LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
GIPPSLAND-based environmental lobby Facebook group asks for people’s thoughts, and if they don’t like them, they delete, block and ban.
I am not a ‘redneck’, nor am I ignorant or arrogant.
It asked for people’s thoughts, so here are mine.
A renewable resource such as trees will produce again and again if they are replanted or regenerated, which they are.
Greens say it is about animals, but far more will disappear in the uncontrollable fires that will eventuate with no forest management.
No faller, logger, mill worker or forest management will purposely kill just so they have a job.
They re-home, pick up, nurse and help them.
Timber workers are not rednecks, but they are the first to lend a hand when there are bush fires and floods.
Quite often when I was growing up the mill was the first to close and the workers were on the front line.
I know who I would rather have at my door when there is a fire or a flood.
Fires have increasingly gotten worse over the years.
Forests haven’t had the controlled burns that were needed, resulting in some of the worst bushfires in history.
Closing the mill will take away the livelihoods of thousands of people directly and indirectly, who only want what was promised, their quota.
Environmentalists too drive cars, live in houses that no doubt were built after clearing of native vegetation, have mobile phones, use computers, use some sort of energy-reliant heating and cooling.
They too search the internet that has sites which have sourced much of their information from books made of paper.
Most environmentalists can’t honestly say that they care and protect, because they won’t forgo 21st century comforts.
Until they live in caves with nothing that could have come from timber, animals or their by-products, they are just like the rest of us.
The thousands of people who rely on the forest for their everyday lives respect the environment it comes from.
To those people out there who don’t have paying jobs that are standing for the protection of forests – who do they think funds their Centrelink payments?
The very people they would like to put out of work.
In this economic climate, Australia can’t afford more welfare payments if their livelihoods are taken away.
Environmentalists claim that continuing logging will make the Leadbeater’s possum extinct.
It will certainly make the town of Heyfield and many others extinct if logging stops.
The trees are a renewable resource that can keep growing and re-growing.
With the percentage of forest that is protected already, the small amount required by the timber town is quite small.
Although small, it will provide income and the sustainability of so many.
These people are relying on keeping their jobs to live and provide for their families.
People need to step into their shoes, look past themselves and really see what will happen if this timber town doesn’t get what it was promised.
