VicForests To Reduce Mountain Ash Logging

Tom Arup, Environment editor
The Age, May 16, 2013



Victoria's state-owned timber company will reduce logging by 25 per cent in the bushfire-ravaged mountain ash forests of the central highlands – but will wait until mid-2017 to make the shift.

The ash forests are home to Victoria's endangered faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, whose numbers fell to well below 2000 after the Black Saturday fires ravaged its habitat and have not recovered.

VicForests has been under pressure from scientists and environmentalists over the impact of its logging, which has not markedly decreased since the fires, is having on remaining Leadbeater's possum habitat.

Those groups, including the Wilderness Society and the ANU's Professor David Lindenmayer, rejected the decision to reduce logging in 2017 as too little, too late to save the possums and mountain ash forests.

Releasing its 2013 resource outlook on Thursday, VicForests said the reduction in sawlog to be taken from ash forests will mean about 500 hectares less area will be logged each year than under current rates.

VicForests' director of corporate affairs, Nathan Trushell, said the move would result in the loss of up to 200 jobs. The decision to wait until 2017 to reduce logging had been made to allow the broader industry time to adjust, Mr Trushell said.

"First and foremost this decision has been driven by about what the forest can support, what it can supply," he said.

The resource outlook modelling predicts lower sawlog rates in ash forests will run until 2044-48, but could increase afterwards as regrowth forest matures.

Mr Trushell said VicForests would look at expanded opportunities in other mixed-species forests in the highlands, but that what could be on offer would not match that being reduced in mountain ash.

The Wilderness Society's Amelia Young said the decision meant VicForests had admitted what conservationists had been saying for years, that the industry had overestimated how much it could log public forests.

"By the time 2017 rolls around it will have taken VicForests nearly 10 years to respond to the impacts of the 2009 fires. To wait another four years before reducing their logging does nothing to address the biodiversity crisis in our forests," she said.

Professor Lindenmayer, who has studied the ash forests for decades, said the decision was not strong enough to save the Leadbeater's possum and the species was being driven towards extinction.

"It is so little, so late, and it puts off a decision that should have been made five years ago. It doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Twenty-five per cent to 2017? It is all pretty much all and done with by then," he said.

State Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh said: "While this decision will disappoint some businesses and workers, it is vital that VicForests manages the harvest of our state forestry resources at sustainable levels to ensure a long-term future for the industry."

Last week the Napthine government passed changes to state timber laws, allowing VicForests to sign supply contracts of up to 20 years and giving it greater control over when and where to log.

The government is also yet to release detailed monitoring and modelling it commissioned on the health of key central highlands species, including the Leadbeater's possum, after the 2009 fires.

Logging parks would be a disaster for wildlife and habitat

Letters to Editor
Sydney Morning Herald, May 14, 2013

I am appalled our national parks could be opened to commercial logging (''Logging looms in national parks'', May 13). It is ridiculous to propose swapping the old-growth, diverse forests in national parks for heavily exploited state forests. This will lead to a loss of wildlife and irreplaceable habitat.

Using land for forestry does not provide the same conservation benefits as managing land for conservation in the national park system.

The Premier must make a stand against the Shooters and Fishers Party and categorically rule out plans to log our national parks.

Robbie Bentley St Peters

I have seen small, rural communities sacrificed on the altar of city votes as their industries were closed down; forests that had been managed for over 100 years touted as ''virgin'' and marked ''must be preserved in parks'' and a succession of state politicians declaring more land tied up; maybe, just maybe, someone will take a rational look at the expansion of our national park system.

The Murray River red gum forests were the most recent sacrifice, just before our marvellously conservation-minded (and mining-devoted) Labor government went to the polls. Those forests had only been managed and had multiple usage for about 150 years, so saving them in a park was vital.

Why, on the South Coast the koalas keep turning up in state forests that have been managed for multiple uses for more than 100 years so now those areas desperately need to be locked up in parks. Forget their productive history.

Of course, declaring a national park is different to funding the national park service adequately to manage the massive areas of resources. The parks make do with insufficient resources and cop heaps of criticism from neighbours etc. Mere detail.

Nothing will come of this upper house inquiry though; there are no votes in the bush.

Terry Beath Wollongong

I can see the headline now: ''Logger shot by feral-animal hunter.''

David Sayers Gwandalan

So now Robert Brown wants logging permitted in national parks and proposes a compromise tenure swap between state forests and national parks. A better idea is to continue the logging ban and allow the Shooters and Fishers people into national parks - but only with their fishing rods together with the appropriate licence.

Peter Bennett Nelson Bay

When Bob Carr came to government he commandeered large tracts of native forest, which were sustainably managed to supply timber for domestic consumption and export, to create new national parks. He locked the loggers out and replaced foresters with park rangers.

