Cassy O'Connor MP | Greens Leader
There are likely fewer than a thousand Swift parrots left on earth. Yet today, in the Eastern Tier forests, Forestry Tasmania is obliterating high quality foraging and nesting habitat.
During the 2022 Swift parrot breeding season, the Snow Hill coupe SHO50B was the most important observed swift parrot site in Tasmania, by a very large margin. Flocks of up to 30 birds were observed and photographed there on multiple occasions.
Now the precious breeding and foraging habitat at Snow Hill is being logged – forests the fastest parrot in the world depends on for survival.
When the Greens asked Resources Minister, Felix Ellis to confirm the logging prescription at this coupe is to remove all habitat trees, he refused to answer. He called the Swift parrot a landscape-scale species and he appears to believe its dispersed forest habitat is too broad to protect.
The Rockliff Liberal government is cheerleading the logging and burning of critical, old growth trees with hollows where the parrot breeds. Those trees are hundreds of years old – the Swift parrot doesn’t have time to wait for new ones to grow. Lathamus discolour is running out of time.
Saving the Swift parrot from extinction is Environment Minister, Roger Jaensch’s job. He should be helping his colleague, Minister Ellis see the light.
The Liberals are allowing – and through their policies, encouraging – the extinction of the Swift parrot. If they wanted to, Ministers Jaensch and Ellis could get the loggers out of that coupe today, and they could move to end the logging of critical Swift parrot habitat.