WATER S.O.S TASMANIA - Social Impact
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The Economic and Social Impact of Logging in Water Catchments
Social Impact Tasmania
 Large-scale, biologically impoverished, monoculture native re-growth and plantations have little in common with forests as they are highly problematic from an ecological, social and economic point of view.
Tasmania Forests
Hook Creek
in the Shakespeare Hills near Rocky Cape
Claire and Charles Gilmour
 
Yet another very special creek, unique habitat and community water supply faces destruction by Forestry Tasmania.
 
Hooks creek is home to a significant number of the very rare Blue Giant Freshwater Lobster, the world’s largest crustacean, together with healthy platypus, the lamprey, blackfish, a variety of galaxia and the burrowing crayfish.
 
The surrounding forest contains healthy Tassie devils, spotted quolls, wombats, , badicoots, the grey goshawk, the wedge tailed eagle, the azure kingfisher, the dusky, flame and pink robins and the beautiful fire tail amongst many other species of wildlife.
Giant Blue Freshwater Crayfish
photos by Claire Gilmour
SOME MORE COMMUNITIES WITH SERIOUS CONTAMINATION ISSUES
Very few communities or individuals in Tasmania still have access to clean uncontaminated water as land clearing and forestry management practices continue to destroy water catchments forever.
Many Councils and communities are forced to install expensive water containment facilities and treatment plants and then suffer the on-going operational cost and sufferance of drinking chlorinated water.
Research clearly shows the $ value of clean fresh water from undisturbed native forests far out weighs the timber value from those forests.
Ref: Melbourne and Metropolitan Water Board, Thompson Catchment, O’Shaughnessy & Jayasuirya.
The pricing of timber from plantations and seeded mono-culture woodlot  catchments, needs to include the price of lost water, nutrients, micro-climate change, contamination of waterways and the loss of habitat and biodiversity.
There is a solid body of evidence linking wood smoke and particulates to the exacerbation of a range of respiratory illnesses including asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
Fire in catchments decreases water yields, the degree of disruption and over what period of time is governed by the intensity and frequency of those fires.   
SEE : The Effects of Fire on Water Catchments
SEE : Chemical Contamination of Waterways