Sprol - Tasmania's Forests

Sprol: Pulping The World, Part 2: Tasmania,Australia

I've been meaning to blog this site for a while. They made it easy for me with an entry on the state of deforestation in my part of the world... Australia.

The Sprol blog entries use satellite photography to illustrate our impact on the planet. Today they are showing the extent of damage done to the wetland rainforests of Tasmania.

I found it shocking and sad to see the areas of forest completely levelled. A lot of the logging is in supposedly protected forests and concerned people are helpless in fighting it.

I enjoyed reading their take on how old these trees actually are...

"People seem to have a hard time with time spans longer than their own lifetimes.

Picture a seedling in the year 1555. The English were burning clergymen at the stake at that time. Back then, in South America, Brazil -- which was named for the Portuguese word for the red color of brazilwood, which the early visitors would clear cut -- Brazil was being settled by the French. That's how long ago it was."

And how they trivialised the end use of the paper product...

"That seedling, grown and felled yesterday, to make a product manual that no one is going to read, and cardboard for boxes to ship it, and cardboard for that extra printed marketing sleeve that comes around the box. To make paper for laser printed documents that people will forget to pick up at the workgroup printer."

I really don't know how we can stop all of this.