The Victorian Rainforest Network has released a virtual tour of Victoria’s Rainforests
Media Release
Friday 27th November 2006
Today Victorian Rainforest Network (VRN) has launched a website that provides a new way to learn about rainforest and native forest logging issues (on public land) in Victoria by providing overlays to be used in Google Earth, so anyone can have a 3D virtual reality forest tour of Eastern Victoria.
The VRN website is found at www.vicrainforest.org
With the help of overlays that can be downloaded from the VRN website into the Google Earth 3d virtual reality world, it is possible learn and expose, in a visual way, what is happening in remote forested landscapes. So far VRN has created overlays for all of East Gippsland and the Central Highlands, (two million hectares of Eastern Victoria). Features include:
* discover where rainforest exists in Eastern Victoria,
* see the extent of past and future clearfell logging,
* see National Park boundaries,
* see location of Rainforest Sites of Significance,
* see how clearfell logging in the forested Melbourne water supply catchments is reducing water supply.
* see how clearfell logging mixed rainforest may contribute to the possible extinction of the endangered Baw Baw frog.
* look at rainforest buffers to check for yourself if logging practices breached the governments rainforest buffer guidelines.
* go on an export woodchip tour from the forests of East Gippsland to the huge industrial pulp mills in Japan (owned by Nippon Paper) via the export mill in Geelong called Midway Pty Ltd.
“This new website by VRN will move the forest debate within Victoria into the 21st century