By Joanna Beard
About 500 Kyneton locals joined Victorian Greens Senator, Janet Rice, and comedian Arj Barker in an organised protest march last Sunday against salvage logging in the Wombat State Forest.
Organised by the Bob Brown Foundation, the ‘March in March’ protest coincided with seven others held across Australia on March 24.
Ms Rice brought the focus of the Mollison Street march to the salvaging of Wombat State Forest wind-fallen timber.
She said native timber harvesting was still happening, despite the state government’s January 1 ban.
“More than 70 per cent of Australians want to see an end to native forest logging,” Ms Rice said.
“Yet it continues and, as we have heard, it’s continuing here, it is continuing under the guise of salvage logging here in the Wombat Forest.”
Wombat Forestcare founding member, Gayle Osborne, said Forest Fire Management “desperately” needed independent oversight.
“These fallen logs are ecologically incredibly important,” she said. “They shelter the soil from drying out and as they rot they provide homes for fungi, small reptiles, mammals and insects.”
Ms Osborne urged the crowd to petition the state government on the creation of a new National Park.
“Nearly three years ago, they promised in Parliament to create this new Wombat- Lerderderg National Park and we’re still waiting,” she said.
