threats to natural values

[ threats to cultural values ] [ threats to the tarkine ]

Logging, mining and mining exploration, fire, and introduced species and disease present major problems with regard to the conservation of the Tarkine's natural values.

Mining and mining exploration can have catastrophic effects on forests, greatly devalue wilderness, and destroy natural beauty and habitat for threatened species. Mining operations such as open-cut mines are devastating but usually in a localised area, although access road construction, and breaching of tailing dams can have catastrophic effects such as the release of immense volumes of silt and heavy metals into surrounding riverine environments. There are currently a number of mining leases that exist in and on the periphery of the Tarkine Wilderness.

Exploration for magnesite has occurred for a number of years on the northern fringes near the confluence of the Arthur and Lyons River. If these loosely consolidated fluvial deposits are mined, there is a very real risk of lasting damage to these riverine environments.

Fire frequency is a critical variable in the region's vegetation patterns, but fires can also be catastrophic events, destroying vast swathes of forest, heath and moorland, devaluing wilderness, and pushing threatened species to perilously low numbers. Rainforests in particular do not readily recover from fire events. A series of wildfires during the 1980s scorched more than 60,000 hectares (some 150,000 acres) of land in and around the Tarkine Wilderness. The sources of these fires were included planned (and supposedly controlled) fuel reductions burns, accidental escapes from campfires, ignition from a forestry operation chainsaw, arson, and forestry regeneration burns (Harries 1992).

Despite the Community Forest Agreement of May 13 2005, 30, 000 hectares of precious Tarkine Old Growth forests are still being logged.

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