Mirboo North calls on Greens’ support
THE Mirboo North community is turned to politics in its battle to stop proposed tree logging by VicForests.
Green’s Eastern Metropolitan MLC Samantha Dunn visited Mirboo North to tour the logging coupes VicForest intends to clear fell.
During her visit, Ms Dunn spoke with the Preserve Our Forests Campaign members and offered her help stop the logging.
“I do cross VicForests a lot in what I do and I understand community members have a lot of frustration in terms of their contact with VicForests, so that’s what I’m going to assist with,” she said.
Ms Dunn said she was concerned seeing beautiful parts of Victoria – such as the forest north of Mirboo North – logged.
“The detrimental impact of that on the local community and biodiversity is just awful,” she said.
Ms Dunn will be raising the issues with Victorian Agriculture Minister Jaala Pulford and assisting the community to obtain information from VicForests, given the community has been unsuccessful so far.
Preserve our Forests vegetation surveyor Richard Lester said Ms Dunn’s visit was about supporting the effort of the Mirboo North community.
“The effort has been wonderful since the public meeting. Lots of people have come and offered help because there’s a range of issues here from vegetation to habitat,” he said.
“I think most of us feel that the importance of the area is in not that it’s just a single habitat, but it’s a varied habitat.”
Mr Lester said the community’s progress in the last six weeks had been excellent.
“We’ve kicked some goals. We’ve had several surveys and at this stage we’ve found evidence of mammals and plants that are reasonably rare in the area,” he said.
“In terms of VicForests’ next move, it seems they haven’t done too much vegetation surveying and it just seems they are desperate when clearing a forest like this which is small and locally precious. It’s pointless at this stage.”
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