13 Sept 2020

The once glorious scenery along the Acheron Way, already badly impacted by fire and logging over the last two decades, will be further degraded if VicForests’ recent Timber Release Plan gets the go ahead.  (See RFPG TRP (7/9/20) submission and addendum to submission, 13/9/20).

Mt Dom Dom is already heavily logged but remaining tracts of prime forest further to the east will be further devastated, and views from the Hermitage  and Fisher Creek Road walking tracks (which form part of the national bicentennial trail) will be badly affected.  (See image here.) These are among the last remaining hiking tracks, easily accessible from Marysville, that pass through mixed species, mixed age forest, as yet untouched by either fire or logging. One coupe would log approximtely 500 metres of the Hermitage track on its eastern end near the Acheron Way. 

The Timber Release Plan released in August comprises fourteen coupes (including ten previously indicated coupes and four new ones) in the Acheron Forest Block. The planned coupes total more than 500 hectares (gross) of prime mixed species forest, dominated by narrow-leafed peppermint and messmate. These forests have abundant and diverse plants and animals, probably because of the loss of habitat in surrounding logged areas.

Funding is currently being sought for a feasibility study for a new walking trail from Dom Dom along the Hermitage trail or Fisher Creek Road and Dom Dom Road to the Acheron Way and thence to Marysville, as the final stage of the proposed ‘Iconic Walk’ from Melbourne to Marysville. However, VicForests’ proposed Acheron coupes would wreck it.

Last year, DELWP’s Forest Protection Survey Program  found 4 koalas, 4 powerful owls, 3 sooty owls, 2 sugar gliders, 153 greater gliders, 46 yellow-bellied gliders, 21 southern boobooks, 5 eastern ringtail gliders, 2 feather-tail gliders and 173 threatened tree geebungs in the Fisher Creek Rd coupes alone. Fisher Creek and Dom Dom Roads are narrow winding track with large trees on either side. Most of these trees will be felled if the coupe is approved and logging proceeds.

Tourism, specifically forest or ecotourism, is the only possible economic future for Marysville once logging ends. These last tracts of pristine forests must not be chopped, bulldozed and burned. The loss of wildlife in Marysville’s forests on Black Saturday, including almost the entire local koala population, was huge. Our badly depleted native bird and animal populations must now be left alone to multiply and flourish in their remaining pockets of forest refuge.

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group has written to VicForests and Lily D’Ambrosio, the Minister for the Environment, asking for the coupes in the Acheron Forest Block to be spared, in accordance with the landscape and biodiversity provisions of the Code of Forest Practice.

The linked map shows three proposed new coupes on the right (green outlined in blue) that will log most of the remaining forest between the burned out areas and narrow special protection zone (SPZ) strip (in yellow) along the Acheron River. A fourth proposed coupe is the narrow coupe on the left along the Fishers Creek Road track and part of the Hermitage walking track. The ten other coupes (outlined in dark yellow) were already on the TRP, would remove several hundreds of remaining forest on the east of the Acheron river.