Local residents and environmentalists have this morning (4th June) blockaded the Baillieu government’s logging of the Yarra Valley’s most iconic mountain, Mt St Leonard.
Last week, the Baillieu government’s logging company VicForests sent bulldozers in to Mt St Leonard, one of the most controversial logging locations of recent years. Logging on the side of Mt St Leonard can be viewed from as far away as Kinglake and has residents who survived the 2009 fires fuming.
“Premier Baillieu will have to personally come out here and remove us from this site,” said Toby Eccles, local business operator. “These forests in Toolangi were untouched by the terrible fire in 2009, and they are now a sanctuary for endangered wildlife. It is abominable that the Baillieu government is now choosing to destroy them.”
“We fought to save our homes and properties and those of our friends, and now we have to fight to save the forests that we live in from a government that is out of control.”
The forests of Toolangi, including Mt St Leonard were completely surrounded by the 2009 Black Saturday fires, but were fortunately spared the blaze. These forests remain an island in a sea of burned forests and provide a safeguard for Victoria’s wildlife. Fifty per cent of the habitat of Victoria’s faunal emblem, the Leadbeater’s Possum, was burned in the fire and it is now estimated only a few hundred possums remain in the wild.
Residents are angry that the logging is reopening scars that are only beginning to heal from the 2009 fires.
“The logging of Mt St Leonard is not just scarring the landscape, it is psychologically scarring the community,” said Deanne Bail, local resident and tourism operator. “It is a repeat trauma for those people who lived through the terrifying fires.”
Local tourism operators condemn the logging as it is undermining the future of the region.
“The future of this community is dependent on these forests being protected, not destroyed by logging,” said Chris Veenhuizen, local touist operator. “The logging is making visitors to the areas including guests of local accommodation feel uneasy and uncomfortable about exploring the forests and going bushwalking along the National Trail. The logging is ruining the goodwill of our businesses.”
Local residents are calling on Premier Baillieu to pull VicForests’ out of native forests and to move the logging and woodchipping into plantations.