By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
PREMIER Crisafuli, your Environment Department’s fines are obscene, extortionate and an a perversion of justice.
In Queensland, taking wood from national parks and state forests can attract on-the-spot fines of up $1378 while so-called “serious breaches” can be prosecuted in the courts to the tune of $137,850 for a first offence, and $413,550 for repeat offenders.
Contrary to the thinking of the faint-hearted eco-fairies who inhabit the plush city offices of the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, removing dead wood from national parks and state forests harms no-one and actually reduces the fire risk and fire intensity – especially in the scrubby, secondary-growth forest shown in the QPWS camera.
In fact collecting firewood from reserves and state forests with a permit has long been standard practice in Australia and those forests have benefited from it. It should be the same with national parks, although obviously with stricter time and place limits.
QPWS has warned the public it is illegal to remove dead trees from national parks and recently posted captured images of a ute filling with wood from a wildlife camera inside a park.
We at Cairns News would like to know what’s so shockingly bad about someone in a ute taking dead timber from a park? The ecologists tell us they like the wood to rot down and provide a home for fungi, lizards and so on. Big deal. There’s no shortage of dead wood in Australia’s forested land.
But what do these same ecologists say when a hot summer wildfire leaves the park a black, charred zone of destruction? They wring their hands and say nothing, because that’s how they allegedly “manage” the Australian bush.
“We speak for the trees when we say everything within a national park and state forest is protected in Queensland,” the department says in a social media post. What a load fairy dust.
“Whether it was a live tree like this one, or a dead one, they all play an important part in the protected ecosystem and should never be firewood sources — and penalties do apply,” the QPWS eco-fairies tell us.
The fact of the matter is all that dead vegetation QPWS lets lie around often does become firewood when one of the increasingly frequent fires sweeps through due to QPWS mismanagement of the forests.
The department wants dead trees and branches to serve as “vital habitat for animals and other plants”, but when the fire comes through it suddenly doesn’t matter.
“Removing dead wood can interrupt the natural decomposition processes and the construction of shelter and food sources for other animals,” the QPWS says. We ask: Like the wild pigs, dogs and cats that breed out of control in the parks?
The Daily Mail quoted “Senior Ranger Compliance” Luke Male as saying “forest officers can seize firewood and timber, conduct vehicle searches as well as seize vehicles and equipment such as chainsaws used in committing the offence.
“The department has a zero-tolerance approach to the unlawful collection of firewood and other items in our State forests and timber reserves, and people caught breaking the law can expect a fine or prosecution.”
Cairns News has a message for “Senior Ranger Compliance”: “Everyday Australians – especially rural Australians – are sick and tired of the relentless harassment by nanny state eco-fairies wearing badges and their endless lists of rules and regulations that benefit no-one.
They are also sick and tired and disgusted by the gross hypocrisy of your political bosses who approve the destruction of thousands of acres of forested landscapes for wind farms yet bristle when some bloke in a ute takes some dead wood out of a forest.
One man was fined $1437 at the expanse of scrubby wasteland known as the Pinnacles Reserve near Townsville after “being caught cutting timber in a protected area”.
In other examples of obscenely high fines being imposed, a person was fined $30,000 for merely collecting firewood from the Murrumbidgee Valley while in Victoria a man was fined more than $43,000 for collecting firewood in 2021 and, shock horror, driving off road.
The greenstapo of Victoria really went after the 37-year-old Myrtelford man who was stitched up with 14 offences under the Land Conservation (Vehicle Control) Regulations 2013, Wildlife Regulations 2013 and Forests Act 1958 and ordered to pay $6500 in fines, $131.50 in statutory costs and $36,399.35 to cover the Department’s legal fees.
Reminds me of a true story. My grandmother came to America but most of her family were back on the farm in Poland. There was no electricity yet, and they heated their house with wood from their own trees. In WWII, during the fighting, a shell took out the roof of their home. The father took their horse and wagon to go look for food. The horse came home, with dad dead from a sniper bullet. After that, the Communists took over, and posted a sign over their trees calling it the People’s Forest, and cutting trees was forbidden. It was winter, so the family gathered windfall branches to heat their home. They were arrested, and found guilty of stealing from the People’s Forest. The penalty was all the eggs from their chickens, and all the milk from their cows.
