Bellingen Koalas and Suburbia

After the logging and clear felling of Bellingen's forests, koalas find themselves wandering around homeless. Desperate to find suitable (private) land that has not been cleared, they have to cross an array of roads with speeding trucks and cars. Navigating this terrain they find that most '5 acre kingdoms' are sprouting monocultures of lawns and exotic weeds. The majority of local landowners keep introduced canines that keep their places wildlife free. Additionally, these pet owners walk their dogs unleashed through the 'bush' to be emptied. Delighted to spot a koala they take snapshots of the horrified marsupials clinging to a tree by the roadside. They are then tagged and spread around on proprietary platforms.

Data from the South-East Queensland Wildlife Hospital Network could be an indication about the main mechanisms that are making koalas in 'the wild' extinct. Although there is a sparsity of data for the Bellingen/Gleniffer area, one could assume similar trends for this area. Industrial logging of 'The Great Koala park' is a rapid disruption to all forest biodiversity. Unrestrained sprawling human settlements with their associated roads/cars and dogs are also making Australian species extinct.

"After European colonization in 1788, more species have become extinct in Australia than in any other country on Earth (Australian Government Department of Agriculture Water and the Environment, 2022)."

VEHICLES
The wildlife around Gleniffer Rd. and Roses Rd. have experienced a 'massacre' after the 'upgrades'  (for logging machinery and tourist access). Australian wildlife are smeared along the asphalt on a daily basis. The externality of this mobility form is called 'roadkill'.

When koalas are hit by motor vehicles they are predisposed to head trauma and fractures to the skull and jaw. "Koalas who had been attacked by a dog, fallen from a tree, and/or been hit by a motor vehicle were more likely to be euthanized or found deceased than released."

DOGS
For koalas, the main complications of a dog bite injury often include infection, torso fractures and zoonotic organisms carried by dogs. "Despite almost 50% of households in Australia having a pet dog, there is limited research on the human management of pet dog and wild koala interactions." The system is also lacking management strategies to prevent dog attacks on koalas.

This area has no wildlife hospital nearby and no data/ studies have been conducted on the impacts of sprawl ( logging, settlements, roads, cars and dogs).

In 2020, the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Koalas found that koalas will become extinct before 2050 with the present regime of 'business as usual'. First the thylacine, then the koala, then... 

Charalambous, R., Descovich, K. A., & Narayan, E. J. (2024). Identifying Trends in Admission and Release of Wild Koalas in Veterinary Clinics Throughout Queensland, Australia. Society & Animals (published online ahead of print 2024).  https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10220

An Environmental History of the Timber Industry: The Social Constructions of Forest and Identity

Some remarks on the Social Constructions of Forest and Identity: An Environmental History of Timber Industry Authorities in the Forests of Southeast Victoria, Australia,  Claire Waddell-Wood, La Trobe University, Victoria, 2024 (source)

 

One wonders why the degradation of Australia seems unstoppable.
Why are the forests and biodiversity being wiped out, eradicating a future for complex living beings?
What is the nexus between settler society and the extractive relationship to their surrounding country?


Claire Waddell-Wood, is an environmental historian who investigates the Victorian timber industry. Light is thrown on the extractive relationships of settler-colonial interactions with the landscapes they colonise. The conceptual framing foregrounds resource extraction/forestry labour and masculinity constructions against the background of a more-than-human world. 

The metabolism between European modes of production/ consumption took the form of “rape and pillage disasters.”  The resulting ecological crisis does not only take place in the timber industry alone, but is a way of life and work in all the extractive industries.


Victoria officially ceased logging operations recently. But in other states such as NSW (The proposed Great Koala Park) forests and their remaining biodiversity are still being denuded and erased. Elsewhere in the Big Quarry, “dualistic ontologies still guide human behaviour.” 

An acknowledgment and a change of ways of the mainstream structures, institutions and mindsets, as well as in environmental movements could harbour the possibilities for a fundamental transition of socio-ecological relations.

The ‘history of degradation’ traces the (southeast Victorian) forest industry’s  extractive work, masculinities and landscape degradation. p. 202

A “deep time forest culture (which) shaped and was shaped by long histories of interactions” (by Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Taungurung, Gunnai Kurnai, Jaitmatang, Bidwell, and Ngarigo people) encountered male dominated European settler culture that conceptualises “those forests through the resource imaginary”.

“The social metabolisms of invasion clashed with deep time forest cultures, and ecosystems became disturbed and damaged. The interactions between settlers and forests led to the escalation of fire frequency in forests.” p. 200

European agricultural ideals of plantation monocultures and short term crop yields constitutes a violent othering of Nature. Ancient Indigenous knowledges about forest ecology and ‘the region’s deep time fire culture’ were ignored. The result were intensified extraction and megafires.


