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Franklin rainforest

Franklin River Cool Temperate Rainforest and Wet Forest Buffers Protected (October 06)

In 1997 logging was carried out by Victorian Plantations in Stronach's Road and Red Hill Track. No buffers were left around the rainforest. Clearing was carried out right to the edge of rainforest and debris pushed into rainforest gullies, causing damage to myrtle beech.

The damage to the rainforest has resulted in a number of trees dying of myrtle wilt. Myrtle wilt is dispersed by airborne inoculum, so this action has put the myrtle beech within the nearby Franklin and Agnes reserves at risk as well as those areas adjacent to the area logged. Myrtle will has since been seen in the Franklin some distance from Stronach's Road and a number of trees have also been seen to be dying of myrtle wilt in the Agnes catchment.


 

Fauna habitat

The headwaters of the Franklin River contains a significant population of Greater Gliders both inside and outside the reserve. Greater Gliders require old trees for nest hollows. The abundance of the Greater Glider in undisturbed forests is in strong contrast to its paucity in regenerated forest, which lacks old trees with hollows suitable for nesting. Its conservation is utterly dependent upon sympathetic forest management which retains buffer strips of old forest between coupes and preserves old habitat trees and their potential successors in small unlogged areas. Greater Gliders are destroyed in clear-felling operations.

The Franklin Reserve still contains large numbers of mature and old-growth mountain ash. There is also the 1939 regrowth at the corner of the Grand Ridge Road and Toora Gunyah Road. However, old habitat trees continue to be removed outside the reserve, where there is a significant Greater Glider population. Further fragmentation and isolation of the Greater Glider habitat jeopardises the conservation of the Greater Glider in this area.

The Franklin rainforest area is bounded by the Grand Ridge Road to the north, the Boolarra/Foster Road to the West, ExtractionTrack and Clay Track to the south and the Gunyah/Toora Road to the east.

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