Peter Cole
Here is an amazing example of the false prophets regarding dead wood being collected by the explorers of Australia. I cant help but see jelasy mixed in with the action initiated by authorities. I would stand to be corrected but I would think that there is approximately hundreds of thousands of square miles of bushland throughout remote Australia in which I don’t know – say ,millions of tons of fallen, rotting and decaying wood throughout Australia. This fallen timber is nowhere in the vicinity of any parks, or offroad. With collecting firewood off the side of the road, this limits wild fires encroaching on the sides of the road (there is graphic TV footage of bush fire fighters trying to get access to particular areas, but get cut off due to burning debris etc on the sides of remote tracks. There are also unfortunate cases of bad injuries etc with these wildfires. (The majority being man made with DEWS weapons).
The other winner is wildlife – they tend to use wood and debris as shelter and protection. If there is no wood on the side of the tracks, they tend to not venture out on to them. A large problem with authorities besides jelosy is lack of logic. Do they really think about the impact of tourists (who bring wealth into remote communities, buying fuel and tucker, etc) Exploring the great Australia outback.
Hey Premier, get your Ministers and colleagues together and do a tour of the outback, take your time, talk to the people. You will enjoy it. So my advice is not a whistle stop. Stay in the small towns and get a real feeling of what it is like having a little bit of freedom. Take a swag, boil the billy, sleep out under the stars. You will enjoy it.
Just leave fuel on the ground in national parks so it will be an inferno blaze that will last for weeks when a fire hits, dumb arses 🤔
RE: “Indeed, all they’re lacking is sufficient morality and intellectual integrity to sustain a conscience.”
‘Morality?’ ‘Intellectual integrity?’ ‘Conscience?’
Wtf language you talking in, mate, they gonna need some translators and special advisers for that.
When a law harms the people, we have an absolute RIGHT under Magna Carta to ignore it. And if you read Section 61 we also have a DUTY change the government if it no longer serves the people.
If you get a fine, whether it is for collecting firewood or speeding, parking, whatever, you need never pay the fine with your cash.
KEEP YOUR CASH IN YOUR POCKET:
Go here and learn how to use the law to settle ALL GovCorp bills, fines, rates, taxes and so on with just your signature. We show you how. Join my Zoom chat every Thursday at 6-pm to learn how. It’s free, and it’s easy. Click on the link on the website here: https://mikeholtshow.com
In Norh Queensland where live the bush is predominantly open sclerophyl forrest but they regular burn off for “fuel reduction burns”. The only issue with that is that there is much fuel there anyway, unlike 100ft dense eucalypt forrests that really are a powder keg in the right conditions. Gradually new growth never gets a chance to establish and eventually the place becomes devoid of trees. Castle Hill in Townsville being a good example. Policy driven by idiots. National Sparks and Wildfire Service do plenty to f##k up the environment and to ping people for collecting firewood is just stupid.
Freemasonry and the Juice are the truffle pigs of the financial and governmental world and these creatures just can’t stand anyone getting anything for free hence the ever increasing impositions of fines etc.
Aussiemal said – “… I presume most of these morons have a university “education”…”
Indeed, all they’re lacking is sufficient morality and intellectual integrity to sustain a conscience.
I think it,s quite legitimate . Otherwise how is a bush fire to survive . It has a right to live too . Cmon embrace equality . Burn baby burn .
” they bulldozed about 20 acres of old native yellow box and stringy bark in the process and pushed them into several big piles, i thought “this’ll be good for the campers ,bit of free firewood” then one day a few weeks later i drove past and the np just burnt the piles off!!! typical!”
Really brilliant, going against their own rules just to spite we real people. Complete nitwits! I presume most of these morons have a university “education”.
What about all the billions and billions of termites being given somewhere to breed to create millions of tons of carbon dioxide to close the world down, as these morons are always spruiking about?
Re: “It’s all about money and control of the people by career politicians who haven’t got a brain in their head or an ounce of common sense.”
Our politicians are no more stupid than they are rotten, treacherous and mercenary. They are simply implementing agendas for which they were selected to implement.
‘Stupidity’ of the sort that they project for our benefit does not exist. The only stupidity is on OUR part for legitimising the selection of the few, by the few and for the few. Not to mention tolerating their evil doing. Period.
The Communist state always makes collecting firewood a crime as well as foraging and rights to field and stream. Collecting seaweed from the foreshore to fertilize the garden is also a crime. There will soon be (if there is not already) laws in place against going onto beaches and parks that an AbCorp has closed to White Australians.