From now on “the only true forest knowledge-holders were those trained in the forestry sciences.”  A move from bare rural masculinity in primary industries with boots on the ground to a ‘technoscience of colonial forestry’ operated at arms length via assemblages of machinery and from a top floor of a distant city.

The administration of the ‘stuff’ becomes ‘spatially alienated from the forests’. Hierarchies of (male) staff control the ‘output’ of the biophysical forest factory. Forestry and science experts with exclusionary language and procedures take control from head office over the landscape. Here “the construction masculinity through work” and the production of “wasted landscape" and “waste peoples” takes place.  p.197 

Waddell-Wood's thesis “can aid in untangling the myths of capitalism and colonialism from our everyday lives and help us to live with the biophysical world rather than against it.” p 203

Yet another stepping stone on the path to truth telling.

Visions of Nature - How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism by Jarrod Hore - A commentary

Jarrod Hore is an environmental historian of settler colonial landscapes, nature writing, and geology. ’Visions of Nature How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism' elucidates cultural techniques used in the Anglo-American settler empire over various centuries. The Pacific Rim Nations (North America, Aotearoa/NZ and Australia) command the most attention of the critical historical image research. It is a historical elaboration of pictorial imagery (iconography), mainly photography, paintings, but also texts.

At the time of steam trains, photos were a novelty with which to view exotic locations. Photography and paintings informed worldviews and worldmaking practices. Visual cultural analysis can reveal the power relations that are embedded in the narrative knowledge that these images and publications entail.

Hore’s text emphasises the underlying scaffolding of presence and absence in the visual realm, textual narrations and the world. The unseen is rendered visible through an apparatus of in- and exclusion. The dominant motif is the binary opposition of existence and non-existence, life and erasure, being and necropolitics.

In 500 years of European expansion, the legal myth of ‘terra nullius’  (‘nobody's land' or ’uninhabited land’) was a foundational imperative. Settlers transferred the ‘empty land’ or ‘natural environment’ into their possession. The human absence of a ‘disembodied land’ was not a given but was achieved by on-going violence and exploitation by the global settler community.

The ‘wide-open spaces’ depicted in images of the time lacked any human trace. They were selling tales of empty land to satisfy settlers/farmers driven by an expanding ‘land hunger’. The ‘empty spaces’ were ‘yearning’ to be filled with plant and animal mono-cultures from the mother country.

Images of this environmental transformation had to depict the taming of a ‘wilderness’ not as the degradation that it was by then, but as a J Locke-style “clothed in the language of improvement” and thereby value creating.

Spatial politics was composed of cultural practices, monotheistic belief systems and iconoclastic enactments. The dominant culture usurps interpretive sovereignty over all cultural artefacts.

Later, new customers were assured of an empty and available commodity to project their imagination upon. “Rampant land speculation” chopped up the land into square rectilinear bits and put it on the market.

Upper Orara 1912

After this period of utility came the romantic idyllic scenery with nationalism to foster belonging. Pictures drove the real estate industry and satisfied “European expectations of the scenic” for leisure. The spatial production of ‘wilderness’ opened up new possibilities for recreation.

National Parks were declared in Australia as primarily for settlers to access recreational spaces, whereas in the US they were set aside for the conservation of biodiversity primarily. “Wilderness was violently, legislatively and spatially produced before it could be preserved.” (Hore, 2022, p.106)

To the same degree as Indigenous mobility was restricted and confined, settlers' mobility was increased. It was time for explorative drives into the countryside. “Pioneering settlers constructed new environmental regimes that improved the prospects for settler mobility and constrained Indigenous movement.” (Hore, 2022, p. 211)  First Nations peoples and Australian flora and fauna were by now “outside the frame” of the settler society's gaze.

When nationalism severed ties from the mother country, some floral and faunal emblems were allowed to impregnate the hearts and minds and stand for the new nation.

While this new national identity was manufactured, a new wave of exclusion and denial was pursued for people not of the Anglo-Saxon ‘race’ - a ‘neo-European nationalist destiny’ was to be established.

A hierarchisation of ‘races’ discouraged settlers from non-European origins, as well as ranking European ‘ethnics’. Newcomers should have been preferably "white/British" or Anglo-Celtic peoples to make up a monocultural ‘white ethnostate'. 

Coffs Harbour, 1924

The entanglement of nationalism and colonialism continued for the ‘chosen people of the promised land’. An expansionist Manifest Destiny excluded non-white settlers from entry and/or citizenship. The White Australia policy was ended in 1973. In 1967 they finally acknowledged the existence of First Nations people of Australia and started to count the survivors.

The presence of First Nation peoples is a “logical anomaly in settler polities - an embarrassment to the sovereign settler state.” (Hore, 2022, p.109) The outstanding business lingers and is unsettling and traumatic. The dispossession and exclusion of Indigenous peoples in this country is like a festering wound rocking the unstable foundation. 

