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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Australia Outdoes Third World in Land Clearing

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/links/ -- Forest Conservation Links

10/21/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Australia is a global leader in advising developing countries about

the need for environmental protection. However their dirty little

secret is that they are clearing their forests faster than nearly

every other country in the World. Over half a million hectares of

Australian forests are being lost a year. Ecological sustainability

of the Australian continent is starkly threatened. The Australian

government has zero credibility on forest conservation.

g.b.

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Title: Australia outdoes Third World in land clearing

Source: Copyright 2001 Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Date: October 15, 2001

The Commonwealth's champion tree chopper is an impoverished African

nation, Zambia.

The runner-up, though, is one of the four rich countries in the 54-

member grouping: Australia.

While Zambia is clearing its forests at a rate of 850,000 hectares a

year, Australia comes second with 564,000 hectares a year.

Australians, always so ready to advise Third World countries on how

to manage their affairs, are turning their land from green to brown

at eight times the average Commonwealth rate.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is embarrassed by the

figures in the latest Commonwealth environmental report and has

called on the government to bring in national laws to slow the

shocking pace of land clearing.

The ACF's embarrassment not shared by the federal government in

Canberra -- or the Queensland state government in Brisbane.

Of the 564,000 hectares of forest cleared last year, three quarters

was in Queensland.

Queensland Environment Minister Rod Welford, who has issued farmers

with permits to clear 644,000 hectares this year, denies there's a

problem.

"This is just normal clearing," he said. "Some people seem to think

we should have zero clearing -- that's not going to happen".

Ian Donges, the president of the National Farmers Federation, also

insists there is nothing to worry about in the rate of landclearing.

"I get pretty uptight when I see these suggestions that we are out

there raping and pillaging the land," said Donges. "We all want clean

water and to keep native plants and animals".

Australians live in a big country with a small population and tend to

see trees as a limitless resource.

They share with Americans an unwillingness to give up cheap petrol,

big cars, wood stoves and hot tubs.

And, like Americans, they are unworried by their global-vandal tag.

They pump out more of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases

responsible for global warming than any other country bar the United

States and Canada.

Their rate of greenhouse gas emissions, 27.6 tonnes per person per

year, is twice the 12.9 tonne average for rich countries.

As in North America, it's households rather than factories that puff

out the bulk of ozone-depleting gases -- 56 per cent.

And here's a telling statistic: the ACF estimates that 10 per cent of

the growth in greenhouse gas emissions this year will come from the

exhausts of all those tractors ripping out tree cover.

Yes, that's right: Australia, rather than seeking to ameliorate the

world's environmental problems by preserving forests, is busy adding

to them by chopping them down.

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