The list of Orc rulz will grow longer every week until the 1901 Immigration Act population base of Anglo Celtic Australia becomes Racially Aware and organised and puts an end to all this crap.
You’d think they would be happy for us stopping it turning into coal because coal is evil. Maybe burning it is more evil due to C02. Who knows how a halfwit thinks.
Like I keep saying, the answer to all these problems is for the fake government politicians that create the fake ‘non-signed off’ by a valid Monarch, laws and pretend they are lawful, … is to inject them with dead’s disease or a super covid ‘virus’ that will take them out with turbo-cancer or a myocardial heart attack.
They are used to injecting the public, so now it is our turn to inject them.
I remember living in Germany. The Germans had a whole different approach to forest management. Any dead wood was fair game for anyone that wanted to harvest it. The forest floors were like a lovely park. During blueberry season you could walk through this natural park and pick as many blueberries as you could handle.
Somewhere along the line the ‘greenies’ forgot what it was to be ‘green’.
Government is always thinking of more stoopid things to do, it’s because they are over-funded
Michael Slovanos comments: Thanks for adding those very obvious facts that further expose the gross hypocrisy and double standards of government environment departments.
Greens should not be allowed to use the name because it gives a false impression. I have seen more destruction to nature and wildlife fom fires and floods from their party’s laws than if they had left nature alone.
We can’t collect firewood, we can’t fish for food in our own waters without a licence. And yet the Government clears 1000’s acres of land for plastic turbines that cannot be recycled, that kill our birds on the land and whales in the sea. They put up miles of shark nets that kill every fish and mammal in the sea except sharks. They constantly spray our skies with poison which will eventually kill off the rest.
If the Greens lived up to their name, these are the things they would be fighting for!
It’s all about money and control of the people by career politicians who haven’t got a brain in their head or an ounce of common sense.
few years ago girrawaween national park built a new camp ground and sewage plant, they bulldozed about 20 acres of old native yellow box and stringy bark in the process and pushed them into several big piles, i thought “this’ll be good for the campers ,bit of free firewood” then one day a few weeks later i drove past and the np just burnt the piles off!!! typical!
Pat from Vic always cracks me up with his irreverence but I totally agree, and have for some time, that the ban on picking up firewood from a forest or beside the road is absolute rubbish.
The author quoted the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service – “Whether it was a live tree like this one, or a dead one, they all play an important part in the protected ecosystem and should never be firewood sources…”
Let’s CLARIFY their statement, shall we?
All that shit in the forest “should never be firewood sources” for US, folks.
Because it’s firewood sources for THEM, and all the destructive wasteful shit-head mayhem that THEY want to rustle up. And while they’re “managing” all “their” untouchable pristine natural wonderlands, they’re also DENYING ACCESS to those enormous resources and tracts of sacrosanct land, and AMPLIFYING and LEVERAGING their DESTRUCTIVE POTENTIAL, to manage US and herd us into the sheep pens where they WANT us.
Because the CORPORATIONS masquerading as our governments “own” it, not US. We’re THEIR servants, THEIR slaves, not the other way around. And they’ve got the foreign-owned corporate ARMIES of irretrievably retarded utterly remorseless shit-for-brains pig-raping hired mercenary thugs to PROVE it.
Let’s see now. First NP burns the crap out of our natural forests killing more trees and wildlife than what they think they are advocating they are saving. Then with all the dead trees and debris from constant fires with the added weed growth becomes a horrific fire hazard. And now we are not allowed to touch their manufactured fire hazard, for what? I cannot imagine
The only true wilderness..is between a “greenie’s ears.
God gave us the forests for free! Not for certain the damn evil belligerent halfwits in Government to take control. of us and fine us for collecting wood. The article above is appalling news to any sensible person & the cronies responsible for introducing such crooked Laws are nonsensical drongos. We are screwed because of idiotic arrogant Premiers & the puppets who enforce such draconian regulations. I know this happens a lot but am still shocked at the article above.
THE GREENS ARE ABSOLUTELY SCREWED IN THE HEAD, WHERE AS NORMAL PEOPLE HAVE A BRAIN, THEY BY IMPLEMENTING THIS DROCANIAN LAW AGAINST HUMANITY APPEAR TO NOT TO BE HINDERED BY COMMON SENCE AND ARE TOTALY VOID OF RATIONAL THINKING.
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