The Bob Brown Foundation’s new report documents another year of state-sponsored destruction in the vanishing habitat of the swift parrot. The Rockliff Government, despite being informed that logging was occurring in critically endangered species habitat, refused to act and protect them.
Scientists from the Bob Brown Foundation have gathered an overwhelming body of evidence documenting swift parrots nesting and breeding in areas throughout the state that are actively being logged. It includes the Swift Parrot Important Breeding Areas in Wielangta and the Southern Forests, and the Central Highlands.
Despite this incontrovertible evidence being handed to Premer Rockliff, Minister Ellis, Forestry Tasmania, and the Forest Practices Authority, logging of native forests continued unabated in critical swift parrot survival habitat. In a climate and biodiversity crisis, the Rockliff Government is continuing to log native forests and drive the swift parrot closer to extinction.
The Premier received twelve letters alerting him to this destruction. He ignored his responsibility to protect critically threatened species and fobbed them all off to the Minister for Resources.
The Forest Practices Authority is not fit to manage threatened species habitat in Tasmania’s forests. To sit idly by while the swift parrot’s habitat is logged and burned, in areas meant to be designated for their protection, is unthinkable. Our forest practices system should protect nature and conserve threatened species, not facilitate their extinction.
