We have come to experience a family day in nature with Forestry Watch in the Lonnavale forests in Tasmania’s south, but the scene that greets us as we step out of the car is confronting. Charred debris litters the area. Small groups of people sit atop the horizontal remains of a trunk of a former giant, metres and metres in diameter. “That’s the biggest stump I’ve seen in my life,” my partner Dan observes, subdued. I think of John Muir’s scathing 19th century assessment of those who brought down a Californian sequoia, “The laborious vandals had seen ‘the biggest tree in the world,’ then, forsooth, they must try to see the biggest stump and dance on it.”
Part of the trunk has been trucked away, perhaps to be turned into toilet paper.
We place our infant son down to play amongst the blackened remains of forest, not quite the idyllic nature experience I’d pictured, though Theo is cheerfully curious. The springtime sun beats down with a particularly Tasmanian strength. People trickle out of the adjacent forest to pose for a group photograph and listen to some rousing speeches, lining up along and below the remains of the felled giant. There are people of all ages, from an eight-month-old baby in a carrier through to people in their 80s.
I had walked through the remaining forest of Denison Coupe a few weeks earlier, on the trail created by Forestry Watch. Its official name is coupe DN007B, a reminder that it is scheduled to be logged in 2023. Forestry Watch has given this place another name: Denison Swift Parrot Sanctuary. On that earlier visit, I had come hoping for a glimpse of the critically endangered parrot, and had been lucky to see about a dozen feasting on the flowers of giant bluegums.
The path through the sanctuary is soft underfoot and meanders through wet eucalypt forests, among the largest bluegums I have ever seen, perhaps the largest stand still in existence. Entering the forest feels like stepping back in a portal in time. The only sounds are those of nature. Giant ferns line the trail, layered with mosses. These tiny colonisers at first seem uniform, but a closer look reveals infinite variety in shape and size.
A peep into a hollow reveals slime mould, neither plant nor fungi, which scientists have found can work its way through a maze. The forest bears marks of selective harvesting in years past, but for the most part the forest seems pristine.
Hidden from view is its ancient human history, which has left no obvious marks. It is startling that there is forest such as this tucked away here, far along a dusty road of uniform eucalypt plantations.
The clearfell we are standing on, DN007C, would have been the same type of forest. It may well also represent the future for the sanctuary, which is scheduled to be logged in 2023. I bundle this thought to the back of my mind as we join a guided walk. We pass through myrtle and regnan forest as pardalotes call above us. The forest has its own gentle climate, moist and cool. Nestled in Dan’s backpack, Theo points toward the crown of a tall tree, clearly impressed.
We pass small mauve tangles of ramaria versatilis, an aptly named coral fungi. Meanwhile, other visitors take the opportunity to scale one of the large trees to gain a bird’s eye view of the forest.
Forestry Watch, part of a new generation of environmental activists in lutruwita/Tasmania, is determined to protect this patch, using citizen science. I met with Alex Wylie and Amelia Cromb of Forestry Watch in the building they share with the Wilderness Society on the outskirts of Hobart.
“Denison Coupe started Forestry Watch,” Wylie told me. “I was climbing a 92-metre bluegum [nicknamed Mother-Daughter] and had eight swift parrots fly around me. We could hear chainsaws going and 900 metres away they were logging giant trees where swift parrots were undoubtedly nesting. We saw that happen and thought, ‘We can’t let that happen again’.”
Cromb describes Forestry Watch as a group of friends. It began as a mix of students and ecologists who were concerned about logging in Tasmania. “The ecologists read a lot of the papers from the industry,” said Wylie, “about how they were documenting habitat, and we thought, geez, I wonder if they’re actually doing this? And so we started [surveying] and realised pretty quickly that they weren’t.”
The fledgling group was buoyed by what Wylie described as a “small win” at Southport in 2017, which showed the site to be prime swift parrot habitat. In response, Sustainable Timbers Tasmania (STT) halved the size of the logging coupe to keep the best habitat for the parrots.
The Forestry Watch logo features a swift parrot, symbol of the conservation movement within Tasmania. The fastest parrot in the world, they migrate annually across the wild seas of the Bass Strait to Victoria. They breed only in the forests of Tasmania, feeding on the nectar of bluegums. They nest in tree hollows, which take hundreds of years to form. The sanctuary, with its giant bluegums, is ideal swift parrot habitat.
A few years ago, this was recognised within the industry, which managed the Denison Coupe as a Swift Parrot Important Breeding Area (SPIBA). This meant that part of it was to be kept for the swift parrots. Several years ago, however, the area mysteriously lost its SPIBA listing.
“The fact that it’s not national park blows my mind,” said Alex Wylie. “It’s the best patch of forest that I’ve ever seen. It is a sanctuary for swift parrots and they do breed there in large numbers because it is the last place like that. And it’s in a logging coupe, which is absolutely insane.”
As well as swift parrots, Forestry Watch members hunt for giant trees. STT has an internal policy to provide a buffer zone for trees over 85 metres, or 280 cubic metres. As this is not legislated, however, there is no actual penalty if the policy is not followed, and Wylie believes that the felled giant of DN007C would certainly have been larger than 280 cubic metres. He hopes that if large trees are independently measured, they are more likely to be protected: “Other than the Denison one, which kickstarted Forestry Watch, we haven’t lost any giant trees yet.”
Home Tree is another example of a giant recently discovered in a logging coupe, a eucalyptus obliqua which stands 73 metres tall in the Upper Florentine. It is one of the biggest of its species, though not tall enough to qualify for a buffer zone. Forestry Watch were alerted to its presence by some mountain bikers who had stumbled upon it in a coupe that was being logged. At an open day organised by the group, 300 people placed a handprint on a banner proclaiming, “We will protect this forest”. In a victory for the group, the site was removed from the three-year logging plan, ostensibly for other reasons. Castle Forbes Bay forests near Franklin, also the focus of a sustained public campaign, is likewise no longer on it. “It shows that community pressure is effective; they are listening if we can unite,” said Wylie.
“I think the emerging generations are becoming more aware of the power they have to make a difference,” Amelia Cromb said. This is evident too in the massive global climate change protest movement, spearheaded by young people. One of the commitments made at COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021 was that native forest logging must be phased out.
. . .
It remains to be seen whether we will be able to bring our son back to these astonishing forests when he is old enough to remember them, but the dedication of Forestry Watch may yet save them.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson, and in early 2022 Forestry Watch found reason for hope: a nest of swift parrot chicks in the sanctuary. Given there are thought to be fewer than 300 birds left, this was a momentous find. A new year, a new generation of the critically endangered birds, born against the odds in a threatened forest. I wonder if the precarious presence of these chicks might, unbeknownst to the little birds, be enough to protect the forests they are a small part of.
For more information on guided walks and other events in the Denison Swift Parrot Sanctuary, see forestrywatch.com.
Fiona Howie is a teacher of English and history with a Bachelor of Advanced Arts (Honours) from the University of Sydney. She lives on the sunny eastern shore of nipaluna/Hobart with her partner and infant son.
