WHERE HAVE ALL THE FORESTS GONE?


The other vanishing forests, such as in South America are cut down recklessly. Who vandalizes them? Again, it may be the peasant who needs the wood for his cooking fire or to sell for a pittance to the greedy wood merchant. Thirty thousand hectares of old growth forests were lost foreverver in 1997. Who do we blame? The poor peasant desperate to keep living? The wood merchants greedily becoming millionaires? Mr E Nino who lives in the United States and is rung many times of the day and night and told to stop the floods, the drought, the winds or the snow storms? Do we ask ourselves "How did it happen so quickly?" and shrug and tell ourselves, "Tch! Tch! The poor peasant shouldn't do that but there is nothing I can do about it? Too many things to fret about. The Greenhouse effect The Hole in the Ozone! Mr E Nino!!

It has not happened quickly. Some years ago my Dutch sister-in-law and brother-in-law came to visit us in Tasmania. It was the year that, for the first time, there was much talk of the growing hole in the Ozone layer. After dinner we were chatting about the danger of sun baking in Australia. The proximity of Tasmania to the South Pole means that when the Hole enlarges at certain periods every year, it has become most imperative that we take all precautions when outside in our gardens. The conversation moved on. I was on my usual hobby horse complaining about the felling of our bush for wood chips and that this was changing our weather. This is an unscientific observation but as I am in the garden every day, I have observed that there has been a definite change in the weather pattern and this started the year after the Tasmanian government gave away our forest trees for a pittance

Gery, Kees' sister told us a horrifying story. I had already read about the acid rain falling in Europe causing the trees to die in the Black Forest. This was the forest of my childhood fairy story books, where the giants and the princesses and the elves lived.

Gery told us that one morning they woke up to find their whole garden, their car and their garden paths were covered with a layer of fine sand. They heard on the news that the sand had been blown from

The copyright of the article WHERE HAVE ALL THE FORESTS GONE? in Tasmanian Gardening is owned by Gay Klok. Permission to republish WHERE HAVE ALL THE FORESTS GONE? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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