Tolmie biofuel logging continues

Here’s a stack of nice, straight logs at the Murphy Fresh glasshouse, ready for the biofuel chipper. Obviously forest waste!!!

Here’s a short piece from our Mansfield correspondent, Doug Vance.

“More disturbing news from Tolmie. They are still logging and stacking logs at the Bridge Creek Greenhouse of Murphy Fresh. Thought they had finished for the year but obviously they have started on another coupe. This stupidity so needs to be stopped.”

Do Coles and  Flavorite Tomatoes know how Murphy’s grow their tomatoes?

Here are two photos of the previously burnt forest before it was logged, just to show how long and straight the trees were (in case it’s not obvious from the stacked logs). An absolute waste of  valuable timber and a recovering forest! And an aerial pic of the stack pictured above. Another stack is being made next to this one.

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How much timber does the Murphy Fresh boiler need? Well, the boiler runs 365 days per year, we understand, and Murphy Fresh has an allocation of about 10,000 tonnes of native forest wood per year – no wonder they need a very big stack of logs. And all this timber is presumably green, they’re burning green wood! It may not be particularly efficient, but it’s cheap! Cheap, because VicForests can supply the wood to Murphy’s at below-commercial cost. The invisible cost is borne by the forest and the catchment. The coupes where these trees were harvested will now slowly but surely be transformed into tree farms with 30 yr rotations – goodbye natural forest.