On the biodiversity front it appears that settler society has not stopped rolling up the unique rich ‘carpet’ of Australian animals and plants, and turning them into a fast buck. ‘Superior land use’ consists of having the worst animal extinction rate in the world. Most ecosystems are degraded and collapsing.

“Australia has the worst record of mammal extinctions globally. (It) is regarded as one of the world's 11 deforestation fronts (WWF, 2015) and is likely to suffer widespread biodiversity loss from climate change and habitat loss over coming decades.” (source)

Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges
Eugene von Guerard, 1857

The modus operandi of settler society has not changed. Genocide and ecocide practices are still the dominant structure. The social and natural metabolism is intensifying. The gear is changing from business as usual to fast-tracking everything. The distribution of gain and harm of this extractive and exploitative process is made to appear as natural. 

An expansionist political agenda increasingly excludes uncomfortable positions by scientists, ecologists, conservation experts and Indigenous peoples with hushing-up tactics. People speaking up about threatened species, mining, logging, carbon credits and other harm to the environment are in danger of becoming a persona non grata. Their voices or studies might just cease to exist, data might just vanish. Many whistleblowers and demonstrators are gagged and are existentially threatened. Resonance spaces for counter narratives shrink in civil society.

An inadequate public discourse and science suppression do not make for a literate citizenry. The absence of the acknowledgment of the truth of the violent legacies cannot break the prevailing ‘code of silence’.

The past still echoes in the collective psyche as unfinished business. There is an unwillingness to properly confront the uncomfortable truths about genocidal colonialism and the extractive relationship towards nature. It takes reparative justice and mindful symmetrical relations to heal the poly-traumas.

Settlers on this Earth need a fundamental reorganisation, a paradigm shift (a Copernican like revolution) to demonstrate that they are not the navel of the universe.

The Eurocentric baggage brings with it epistemic violence, exploitative relationships towards others and the ecosphere. The Western world view and practices curate our habitus and seem to be set on autopilot. Extraction, pollution and exploitation without limits has to end.

It is time to re-imagine the contemporary landscape and reconfigure the connectivity to the natural and social world.

Hore’s Visions of Nature provides another stepping stone on the path of truth telling.

A Master Plan for Bellingen Placemaking and its Surrounding Forests

Bellingen area stripped bare?

Bellingen council is in the process of producing a CBD Master Plan for Bellingen, Dorrigo and Urunga.  “A long-term vision and implementation strategy will be outlined for guiding growth and change in an area." The plan will be used to implement “ land use, building density, public spaces, mobility, sustainability, and heritage.”

These long-term 'visions' and actions will have implications for settlers, Indigenous peoples, visitors and more-than-human lifeforms. Stakeholders were asked to ‘share their ideas’ (consultation) with consultants and council. Biodiversity was rendered voiceless.

A strategy for growth (business as usual) and change (unspecified) ”will influence the future appearance, atmosphere, and functionality of the town centres”

Bellingen is a small town, located on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. It has a long history of (rainforest) timber extraction. Like most other Australian sprawling towns it is (totally) fossil fuel/ car dependent. Users of the CBD obtain their stuff there and drive to their homes or short term accommodation. All roads are congested and constantly have to be rebuilt to accommodate the increasing traffic.

The idyllic scenery

A drive in the scenic countryside used to be a big drawcard for visitors and boosted the income for the service industry. The cruise past forest canopy from the coast to mountain rivers and waterfalls funneled money into town.

It is these surroundings, the ambient milieu, that gave the small town its charm. Showcasing its physical (rich biodiversity) or social settings (some non mainstream culture) put the place ‘on the map'. It is not a few shops, but the setting, the relational context that gives a 'thing' its value.

Stripped bare - Native forest governance

The NSW state government’s Forestry Corporation has made the decision now to log and clear-fell vast areas of forests surrounding the area before some are declared a Great Koala National Park. Bellingen/ Gleniffer is now surrounded and locked in by industrial forest logging sites for years.

The degradation and destruction of Bellingen’s 'frame' will have impacts on the “the future appearance, atmosphere, and functionality of the town centres.” 

The habitats of plants and animals are being stripped bare while timber is being extracted with the aid of fossil fuel machinery and tax dollars to subsidise these destructive projects. Untold living creatures lose their homes and are being pushed onto the newly updated logging roads to become 'roadkill'. Diverse and endemic remnant flora and fauna are wiped out to make way for a monoculture plantation with the aid of pesticides and lingering fires and smoke pollution.

Residents, visitors and businesses that have chosen this country location find themselves next to industrial sites with mega industrial machine pollution, eroded, dangerous extraction roads and stranded assets. This invasion disrupts and absorbs the lifetime of the residents and carers who are committed to refraining from degrading Australia any further.