In the meantime, the greenies looked at the remaining native forests as they thrived under expert care and, when they reached about 40 years of age, they started claiming the loggers were harvesting old-growth forest. Bob Carr locked up yet more native forest. It's time for a more balanced approach to native forest management in NSW.

Cherylle Stone Soldiers Point

I was under the impression the existence of national parks was for the conservation of nature for future generations.

How exactly does shooting by recreational hunters and logging fit into this concept?

Sarah Benmayor Bondi

When there's a downturn in jobs in the construction industry, I suppose we could knock down the Opera House and build something new.

Dominic Toomey Hunters Hill

Of course, the Shooters' proposal makes perfect sense. Without those pesky trees in the way, the risk of bushwalkers getting shot by recreational hunters will be much reduced. It is win-win!

Anne Cooper Earlwood

Logging looms in national parks

Sean Nicholls, Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor
Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, 2013

Logging would be allowed in NSW national parks and a freeze imposed on the declaration of new conservation areas under recommendations of a state government-dominated parliamentary inquiry.

An upper house committee into land use chaired by the Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Brown has made the recommendations in a draft report, obtained by Fairfax Media.

The report says the government should ''immediately'' consider opening national parks and other reserved areas for logging to ensure the viability of the timber industry.

The report urges the government to consider the possibility of a ''tenure swap'' between national parks and state forests, meaning sections of parks would be opened for logging and state forests, which are already subject to logging in NSW, would be reserved in return.

Asked about the report, the government said it did not support commercial logging in national parks and had ''no plans'' to introduce it.

But a committee member, Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, has branded the inquiry a ''kangaroo court'' and said the government could not be trusted to rule against its recommendations.

''Barry O'Farrell said he had 'no plan' to let shooters into national parks before the last election. Now we've got shooters in national parks,'' Ms Faehrmann said.

''The Premier needs to rein in his cowboys in the NSW upper house who are intent on trashing our natural heritage for their own political interests.''

Environment Minister Robyn Parker said in a statement: ''The NSW government does not support commercial logging in national parks and has no plans to allow it. Once the committee's report is finalised and tabled in Parliament, the government will respond in the usual fashion.''

Members of the committee travelled throughout NSW to speak to representatives of the logging industry, farmers and conservationists.

Their draft report says a key question for the inquiry was whether national parks provided ''the best means of conservation and, if so, whether they are indeed fulfilling the conservation objectives they were designed to meet''.

It says the committee concluded that ''reservation is not the only means to protect biodiversity'' and highlights concerns about the economic and social impacts of converting land to national parks.
''Important industries, such as the timber industry, suffered, communities are now struggling and calls are being made to reconsider the reservation of land as national park estate,'' it says.

The timber industry argues that land historically available for logging before being reserved as national park or a conservation area should be reopened to increase wood supply. The committee was ''sympathetic to this cause'' and recommends the government ''identify appropriate reserved areas for release to meet the level of wood supply needed to sustain the timber industry''.

The report highlights the need for action in the Pilliga region and presents a case study of the river red gum forests in the southern Riverina that were mostly given national park protection in 2010 by the former Labor government.

The committee heard the decision reduced timber volume from 60,000 cubic metres of sawlog to 10,000. This had reduced the number of timber supply mills from 20 to two and led to job losses.
The report appears to question the science of national park creation by placing inverted commas around the word science.

It recommends a moratorium on the creation of new national parks while an independent review is conducted into the management of all public lands.
Last year the government froze the creation of marine parks while the science behind them was reviewed, after recommendations of a committee chaired by Mr Brown.

Forest peace rocked

Andrew Derby

The Age, April 16, 2013

Tasmania's forests peace deal is in doubt again after State Parliament's upper house voted against key elements on Tuesday.

The Legislative Council voted, with state government support, to postpone the creation of a set of 270,000 hectares of forest reserves fundamental to environmentalist signatories to the deal.

It also voted in favour of cutting out tracts of mountain country from a Word Heritage nomination already filed by the federal government.

Former national Greens leader Bob Brown said the council had put a chainsaw through the trunk of the forest agreement. "They are wreckers," Dr Brown tweeted.

Green and industry groups produced the peace deal as an attempt to end the state's generation-long forest wars.

Politicians back Victoria’s timber industry

Philip Hopkins 
The Gippsland Times, Feb. 26, 2013

LIBERAL, National and Labor parliamentarians, including all Gippsland MPs, united last week to back Victoria's timber industry.

The MPs have formed a bipartisan parliamentary support group for the forest and wood products industry, which was launched at a function at Parliament House on Tuesday evening.

