The National Parks Association is therefore correct to call for a moratorium on such logging. The most recent changes to NSW logging laws saw a dramatic intensification of the logging. The changes will lead to the conversion of many of our public native forests into monoculture plantations, which will have a dramatic effect on our native wildlife.

The NSW Government's own Natural Resources Commission analysed the changes and concluded "the intensive harvesting zones are being formally introduced to prop up an unsustainable wood supply arrangement at the expense of the environment". Despite this, the government approved the changes.

Since then we have had the recent bushfires, which affected more than 5 million hectares of land in NSW. One hundred and fifty parks had more than 50 per cent of their area burned, with huge impacts on native vegetation and wildlife. Our wildlife and our natural environment needs time to recover, as intensive logging destroys important bush fire recovery habitat.

An immediate moratorium on logging is the only way to ensure that happens.

I reject much of the content of the letter from Les Blessington (NSW Forestry Corporation).

Mr Blessington claims that only 0.1 per cent of NSW's forests are set aside for timber harvesting. This figure is likely to be derived by a subterfuge. Only a small proportion of our native tree cover is of any use to the timber industry. These are forests growing in areas that receive greater than 650mm of rainfall, (wet sclerophyll forests). These forests occur in a thin strip up the east coast of Australia .

The 0.1 per cent Mr Blessington cites is likely to include huge areas of tree cover that the timber industry does not want to harvest. I recall as a participant in the Victorian Forests Education Project that this was done by changing the definition of a forest from trees of an average of 33metres to 10 metres. I shall look at the material Mr. Blessington recommends with interest.

These wet sclerophyll forests the timber industry makes money out of have been radically altered since white settlement. First, the cedar trees were cut out, even before Milton was a township. Then the giant eucalypt trees, 80 metres tall and 250 plus years old came next. Today only two of these giants remain in our area. One is the famed "old spotty" at Bawley Point.

Almost all of the wet sclerophyll forests have been logged at least once. What we see today are all regrowth forests the timber industry wishes to log on rotations of about 90 years. When the calculations show the industry can't obtain sufficient timber on a 90 year rotation it will ask for it to be reduced to say 70 or 60 years.

These juvenile forests have many fewer nest holes for native animals and a diminished understory.

Mr Blessington fails to mention that these regrowth forests are also much more fire prone than the moist ancient forests that were the natural vegetation of this district. When regrowing, wet sclerophyll forests use almost all the rainfall they receive, the understory dries out, stream flow decreases drastically, the tree density goes from four giants per hectare to hundreds of saplings, the canopy is lowered and we have the ingredients for the fire storms we saw over summer.