She states that local people are employed in local sawmills. Which century is she referring to? The reality is that the myriad of small local family mills that responsibly logged our local forests in the past have been pushed out of the market by multi-national company Boral. Compared to the past, there are very few jobs for local families in this increasingly industrialised sector.

She asserts that FCNSW ‘strikes the right balance’ between logging and ‘protecting waterways and animal habitat’. Anyone who cares to take a drive along forest roads in our electorate will witness the hectares of clearfelled trees, the churned-up exposed soil, and the silted waterways. How are animals to survive in such a devastated habitat?

Prepare for clearfelled areas to increase from 0.25 ha to 45 ha, and for a whopping extra 140 000 ha of ‘heavy intensive’ logging to be opened up from Grafton to Taree. Prepare for our iconic koalas to be deprived of their preferred feed trees as FCNSW creates a Blackbutt monoculture for its main client, Boral.

And prepare for our forests to be wood-chipped – yes, you read correctly – and for the wood pellets to be fed into furnaces for power generation. FCNSW has its eye on the lucrative overseas wood pellet market, in its desperate bid to finally make a profit rather than being interminably subsidised by the NSW taxpayer.

Congratulations to Peter Alley and PMHC for ‘seeking information about the impact of FC’s logging operations in the area.’

Assuming Ms Lyons will deliver the same spin to council, councillors would be wise to do their homework on the reality behind Forest Corporation’s rosy narrative.

Jane McIntyre

Lorne NSW