Big old hollow-bearing trees provide some of the most vital habitat in Victoria’s forests. They tower in the canopy like skyscrapers, alive with Yellow-tailed Black and Gang Gang Cockatoos, Striated and Spotted Pardalotes and Lace Monitors.
They’re home to marsupials like the Feathertailed Glider and critically endangered Leadbeater’s Possum.
But it can take hundreds of years for hollows to form, especially ones big enough to be home for big animals like Powerful Owls and Greater Gliders.
In Wellsford State Forest, just outside of Bendigo, a scattering of large old Box and Ironbark trees, known to the locals as The Big Trees, tower over the surrounding forest.
On 2 March 2022, two of The Big Trees were recognised for their scientific and aesthetic values to the landscape, and listed on the National Trust’s Significant Trees Register.
How can we keep big, old, hollow-bearing trees in the forest and across the landscape?
These trees, and maturing, hollow-bearing trees of the future, need an immediate end to native forest logging. They need a protective buffer around them and their immediate surrounds.
There’s no future in native logging. Our government knows it, and are phasing it out by 2030 – but that’s not soon enough.
There’s no future in native logging. Our government knows it, and are phasing it out by 2030 – but that’s not soon enough.