Convened by the Narracan MLA Gary Blackwood, and Ripon MLA Joe Helper, the group was formally launched by the Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, who has responsibility for forestry.

About 40 MPs and 100 industry representatives attended the event.

All Gippsland parliamentarians are members of the group: Mr Blackwood, Deputy Premier and Gippsland South MLA Peter Ryan, Morwell MLA Russell Northe, Gippsland East MLA Tim Bull and Eastern Victoria MLCs Peter Hall, Phil Davis and Matt Viney. Also a member is the Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Water and Resources, John Lenders, who was born in Warragul and educated in Drouin and Trafalgar.

Mr Helper was the agriculture minister in the last Labor state government.

Forestry is a key industry in Gippsland, which forms the backbone of the Victorian timber sector, both native forest and plantation. According to the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, the industry produces more than $400 million in sawlogs each year, generates $7.8 billion in sales and services income, and directly employs 24,000 people, both in regional areas and Melbourne.

VAFI chief executive Lisa Marty said forestry and the industries that rely on it for wood and paper products had too often been subject to political debate without the appropriate understanding needed to make decisions about such an important part of the economy.

''The products we produce are renewable and store carbon,'' she said.

The keynote speaker Paul Klymenko, chief executive of environment group Planet Ark, spoke about the importance of using forest and wood products as a sustainability resource.

Mr Blackwood, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Forestry and Fisheries, said the high attendance at the launch was a strong sign that MPs from all major parties recognised the importance of the industry.

Mr Helper also praised the bipartisan nature of the group, but said Labor still retained the right to disagree on certain aspects of government policy.

''Victoria manages its forests to world's best standards. It is great to see Victoria's elected representatives out in force, and choosing to engage with the industry,'' he said.

The ALP has been accused in the past of sacrificing rural jobs for Green votes in the city. The Bracks' government stopped logging in the Otways at the 2003 election despite timber harvesting there being deemed sustainable under the West regional forest Agreement. Also, at the 2007 election, the Bracks' government added 40,000 hectares of forest to reserves in east Gippsland without offering industry any other forest as compensation.

Mr Lenders told the Gippsland Times that Labor had not yet finalised its timber policy for the next election.

''This year is a listening year,'' he said. However, a policy would be put in place next year before the elections scheduled for the end of November.

Mr Lenders said the party was conscious of the need for jobs in regional Victoria.

''We realise the industry has to have sufficient resource to do what it needs to do and that is more than plantations. We have to finalise that,'' he said.

Value-adding to the resource was a key way to generate jobs.

Mr Lenders said the starting point for the policy would be the timber industry strategy the party took to the last state election.

''This had a number of priorities, such as the review of VicForests, but we have a right to develop new policies if circumstances change," he said.

The State Government is working to put in place its timber industry strategy, launched in December 2011. Its features include giving industry greater resource security through long-term contracts of up to 20 years; compensation for industry if future government policy changes affect timber supply; greater autonomy for VicForests; and a renewed emphasis on biodiversity conservation through surveys and monitoring.

* Philip Hopkins is a former Age business journalist and Gippsland journalist who will be writing occasional articles for the Gippsland Times.

A state of extinction?

Bridie Smith, Science and Technology Reporter
The Age, December 7, 2012

Bushfires and logging have taken a terrible toll on the habitat of the rare Leadbeater's possum. How long can it survive? Bridie Smith and Tom Arup report.

The critically endangerd Leadbeater possum. Photo: Angela Wylie

THE ground squelches underfoot, the forest a mass of branches criss-crossing between the slender trunks of mountain swamp gum and the ferny undergrowth. This is Leadbeater's possum country. And one of the tiny critters is about to get a rude awakening.

It's late in the afternoon, but for the endangered nocturnal possum it's the middle of the night. Its round black eyes are fully alert by the time it has been scooped from its timber nest box high in a mountain swamp gum and popped into a brown cotton bag.

Still radiating the body heat it has generated and shared with its nest buddies, the young male is weighed and measured at ground level before being returned to his treetop home.

A clear-felled Leadbeater possum habitat in Victoria's central highlands. Photo: Justin McManus
The annual weigh-in, which also gathers genetic data, is a vital opportunity for biologists to check the health of Victoria's faunal emblem and one of the rarest mammals in the country.

But what the surveying scientists are increasingly finding is a species under stress. Fire has destroyed much of its habitat, and conservationists say logging is putting pressure on the rest.

Now there are serious suggestions Victoria is watching its animal emblem head towards extinction. And there are calls for intervention.

