or media, have failed to recognize the obvious - that TREES are somewhat important to environmental stability.

Trees, and ALL THE OTHER PLANT AND INSECT AND ANIMAL LIFE, which co-exist beneath their magnificent canopies.

And the essence of this sentence is the vital relevance of BIO-DIVERSITY to maintaining a stable environment, that-is, HABITAT, that is, that from which even HUMANS depend ENTIRELY for sustenance.

NOT just until the next end-of-year stock market report on one plantation corporation or another, and NOT just so the government IMF softcocks can tell the punters that the economy is skipping along above water, the “economy” which invariably ends with the profits from worldwide environmental CARNAGE going to the Swiss bank accounts of multinational - THAT-IS - FOREIGN colonialist banking elites!
And NOT so the sycophantic Catholic clones of the planet can occupy a nice little 3-bedroom nuclear disaster area, complete with masses of wood carvings and furniture -ETCETERA-ETCETERA-ETCETERA!

FOREVER AND FOREVER AND FOREVER!

AND FOREVER!

So, back in the plantation pseudo-reforest just east of wiped-out Wandong, I am Duty-bound to question the current practices being employed, er DEployed hereabouts.
It stuck me with a little horror recently that the pricks of development were set to profit from the bushfires, for it gives them an excuse to clear the once-forested areas, for - SUBDIVISIONS!

Yes folks! MORE of the catholic nuclear disaster areas suburban nightmares are about to swarm your bushlands!

However, as ever, our cattle graziers are ever-on-the-look-out for MORE grazing land, and each one of them looks with drooling envy at the forests surrounding their deforested cattle-grazing land. It would not be the first time, that the cattle farmers of the burnt-out area, breathed a sigh of delight after the bush fires, knowing that any forested land on their acreage that was burnt clean, would be soon available for their meat production business with the pasture grasses which would or could be planted to grow.

Indeed, many a bushfire in our forests have WITHOUT DOUBT, over the couple of hundred years, been started by cattle graziers for that exact reason. It is as likely that the land that has since, been completely cleared of it's remaining tree growth, is to be used for their cattle.

Today, everyone knows the unsustainable nature of cattle farming, and yet our (principally) state governments do nothing to make the owners replant or nurture forests back to being forest.

Clearly, without a MASSIVE REVOLUTION, where many of our social, cult, corporate and political leaders are either burnt at the stake, or hanged by the neck until the crows pick at their cadavers, this most heinous cultural, social, environmental disaster and personal psychological delusion of nuclear family housing and it's collective of utterly devastating suburbs, and the totally unsustainable cattle and sheep farming, and the broad-acre, monocrop farming will be the death of life-as-we-know-it.

BRING-ON THE CLING-ONS!

So....?

What solutions can the world's wealthiest bum offer?

I say it is environmentally illegal to clear any of the trees which are showing regrowth as these Eucalypts are. No doubt the plantation corporations have been hit hard by the forest-fires, but it must not be denied that due to their BAD agricultural planning, they have brought the destruction upon themselves.
This displays clearly that none of them are anywhere NEAR qualified to operate such plantations, and it also shows that the whole concept of making economic profit from such schemes is deeply awry, flawed and even dangerous to all life around and within it.

Therefore, if the corporations and the authorities who run these ventures cannot adjust their designs, they HAVE NO AUTHORITY in owning or operating or seeking to extract any wealth from the lands they lay claim to.

As they ARE here, and as they have hundreds of employees dependent upon their wages, it becomes incumbent upon the managers to redraw all their plans and designs where-ever they have titles to the lands.

FIRST PRIORITY - THE PERENNIAL SUSTENANCE OF THE FORESTS, OF THE BIO-DIVERSITY, OF THE WATER-CYCLE SYSTEMS, AND THUS, OF THE INSECT AND ANIMAL LIFE THEREIN!

Second Priority - the Security and Sustenance of the Human Inhabitants and employees therein.

This does NOT mean work or productivity has to cease, but that short-term profits, even to the 30 year cycles forestry works around, are no longer tenable.

In the immediate scenario, I put it that ANY trees which show healthy regrowth, from the roots and trunks, of branches and leaves, must be left to grow.

They are clearly no longer any good for use as timber products, for the nice straight trunks are as good as dead, and the regrowth will be below timber standard quality. This is a shame, for all concerned.

But the VALUE of the regrowth, in ENVIRONMENTAL terms, is vital and inestimable, and it is going to be essential in keeping the earth beneath these trees from baking in the sun, thus causing massive water evaporation, and thence the drying of the land. It should be obvious that this drying will contribute more to general environmental warming, and climactic chaos.

Secondly, it's clear that biodiversity is essential, and that planting regimes have to be implemented to restore all facets of the floral and fauna life.

So I would suggest that these areas, whether owned by private or government corporations, be populated by Humans, who are trained in the business of environmental restoration and sustainable growth, etc.

LOGGERS!? Time to retrain your aching Souls into being Gardeners, complete with a Full, Secure and Relaxing, Lovable Lifestyle!

Obviously NOT in suburban nuclear family layouts, but in “bush cottages” or such. Ideally, for sustainability, the housing should be “communal” where small enclaves in the reforests are built to house perhaps 5, perhaps 10, perhaps more families, and singles, who work on site, and whose primary occupation is reforestation of the fullest kind - BIODIVERSITY!

Ancillary industries should surely be able to develop. Perhaps the regrowing Eucalyptus can be sustainably commercially harvested for it's oils - YUM!

But native vegetation need not be the only plan.

There should be no reason why food crops cannot be grown and tendered and harvested WITHIN the regrowth reforests. If employees are settled into the forests in as said, the small communal enclaves, it should be very possible to employ them through the forests tendering the food and other plants, on a three, four or five day per week basis.

Wages would not have to be as high as for people left to the vultures of the open private housing marketplace, for they would be paying True Land Value Rents to the government corporations, for secure, long-term accommodation, and schooling, health and social facilities, either onsite, or within LOCAL busing distances.

But, getting back to the here and now, I argue, irrefutably I say I say, that all clear-felling of the remaining burnt forests must stop immediately, to be corrected to leaving all promising regrowth, to regrow. The “dead wood” above the regrowth on the trees, may be trimmed, and I suggest, should be wood-chipped, either as a resalable byproduct or just spread across the lands where they were cut.

As said above, it seems clearer by the day, that without a Fullblown REVOLUTION of our systems of government, nothing of this kind is going to happen.

As the People, from the underclasses to the CEO-classes have been brought up-to-speed recently about how serious our environmental and economic and legal and social and survival situations are, a little bit of Humble Honesty and Integrity is the Call, methinks?

If our bloody-minded “State” governments cannot answer the call, and live upto the expectations of the lately Enwisened People, then dissolution of the three tier federal-state-local council government structure is THE Priority.

It would appear, that for this to occur, the STATES, both government and opposition, must step-up-to-the-plate, and begin this process.

As well, we have underpinning and underwriting all this, the imperative for Australia to become a REPUBLIC.

Ken Henry, our federal Head of Treasury, put out the “feelers” last month with his Honorable and WISE announcement that a nationwide Land Tax be introduced to eliminate the farcical and clearly corrupt myriad of taxes.

As everyone knows, this is the basis of my Philosophy, and of my political and Economic Advocacy.

So too, it would appear, is it the Basis of many, many Australians and indeed Human Beings, worldwide, in terms of restoring some sort of Balance to Life on Earth.
“The big game is over!” Let's get us down to THE FACTS!

Aum.