Farming and Forestry practices must change with the climate. If you look at the countryside as you drive around you will see how yellow and dry it is and the winter season has only just ended. All the major river levels are way below what they should be, and most of the smaller streams and creeks are dry with some of them never even flowing during winter.
It has been the warmest winter on record with hardly any rainfall. Compounding that are the huge farming Pivot irrigators everywhere draining the aquifers. Disappointingly you can see these monsters operating only during the daylight hours and even in the windiest conditions where almost none of this water ends up where it is intended. Irrigating should preferably be done at night to minmise evaporation and give most benefit.
When I first arrived in Tasmania over a quarter of a century ago there was hardly any irrigation done because it wasn't required, and only with sprinklers which wound up to tractors. When you flew into Tasmania from Victoria the difference in colour was incredible with Victoria being dry and yellow while Tasmania was always lush and green no matter which time of year you were flying in. Now Tasmania is dry and yellow, even in winter.
When the Forestry industry started their massive land grab, springs which had never dried up before started to disappear forever as the extremely closely planted non-endemic plantations established themselves and started to drain the previously healthy aquifers. On top of this is global warming where the seasons are all out of whack, and even Europe has just experienced their hottest summer ever with temperatures constantly in the high 30s and 40s.
On top of that Forestry has never ever made an annual profit. Gunns went bust doing it, and Forestry Tasmania changed their name to Sustainable Timber Tasmania to try to hide their involvement, as Governemnt Departments do when they develop a bad name. A complete waste of our taxes just to make woodchips for toilet paper.
Clean fresh abundant Water is the most precious thing on our planet, and without it nothing survives. Farming and Forestry practices must change now for the survival of the planet and all life on and in it.
