The Big Scrub

The Big Scrub, our local rainforest, covered 75,000 ha prior to European settlement. It was the largest expanse of lowland subtropical rainforest in Australia. It is directly descended from the great Gondwana rainforest that covered Australia 40 million years ago. It is unique. It is internationally significant. It is a very important part of Australia’s rich biodiversity heritage. 

The Big Scrub is renowned for its unique 300+ flora and fauna species. Many of these species are now rare or endangered due to logging, land clearing and destruction of habitat. The Big Scrub has been given  United Nations World Heritage status as part of the Gondwana World Heritage listed sites of importance. 

Originally the Big Scrub stretched across more than 75,500 hectares. Since Europeans settled in Australia, 99% of the Big Scrub has been cleared. Less than 1% remains of this endangered rainforest, in scattered remnants. In 2012 the Big Scrub was listed as a critically endangered ecological community under the commonwealth EPBC Act. Remnants of this vital forest are growing here as a direct result of successful anti-logging campaigns that started in 1979 and still continue today.

World Heritage Listed -Gondwana Rainforest

 1986, a number of rainforest reserves located on the Great Escarpment of Eastern New South Wales, know as the Australian East Coast Subtropical and Temperate Rainforest Parks, were inscribed on the World Heritage list for their outstanding natural universal values:

• as an outstanding example representing major stages of the Earth's evolutionary history

•as an outstanding example representing significant ongoing geological processes and biological evolution

• containing important and significant habitats for the insitu conservation of biological diversity

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE WEBSITE: 

The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, (formerly known as the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves), are the most extensive area of subtropical rainforest in the world. Collectively, the rainforests are a World Heritage Site.  There are  fifty separate reserves,  covering an area of 366,500 hectares (906,000 acres),  from Newcastle to Brisbane, clustered around the New South Wales – Queensland border.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s rainforests became the focus for an increasingly prominent conservation movement. 

Concern centered on the rainforests of north-east NSW and south-east Queensland. Public pressure was responsible for a dramatic revision of official policies towards forest management the establishment of new national parks and reserves, and the World Heritage listing of the NSW rainforests in 1986

World Heritage listing is the highest level of international recognition that may be afforded to an area, acknowledging its outstanding universal values and global significance.

The Gondwana Rainforests are so-named because the fossil record indicates that when Gondwana existed it was covered by rainforests containing the same kinds of species that are living today.

The World Heritage status of the region was created and negotiated initially in 1986, with the area extended in 1994, and carries the following inscription: The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia is comprising of the major remaining areas of rainforest in southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. 

Logging and Land clearing went on in the Northern Rivers undefended until the  historic Terania Creek Blockade began in 1979.

Who was responsible for logging the big scrub:

NSW  Government paid the logging company,and the NSW government paid the police to protect the loggers while they were having their work disrupted by  ant logging activist protectors.

Who was involved in protecting the Big scrub?

Protesters, film crews, ecologists, lawyers; and landowners working together. The anti logging  campaign succeeded to halt logging and  a precedent was set for  legally stopping logging in old growth forests. 

 There is still a group of environmentalists who keep lobbying to protect the remnants of the Big Scrub;The Big scrub Landcare group

The Big Scrub Landcare group

It has been logged, cleared, filled with weeds and developed, this information is from The Big scrub Landcare group:

The Big Scrub has been identified as a biodiversity hot spot yet is still under threat because part of it is zoned as State Conservation Area (SCA) where logging and mining are allowed.

 The Big Scrub extended from the coastal plain inland from near Ballina to Lismore in the east and to the edge of Meerschaum Vale in the south to the Nightcap, Goonengerry and Byron Bay in the north. After broad scale land clearing by cedar getters and settlers which began in the 1840’s, only about 300 hectares exists as tiny remnants today. That’s less than 1% of the original forested area.

A group of concerned activists  formed The Big Scrub Rainforest Landcare Group in 1992 in response to the fragile nature of the remaining Big Scrub remnants and the very high conservation value of local, national and international significance.  BSL was incorporated in 1995 and received it first project grant. The group evolved and grew rapidly and now is the largest and most active landcare group in the region with over 300 members.

 The volunteers at the Big Scrub Landcare group facilitate, promote and participate in the restoration of the Big Scrub which involves:

• Revegetation of cleared rainforest lands

• Restoring the effective functioning of ecological processes within the Big Scrub ecosystem

• Maintaining biodiversity including threatened species population and habitats

• Enhancing Big Scrub awareness among politicians, relevant government agencies and their people, local government, landholders and the community generally”

•  Enhancing Big Scrub awareness among politicians, relevant government agencies and their people, local government, landholders and the community generally

• Generating landholder enthusiasm, skills and commitment by providing information, education materials and demonstrations

• Assisting, networking with and taking roles in government and community organisations with key roles in natural resource management.

• Conducting events and activities, creating and distributing publications for education/ information/ publicity: Obtaining funding for on-ground projects and other activities.

• Running effective on-ground restoration projects;

• Maintaining the highest technical and professional standards, using best science.

• Rehabilitation of remnants mitigating threats.

Logging in critically endangered ecological communities still goes on today.  The Terania Creek forest protest in Australia in 1979 was an historic event, it brought rainforest preservation into public consciousness and led to the formation of the Nightcap National Park.

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