Page 4933 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 November 2017
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Recreation is an important environmental service provided by many planted forests. The value of this service, however, is not well known. For policy makers and land managers to make informed decisions on planted forest management for multiple benefits, they need to recognize the value of the environmental services provided.
The government here currently sees its pine plantations as a logging resource that supports some recreation. The logging always takes precedence. I think we can view this issue through an entirely different prism. In the future we might see plantations first as a valuable recreational resource which also happen to support some logging.
It is not just Kowen Forest’s trail network that is under threat. Majura Pines is also scheduled for logging that is likely to destroy the existing network of trails. The trails in Majura Pines actually received a significant revamp in 2014. I was the TAMS minister at the time, so I am very aware of this. It had to be done after the Majura Parkway was cut through the middle of what was the previous Majura Pines recreational area. The community showed a strong interest in maintaining the area for recreation, with over 680 people contributing to a public consultation process. The government contributed almost $300,000 to revamp the trails, and the Majura Pines Trail Alliance was formed, a fantastic network of volunteers who help create and maintain the trails. This was a great outcome, as the facility was saved from the brink after the Majura Parkway was constructed through the middle.
Majura Pines is going brilliantly and is a highly used community resource. The Majura Pines Trail Alliance has collected data on its use, both from public information available through GPS logs, such as the web application Strava, and from their own installation of infrared counters on the trails themselves. In a single year they have tracked over 26,000 rides on the Majura Pines trails. Most riders are from the ACT but thousands of riders have also come from other states and territories, as well as a range of countries, including the US, UK, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland and various other parts of Europe, and Asia. This is a highly used and valued recreational facility. Tracking at Kowen Forest has shown similar impressive statistics.
It was especially disappointing when this year the government proposed logging in Majura Pines, which would have damaged and destroyed trails it had just helped create. This kind of episode unfortunately confirms the worst stereotypes about government: that on one hand it helps create a facility and on the other hand it proposes to knock it down. As a minister I can say that, unfortunately, we do not always get this information ourselves, which is why it is valuable that the community bring this information to us, and that is why I want to bring this to the attention of the Assembly today.
Fortunately, after the government released this logging schedule, the concerned community responded and managed to negotiate at least a more sensitive and staggered approach to the logging. It is problematic that this occurred only because of a community intervention. I would have hoped that the directorate would have taken this on board, knowing the value of these spaces and the money we just spent on it, and actually given the minister clearer advice about the possible options.
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