Some Debts Don't Come With Invoices: Jen Lowe and Protecting Old Growth Jarrah Forests

Unless you're an avid hiker, camper or conservationist, the Northern Jarrah Forest (ironically south of Perth) is, for most people, nothing more than a fleeting smudge of colour on their way to somewhere else. 800 native plant species and around 300 orchid species reduced to peripheral noise enroute to a long weekend in the South West's wine country. Virtually invisible to them.

But not to Jen Lowe. She thinks about it a lot.

She's not a botanist or scientist. Nor is she a politician or council worker. In fact, she's not even someone who is paid to think about trees. However, she is someone who started visiting Dwellingup's old growth Jarrah forests because it gave her something she couldn't find anywhere else: quiet, mostly. Anyone who's ventured beyond the city's limits into nature knows this same quiet.

So, Jen went in. And she kept coming back. And then, somewhere along the way, without making a formal decision about it, she started feeling like she owed the place something. We sat down with her to talk about what drew her in. 

What's your personal connection to the Jarrah forest? When did you first start going in, and what kept bringing you back?

I'm a city kid (albeit the world's most isolated city), but at every opportunity, I headed to the hills where my cousins lived 'among the gum trees'. Creating mischief in the bush was my childhood happy place - I think that's fairly universal when kids get the chance.

From picnics to horse riding, swimming, camping, hiking and biking, and then back to picnics again, with my own kids, the northern jarrah forest has always felt like an extension of home. When I reflect on being in the jarrah forest as a kid, there is fear and excitement. It was untamed and fascinating, a place for surprises. The opportunity to push boundaries and connect to my home drew me there, and it keeps drawing me back. It's also the perfect place to escape, not too far from Perth.

Dwellingup's Jarrah Forest is old in a way that's hard for a State as young as Western Australia to fully digest. Some of these giants have been growing since before European contact. The canopy they hold up took centuries to build. And beneath it, an ecosystem of genuinely staggering complexity; think black cockatoos, numbats, and orchids that only exist in a handful of places on Earth. That's not even mentioning a root and water system so intricate it quietly yet diligently fills the catchments that end up in a Perth kitchen tap. Its beauty and importance cannot be overstated.

What was the moment that shifted things for you; that took you from someone who loved this forest to someone who felt like she had to do something about it?

There are two moments for me. About a year ago I did a section of the Big Jarrah Walk with Ricky England; four days with people I'd never met, walking through forest planned for total clearing. Nothing has an impact like that. We were there to build awareness, but none of us expected the walk to end in the biggest forest march Perth had seen in a decade.

The second was reading Dan Martin's Forest Atlas, which maps WA forest change from 1825 to 2060. I had no idea of the true extent of what's already gone, and more shockingly, what's planned. When you overlay the approved and proposed mining, very little remains - the forest from Armadale to Collie is fragmented. Knowing what I know now about how this forest grows and why it can't be restored, it kicked me in the guts. My kids' kids aren't going to share my experience of our home.

The 20-kilometre walk itself started at dawn. Which makes sense. Waking up with the forest itself and moving through it, as it moves through its day, is the best way to fully understand and appreciate it. This is a forest that doesn't give itself up to people in a hurry.

What was special about this walk? What were the highlights from the day? Anything else you'd like to add?

Dawn to Dusk was a chance for me to share the experience that Ricky shared with me a year ago with a much larger cohort of people, most of whom were new to the issue. 110 hearts cracked open as we walked the edge of Alcoa's proposed mine site in the gorgeousness of lush winter forest.

Professor Kingsley Dixon, OA, shared deep and fascinating knowledge about the evolutionary patterns that have meant that, unlike many forests around the world, this one cannot be restored. I learned that in 1868, the royal gardener at Kew Gardens wrote to Charles Darwin:

"I believe that in time, the south west corner of Australia will be seen to have the most unique and peculiar flora on earth."

We now know that the complexity of this ecosystem eclipses that of anything else on the planet. Kingsley's uncomplicated explanation of the mechanisms behind this was the highlight for many of the walkers and kept the conversations rolling by fire into the night.

Some debts are easy to quantify. Others aren't. You can't put a number on what a centuries-old forest is worth. Not really. Though, people keep trying. You can't invoice the silence. Can't depreciate the light. The ecosystem we cannot see won't fit neatly into a line item. What you can do, what Jen did, is show up. Lace your boots before sunrise. Start walking. Pay attention for an hour, or a day, in a place that has been paying attention in its own way for far longer than any of us have been around to notice.