Old Growth Forest

'an area of forest which contains significant ammounts of it's oldest growth stage in the upper stratum - usually senescing trees - and has been subject to any disturbance, the effect of which is now negligible'.


Old Growth Forest is a complete biological ecosystem and a very special and rare treasure. It contains large beautiful trees, young saplings, ferns, orchids etc as well as amoebas, bacteria's, worms, beetles, possums, Infact a myriad of living entities and most of them never studied.

It takes many centuries for a forest to reach the delicate balance required for all of it's species to live in equilibrium with each other. Once this stage is reached, an event like a tree falling or a big wind storm will not be totally disastrous to the forest as it's own rescue procedures are in place.

Human interference with the use of machines can be disastrous and makes us quite capable of removing an entire species from an area. Unbeknownst to us, that particular species may be crucial in the healing of the forest from a once in a century event. It may be the habitat (home) for an animal which has to eat a particular seed to break down it's husk and grow in it's scat to shade another particular tree until it is strong enough to handle direct sunlight.

Logging practices like clearfell and burn remove not only all vegetation but bacteria's and mosses which can take lifetimes to establish.

Old Growth Forest can be hard to identify as Australia has many forest types. Iron Bark Old Growth is quite open and dry with a hard forest floor due to the usually low rainfall volumes in the Iron Bark belt.
Rainforest in the north east corner of N.S.W. is quite dim due to the strong high canopy of trees but it is very green and lush with lots of ferns and orchids as well as countless very small and fragile life forms. The forest floor is very soft and springy due to layer upon layer of breaking down plant waste which is the perfect place for fragile plants to be nurtured.

The forest is quite capable of supplying us with timber but the cost is not how much it costs to keep a bulldozer running, it is the wisdom and super intelligence of our scientific and ecological people to develop a way to work in harmony with the forests ecosystem.


see also Logging & Water Issues