Protecting Victoria’s forests by monitoring threatened species and prosecuting illegal logging

www.kinglakefriendsoftheforest.com 

KFF is seeking to improve and expand our forest monitoring in the Central Highlands in order to provide evidence for court, breach reports to the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, to monitor endangered species, and also to keep the media and public informed about logging in Victoria. Currently survey work is undertaken by volunteers with limited access to equipment, and specialist resources. This project proposes to purchase equipment and services that will greatly improve KFF’s capability to undertake comprehensive and high quality surveying of forests in the Central Highlands.

● Wachete (https://www.wachete.com) subscription. Wachete will analyse VicForests operations plans and maps and report any changes that occur. Four subscriptions will enable us to monitor 400 pages for one year.

● Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) surveys to check if VicForests is logging beyond the allocated area in two coupes: Zurich and Mariner. [Warburton Environment had a UAV survey done of Big Pats coupe which cost $4000 – the surveys we require will cost more because the coupe area is greater.]

● UAV slope survey for Zurich coupe.

● UAV roadside and trackside buffer surveys covering roads and tracks specified within the Central Highlands.

● Arborist reports for trees on coupe roadsides. VicForests has been felling large habitat trees within buffers by designating them as “hazardous trees”. Our lawyer has suggested we obtain an arborist reports on significant trees within the buffers of coupes scheduled for logging.

● Purchase nocturnal surveying equipment to improve monitoring of endangered species in logging coupes: the Sony FDR-AX100 4K Camcorder and the Konus Konuspy-9 3.5x-7x zoom Digital Night Vision Binoculars. These two pieces of equipment will have multiple uses: community spotlighting nights, footage for social media, and providing high quality evidence for court.