It appears that parts of Victoria were inhabited for at
least 40,000 years before settlers came into the area
introducing new land-use régimes such as grazing,
timber harvesting, agriculture and mining. This history
of human interaction with the land has left a rich legacy
of sites and places that reveal often unrecorded aspects
of human habitation.
Places of traditional significance for Aboriginal people
and other areas are highly valued – and protected
– for their aesthetic, historical, social or landscape
values that form part of our cultural history.
During the mid-nineteenth century, Central Victoria’s
Box and Ironbark forests were exploited due to the expansion
of agriculture, development of gold mining and urbanisation.
The forests were stripped bare of trees to provide timber
for underground mines, firewood for steam-driven machinery
and charcoal for blacksmiths who were in high demand
in the goldfields.
In the late 1870s the government proclaimed the forests
as Timber Reserves and actively conserved them, repairing
the damage and encouraging growth via a management system
that included plantations, nurseries, thinning and royalties.
By the late 1880s, the forests that grew back were heavily
stocked and thinning began to produce sawlog-size trees.
Today, some forest areas are set aside as parks and
reserves totalling 427,000 ha and 120,950 ha of state
forest is available for timber harvesting but only 3.5
per cent of the area is available for timber production
per year. Modern ecological forest management means
multiple uses- timber production from these third generation
trees is balanced with flora and fauna conservation,
recreation and catchment protection. |
