Goongerah Environment Centre GECO

17/08/2026

Over 80 people made into the Mechanics Hall last Saturday to hear fire scientist Dr Philip Zylstra explain what the evidence actually says about planned burning.

The "fuel load" theory that underpins Victoria's burning policy did not come from Australian science. It came from American pine forestry in the 1950s, arrived here in a forestry leaflet that was never peer reviewed, and has not held up when researchers have tested it since.

What Phil showed is that burning a forest does not leave it safer. A burn strips the ground bare for a short while, but what grows back is dense regrowth that carries fire from the ground into the canopy. That effect lasts for decades. As he put it: "We may be the cause of the problem, not the cure."

Thank you to everyone who came out, to Gunaikurnai elder Marjorie Thorpe, the Gippsland Environment Group for sharing their monitoring work, to Lewi Haskins for Forest Country, and to Patagonia and the Victorian Forest Alliance for backing the event.

Watch the presentation in full in our website.

Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO) has been working to protect East Gippsland's forests from logging since 1993. Using citizen science, non-violent direct action, political lobbying and public education, GECO has protected thousands of hectares of forest through campaigning. GECO is grassroots, com...

04/08/2026

The Victorian Government is spending tens of millions of dollars on planned burning across Gippsland. Biodiversity monitoring, threatened species recovery, and genuine investment in nature are chronically underfunded in the same landscape.

East Gippsland is home to more than 110 threatened wildlife species. Research shows biodiversity losses after wildfire are up to 93 per cent larger in areas that have been repeatedly burned. Yet the current approach prioritises large-scale burning over the investments that would give forests and communities the best chance of a healthy future.

Next Saturday, fire scientist Dr Philip Zylstra joins local researchers for an afternoon of evidence, conversation, and practical thinking about how we do better.

If you can see forest from your house, or smell smoke when the burns are on, this afternoon is for you.

Saturday 15 August, 2.30pm. Mechanics Hall, Lakes Entrance.

Save your spot at:

Join fire behaviour scientist, Adj. Associate Professor Phil Zylstra for a deep dive into what really happens when forests are burned.

30/07/2026

In the three years from 2025 to 2028, Victorian fire management agencies plan to burn more than 400,000 hectares across Gippsland.

The science on whether this makes communities safer is clear, and it's not what most people expect. Research across southern Australia shows that planned burns more than a few kilometres from homes offer no statistically significant protection to houses during wildfires. The most effective measures lie within 40 metres of the house.

There's a second problem. After a planned burn, recovering forest goes through a dense regrowth phase that is significantly more flammable than the mature forest it replaces. That elevated risk can last for two decades.

Dr Philip Zylstra has spent his career studying this. Come and hear what he's found.

Saturday 15 August, 2.30pm. Mechanics Hall, Lakes Entrance.

RSVP here: https://events.humanitix.com/planned-burns-and-community-safety

21/07/2026

Fourteen of Australia's leading ecologists and fire scientists have written to the Victorian Government calling for an independent review of planned burns in East Gippsland's Snowy River National Park.

Their concern is not that fire management doesn't matter. It's that the current approach, burning remote forest far from any town, is not supported by the evidence.

On 15 August in Lakes Entrance, fire behaviour scientist Dr Philip Zylstra will present the research behind those concerns, and what the science says about what actually reduces risk to communities.

Free event. All welcome. Bookings at: https://events.humanitix.com/planned-burns-and-community-safety

10/07/2026

The ABC is today reporting what we have been documenting in East Gippsland for months.

Since native forest logging officially ended in Victoria in 2024, Forest Fire Management Victoria has been removing and selling large, old trees from state forests under the cover of fire management. A dead Leadbeater's possum has been found at a work site. Hollow-bearing trees watched by wildlife monitors — known habitat for Greater Gliders — have been logged all over Victoria.

In April, the Victorian government quietly released a framework to formalise this. No public announcement. No consultation. It simply appeared.

The government says this is not logging. We disagree. When you remove native trees and sell them to timber mills, the name you give the process does not change what it is.

In the wake of the Victorian government's move away from native timber harvesting, environmental groups are calling for greater management of timber by-product removals in state forests.

09/07/2026

Don't miss this webinar. Don Driscoll is one of the leading scientists that co-signed an open letter asking the state government to pause the planned 59,000 Ha planned burns in the Snowy NP until proper assessments have been done.

🗓️ Next Thursday July 16! FREE webinar.

RSVP now via the link in the comments.

Professor Don Driscoll is Professor of Terrestrial Ecology at Deakin University. With over 30 years of research experience in conservation biology his work includes applications of conservation technology, threatened and invasive species management, habitat fragmentation and degradation, frog conservation and fire ecology.

After the 2019-20 megafires Don co-ordinated a massive collaboration of over 100 Australian ecologists to analyse how fire frequency, interval, unburnt area, pre-fire drought and protected areas modify fire impacts. The research, published in the prestigious international journal ‘Nature’ in 2024, has profound implications for fire management in Australia.

Early this year Professor Driscoll signed an open letter with other researchers and scientists advocating for an end to the large scale planned burns in the Snowy River National Park.

08/07/2026

Do planned burns actually make our communities safer?

Join fire behaviour scientist Dr Phil Zylstra in Lakes Entrance to find out what the science really says, plus a screening of Forest Country and a Q&A with local survey teams and Gunaikurnai Elder Marjorie Thorpe.

Saturday 15 August, 2.30 to 4.30pm, Lakes Entrance. Free, all welcome.

RSVP to reserve your spot: https://events.humanitix.com/planned-burns-and-community-safety

23/06/2026

Have you seen the Four Corners episode exposing the logging transition shambles in Victoria? Well, here's another mythbuster that needs clarification from the program: exports and imports of timber, and a demand for native forest that has been falling for decades.

On the program, industry reps claimed that without native forest logging, Australia would need to import vast amounts of hardwood. Government data says otherwise. Hardwood sawn timber imports have fallen by almost 70 per cent since 2004. Australia has been a net exporter of sawn hardwood since 2022/23, and a net exporter of logs and woodchips by a wide margin every year.

The bigger picture is even clearer. Sawn hardwood consumption has dropped by close to 80 per cent since 2001. In Victoria, most of the wood that came out of native forests went straight into copy paper and wood chip exports, and demand for that has fallen by two thirds in twenty years.

This was never an industry being strangled by policy. It was an industry that had already lost its market, propped up by taxpayer money long before the ban, and still being propped up now through Tasmanian imports and 'transition' funds.

https://theconversation.com/victoria-claims-to-have-stopped-native-logging-so-why-is-it-importing-tasmanian-forests-285789?fbclid=IwY2xjawSn-qlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeqtlRlye8Hey2Uemn-6t2SYYeNTbfEsC3BySh1-458vZcHanLHko2HQaW11o_aem_I87-cvD37vP4HA2Jt8NjmA

There’s no economic or environmental case for native logging. Yet taxpayer money is still being used to support it.

21/06/2026

We were told native forest logging in Victoria was over.

Turns out $1.5 billion in transition funding came with no strings attached. Some of it is now keeping mills running on Tasmanian native forest instead.

Victorian taxpayers are subsidising the destruction of Tasmania's forests.

Appalling.

Watch Four Corners 'Timber Turmoil' tonight.

Four Corners follows the logs, and the money, to uncover how efforts to end logging have shifted the timber trade across state borders.