Some of you will have followed the litany of destruction of habitat at Golden Bay in Western Australia. We need positive, non-violent, assertive action, to articulate a collective poly-environmental/ist approach - 'literary' and/or otherwise. Now Barrabup Forest just outside Nannup is under threat. In terms of preventative action, for those of you not only in Western Australia but wherever, this requires immediate support. See here for petition. Below is a poem written for the forest, and in support of those people working so hard to save it.
For Barrabup Forest
‘assessment
of a harvest coupe within Barrabup forest block following public concerns the
coupe contained old-growth jarrah forest...’
Government of Western Australia,
Department of the Premier and Cabinet
It’s been eight
years since we were last in Nannup,
passing
Barrabup with its old-growth jarrahs
holding the
world together, and a decade now
since I
walked and wrote local forests
and said above
all else we must be wary of dieback.
Beyond
beauty, this is forest that reaches into identity,
that holds
together the spirits of all who come into contact,
who open
themselves to its intensity, its purpose.
And now, re-survey
reveals the truth of public claims —
43 hectares
of old-growth jarrahs, but only 43 hectares of 530
that will be set aside, will be exonerated, will live independently
as if the
world around their reaching back, far back
does not
and did not exist, as if their survival is not connected
to what
they’ve nurtured back into shape, into forest
—
as if old
jarrahs are indifferent to what’s around them, disconnected,
their fates
not entwined to the fate of younger, surrounding forest.
No, they
need the support system that’s managed to maintain them,
give home
to the networks of life. As the imprint of past visits
makes us
who we are, for those who live in the rays of sunlight
filtering
through, and the shadows, a knowledge of joy and trauma
entwine,
enjamb day-to-day lives, too. Dieback will be let in through the door,
along the
hacked and bulldozed road, the desecration of logging will isolate
and entrap,
and all life in the realm of the coupe be surrendered
to the
interest of profit. To name creatures falling endlessly:
Western
ringtail possum, startled Western brush wallaby,
Baudin’s
cockatoo, and the Woylie ringing
generational changes
outside
human science. And yes, I will be down again soon to experience
the last
wildflowers, the utterance of a forest’s claim to aesthetics
beyond
human understanding. Will the pink fountain trigger plant
still be
with us, telling us its truths? Will the forest still really be a forest?
I have seen
so many forests felled to stumps, to nothingness.
We all die
tree by tree, coupe by coupe. All of us. All of us.
John Kinsella
