Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful Dial Range, south of Penguin, in north‑west Tasmania. It was a joy to be there. The Dial Range is an icon for the north-west and offers multi-use recreational opportunities for a diverse range of locals and visitors. It is a compact range that runs north-south from the sea all the way up to the central tablelands. It is a set of hills with numerous walking and mountain bike tracks. It is a hub of so much of the recreational activity in the north of the range. This site’s values were recently highlighted through the Dial Range Recreation Management Plan that was co‑created by the Circular Head Council and Parks and Wildlife Tasmania. Also included was a $15 million pledge by the state government for major upgrades to three key reserves across the state to quote: ‘enhance the visitor experience’.
Sad to hear that Forestry Tasmania has scheduled two coupes within this beautiful area. A total of 45 hectares that will be, according to their timetable, clear-felled in the ranges later this year. That is a 25-hectare coupe just south of Mount Duncan that targets eucalypt regrowth with some old growth scattered through it and the 45-hectare coupe.
How can this be? It is obviously at odds. On the one hand with the tourism strategy for the area, and on the other hand with the Liberals’ addiction to chopping things down – even beautiful, much loved areas like the Dial Range. One of those two coupes will directly clear across 200 metres of a pre-existing trail and it will be highly visible to other trails. The mountain bike tracks in the range are very well developed. There is a lot of investment and a lot of use. There are plans from the community to expand the track network farther south. The expansion that is planned in logging would threaten those tracks. The Dial Range mountains have been used for decades. There are tracks up Mount Dial, Mount Gnomon, Mount Montgomery and Mount Duncan.
When I was visiting this incredible place, I was lucky enough to meet Ash Bulgarelli, who is the founder of the Protect our North West Forest group. He has been at the front line of the campaign to save the ranges. He guided me and my staff member through the Dial with members of the north‑west Aboriginal community and several local walkers. Protect Our North West Forests, along with the Wilderness Society, held a couple of events up in this area, forest open days, to raise awareness for the local community and to help stop the Dial Ranges being so mindlessly logged.
At one event that they hosted, 120 people came from the community, who walked six kilometres into the area. I want to thank the many local groups who were involved: the local Mountain Biking Group, the North West Walking Club, the Penguin Walking Club, the Launceston Walking Club, the Deloraine Walking Club and many of the locals, individuals not part of any club but who go there with their families because they love the place so much. Dial is uniquely special to them.
I also met Lyndon O’Neill when I was there, a local pakana man descended from Dolly Dalrymple from the north. He shared memories of his grandmother looking for a giant freshwater crayfish on country in the Legana/Leven River area. These days native crayfish are endangered because of overfishing and habitat destruction and degradation. That is a very sad thing, and something that the community are so keen to make sure does not happen to their beautiful creeks and the river that runs through them.
If the Dial Range is opened up to logging, then species like the giant crayfish are likely to continue to decline. There is no doubt that this is a mindless logging by Forestry Tasmania of that coupe. When we walk through it, it had no giant mature trees at all. It was a place that was a low-density rainforest, but there were massive ferns, enormous ferns. It is a wonder. It is a jewel so loved. It is a beautiful wet rainforest and the community will fight to keep it there.
