MORE than 50 leading scientists from around Australia have written to the Premier, Nathan Rees, asking him to protect the iconic Riverina red gum forests by creating huge national parks in south-western NSW and increasing the flow of water to them from the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers.
The call is being led by a prominent professor of ecology from Charles Sturt University, Max Finlayson, who chaired the scientific panel advising the world convention on wetlands and worked with the United Nation's scientific body on climate change.
The letter, signed by 57 scientists, warns that the red gum forests and their wetlands are in poor health. It says the Government needs to ''act swiftly to hasten the much-needed repair and protection of these precious river red gum wetland forests by protecting them in new parks and reserves''.
The scientists also want more Aboriginal involvement in the management of the fragile forests and wetlands.
The call comes just one week before the Premier's senior advisory body, the Natural Resources Commission, is due to report on its recommendations for the future of the forests, which have become a battleground between loggers and environmentalists.
The commission's recent interim report found that the red gum forests were under serious threat, with many of the trees dead, dying or highly stressed. The commission said prolonged drought had devastated the forests and without a return to a wet period, ''the future of the forests in their current form looks bleak''.
The Victorian Government has declared a large part of forests on its side of the Murray as national park.
The battle to protect the NSW forests, which are home to the threatened superb parrot, escalated this year, with the National Parks Association and the Wilderness Society labelling logging operations there illegal.
The State Government's forestry department, Forests NSW, is also wrangling with the federal environment department over whether it has breached federal laws protecting threatened species and migratory birds.
The red gum forests have become the No. 1 environmental state campaign for conservationists, who are backed by the former premier Bob Carr.
But attempts to shut down logging in forests have been bitterly opposed by forestry groups who were strongly supported by the former primary industry minister Ian Macdonald. He repeatedly warned that hundreds of jobs were at stake.
When the final report of the Natural Resources Commission is handed over next week, it is expected to spark renewed divisions inside the Government over jobs and the environment and will be a challenge for the current environment minister, John Robertson.
Mr Carr has challenged Mr Rees to stop the logging, arguing that saving the forests was ''the most urgent nature conservation challenge we face in this state''.
Mr Rees has consistently said he is committed to achieving a ''long-term balanced outcome'' that straddles the high conservation value areas of the forests and jobs in the region.
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