Local environmentalists held a small protest this week to draw attention to the fact that promised "regional park" status has still not been granted to the Wellsford forest - the region's "largest remnant of good quality box and ironbark forest".
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The action, on Thursday, came two years to the day since the government committed to adding the Wellsford to the existing Bendigo Regional Park.
The regional park status spells an end to recreational hunting and commercial timber harvesting but still allows prospecting and car rallies, dog walking and the collection of firewood from designated areas.
However, nothing has changed yet on the ground, and the Bendigo and District Environment Council (BDEC) - who had pushed strongly for the area to be designated national park, as recommended by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) - claims firewood harvesting is virtually uncontrolled in Wellsford and is threatening its wildlife and biodiversity.
"It seems not only 'legal' but illegal firewood collection continues through lack of resources," Wendy Radford, from the group, said.
"People who live near the Wellsford have told us that big rigs go in. People are taking firewood for commercial gain, and that is not supposed to happen."
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Endangered brush-tailed phascogales, which "rely on scent trails within the forest", were just one example of species impacted by the removal of wood.
"We want an immediate stop to firewood collection in the Wellsford and signs erected that show it is a community forest and asset for biodiversity, recreation and mental health for the people of Bendigo," Ms Radford.
There were plenty of other sources of firewood, with the farm-grown timber industry, which needed to be fostered, offering a viable alternative, she said.
"We need to foster the farm forestry industry, not pillage our native vegetation and habitat."
Native forest logging to continue beyond 2024 in the west of the state, groups claim
According to BDEC, this week's action was also intended to draw attention to a broader issue the state's conservation movement recently uncovered - that the government's accelerated timetable for ending native forest logging in Victoria - from 2030 to the start of 2024 - didn't apply in the west of the state.
"West of the Hume Highway all our forests are susceptible to VicForests logging, despite many of them being announced as national and regional parks exactly two years ago," Ms Radford said.
These included the Wombat, Cobaw, Mt Cole and Pyrenees forests as well as the Wellsford, for which VicForests still had several forest logging coupes listed on its Timber Utilisation Plan.
"We want the government to promise to cease extractive industries in the forests west of the Hume when contracts expire [in] mid-2024, or sooner," Ms Radford said.
"These important drier forests are vital for climate change mitigation, and biodiversity health (our health therefore), pollination services, agriculture, and much more, flood mitigation and much more."
The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action has said that surveying work for the creation of the new Wellsford Regional Park area started in March 2022, with $4 million committed to the required technical work.
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