The violent destruction of bulldozing ecosystems entails noise, dust clouds, pollution and expulsion. It is the offloading of the externalities, so that the native forests can be sent overseas in the form of wood chips. Voiceless nature undergoes 'dispersal'.

Forest logging robs Australian animals of food, shelter, and breeding areas and threatens their survival. Unique endemic plants and remnant vegetation ‘get under the wheels’ of logging machinery.

Even in 'normal times’ forest-dependent biodiversity is threatened by out of control land clearing, invasive species, cars, pets, pollution, disease and weather extremes due to climate disruption cause by burning fossils.

Native forest logging makes bushfires worse and renders bushfires harder to control. Out of control fires hasten ecosystem collapse.

Wipe out
The industrial extraction of the 'stuff' called timber is torn out of the heart of a complex web of life. The irretrievable evolutionary process of 3.7 billion of years which appears to us as imperceptibly slow motion is just wiped out.

Our present (perception) has an endless past incorporated in it. The bureaucrats/loggers are only able to see the thing called ‘wood' for export income and votes. With this mind frame an open future is foreclosed and the future takes on a necessary trajectory.

Land use vs Country care
Country was managed for 65.000 years (long-termism) with Indigenous knowledge systems of relationality and connectivity. Settler-colonial society encountered a 'pristine' environment. In a very short time of 236 years since European settlement the 'state of the environment' can be summed up as one of degradation and extinction. "More than half of NSW forests were lost since 1750 and logging ‘locking in’ species extinction". (source)

“Our inability to adequately manage pressures will continue to result in species extinctions and deteriorating ecosystem condition, which are reducing the environmental capital on which current and future economies depend. Social, environmental and economic impacts are already apparent.” (source)

The entire Australian environment is deteriorating due to pressures from rapid resource extraction and expansion, climate disruption, habitat destruction, invasive species and pollution.

To squander one’s own environmental capital is maladaptive behaviour, that prevents one from making adjustments that are in one’s own best interest. To destroy the basis of existence is suicidal, unless there is more ‘new found land’ or another planet waiting around the corner.

The speed of exploitation and its associated expansion in spacetime are escalated by the ubiquitous economic dictates. It is an out of control system without functioning guardrails.

“That things are "status quo" is the catastrophe.”
― Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Polycrisis

Ruthless extraction and degradation of one's own existential basis is taking place in the context of an emerging polycrisis, the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events.

Global warming from fossil fuels, putting the chain saw to the tree of life (biodiversity) and pollution of the biosphere are just a few of the intersecting global environmental crises of the collective impacts of one species.

The ongoing ecological depletion on local, regional, and global scales, is seen as normal. The next generations of living entities will just have to deal with this ‘shifting baseline’ of a scorched, barren Earth, devoid of any life as far as the eye can see.

This project is threatening the fabric of complex life on Earth. A 'long-term vision' of a 'master plan', even of a local area, must take the existential risks to humanity and life into account.

It is essential to invoke the precautionary principle to do no social harm and environmental damage in the light of an avalanche of scientific reports and pledges.

Growth, intensification of extraction and expansion of living space constitute the script and the mental landscape of the settler.

 

The 'superior land use' argument has been used to justify the genocidal violence and ecocide of the colonised diversity of life, replacing it with a monoculture of livestock, plantation crops and pets.

The “logic of elimination”, (Patrick Wolfe, 2006) of the expanding colonial scheme goes hand in hand with the denial of existence (e.g. Indigenous peoples, referendum, forest surveys, data sparsity etc) and imperial governmentality.

The state of the planet demands attention and care. A facing up to the unsettling 'long present' of denial. Ending the undisturbed slumber of collective amnesia.

“Australians haven’t actually started living on this continent like they are from here and they have a responsibility of custodianship.” Richard Swain

As we are sliding into creeping collapse at an accelerated speed the presuppositions of the global governance of the biosphere have to be interrogated to produce strategies of bare survival possible in a post-democratic society where regulatory capture is the norm.

The council, Bellingen Chamber of Commerce, the tourism industry, the short stay lobby and all the other ‘stakeholders’ could position themselves to keep Bellingen’s ecosystems in a healthy state. Eradicating forests around Bellingen/ Gleniffer will not foster place identity.

Bellingen placemaking without the buffer of healthy forests and ecosystems would just be another bare drive-though town ‘in the middle of nowhere'.

"First life, then spaces, then buildings – the other way around never works” Jan Gehl

 

Links:

M.Ward et al., 2023, The impacts of contemporary logging after 250 years of deforestation and degradation on forest-dependent threatened species
DOI:10.1101/2023.02.22.529603

Patrick Miner et al., 2024, Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment, Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 115, February 2024
 

Patrick Wolfe, 2006, Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native, Journal of Genocide Research Volume 8, 2006 - Issue 4