The battle to find balance between industry and environment
ABC News (2 Mar 2017) by Stephanie Anderson
Ken Deacon has run a trail riding business in the Rubicon Valley, northeast of Melbourne, for 30 years.
"That beauty of the Mountain Ash forest and the Alpine Ash forest … it's just got a beautiful aura about it that just makes you want to keep riding," he said.
But Mr Deacon no longer takes groups riding through the mountains. "Since industrialised clear-fell logging has been taking place, it's actually devastating areas of the Rubicon State Forest where we used to ride," he said.
Mr Deacon said he used to take groups on rides through 75 year old forest, with trees towering above.
But that has now given way to cleared landscape and scrubby regrowth.
And the tracks the groups once rode are now locked away inside logging coupes, where safety exclusion zones prevent the public from entering.
"We've just been forced out of the forest," Mr Deacon said.