After studying the marsupial for more than three decades, ecologist David Lindenmayer gives the possum's survival in the wild just 20 years. ''If we don't seriously look at conserving these intact areas of forest, then that's all we've got,'' he says. ''This is the time to make sensible decisions and go for it.''

At the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, a small patch of swampy forest is home to the last remaining lowland population. As its habitat shrinks, the past eight years has seen a 40 per cent decline in Leadbeater's possum there. Numbering no more than 60, they are now concentrated in an area measuring just four kilometres by 120 metres.

The situation is not much better for the other, larger, population of Leadbeater's in the tall, cool, mountain ash forests of Victoria's central highlands. Exact highlands numbers are unknown, but are likely to be somewhere under 2000.

On Black Saturday, more than one-third of public land within the Leadbeater's highland habitat range was burnt. Studies by researchers at the Australian National University and the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research have found that Leadbeater's have not returned. Highland possums like to live deep in hollows of old trees, so young trees tend not to be suitable. Victoria's central highlands are dominated by young forest - 99 per cent of the trees are from 1939 or later - and just 1 per cent of the mountain ash forest is old growth.

Lindenmayer says the front line of the fight to save the endangered species is the mountain forest, and that if the young forest isn't allowed to age, the possum will vanish.

Here lies the problem. As fire and felling shrinks forests, competition for the remaining resources between loggers and conservationists has intensified to such an extent that the petite possum, which weighs no more than an apple, is now a hefty political problem.

''Leadbeater's possum is an iconic species, somewhat like Victoria's tiger or panda,'' says Dan Harley, Healesville Sanctuary's threatened species biologist.

The dilemma facing the state government is that it wants to provide the timber industry with resource security to meet its contracts. That means nominating areas for the protection of Leadbeater's and other threatened species, and allowing logging elsewhere.

Harley says there are some risks to this approach. First, it needs to be established where the possum's stronghold populations are.

''At the moment we are protecting sites based on habitat attributes, which makes perfect sense, but you need to know that the possums are in there and at the moment we don't have that information,'' he says.

Second, protecting some areas invariably leads to others being logged. Clearing these areas puts pressure on those remaining sites - which are still vulnerable to fires, such as those on Black Saturday were.

''What Black Saturday did was wipe out areas you thought were important and suddenly the marginal areas become increasingly significant,'' he says.

Experience points to how precarious possum populations can be. Black Saturday wiped out a Lake Mountain population of about 300, leaving just six individuals in a partly burnt gully, half of which died. The remaining three were taken to Healesville Sanctuary earlier this year, with two still living.

When the 2009 Black Saturday fires swept through the tall mountain ash forest in the central highlands, it was indiscriminate. It burnt 1939 regrowth, 15-year-old regrowth and areas of thick forest that date back to the 1700s.

Studies of the forest after the fires showed that the younger forest burned at a faster rate. While it sounds counter-intuitive, Professor Lindenmayer and his colleagues found that the complexity of older forests which have a dense understorey of wattle and tree ferns slowed the flames down. The microclimate was also more moist and burned at a lower intensity.

Victorian government data suggests the average annual gross area for timber harvest in the central highlands over the next four years will be 3547 hectares. The actual area felled is normally slightly less.

In the Supreme Court last year, conservationists challenged three proposed logging coupes in the central highlands on grounds they contravened protection protocols for Leadbeater's.

Justice Robert Osborn found the coupes did not breach the existing state possum protections. But he added there was strong evidence for an urgent review of areas dedicated to possums because the 2009 bushfires had dramatically changed the landscape.

At the same time there have been lengthy delays in strengthening state and federal government plans to restore Leadbeater's numbers to respond to the habitat loss.

Fairfax Media has obtained drafts of the revised state and national plans for the species dating back to 2009 and 2010, which are yet to be put in place. These plans note the massive reduction in habitat after the Black Saturday fires and put forward 25 measures to better protect the species, costing $4.6 million over five years on early estimates.

Serious concerns about habitat loss are shared by an expert panel dedicated to the recovery of Leadbeater's and made up of representatives of the state Environment Department, Parks Victoria, Zoos Victoria and the scientific community. By late last year the possum recovery team was so agitated by the emerging data on habitat loss that it proposed a moratorium on central highlands logging until better protections were put in place.

But after raising its concerns within the Environment Department the team was told bluntly it could not make such a recommendation and talk of a moratorium ended.

Instead the committee wrote to the department in March, proposing changes to the current state possum recovery plan, including listing logging and future loss of suitable habitat as threats to the species' survival.

The panel also recommends tightening the definition of Leadbeater's habitat and tougher prescriptions for logging operations in the region to slow habitat loss.

''The Leadbeater's Possum Recovery Team is concerned with the rapid and dramatic loss of habitat for Leadbeater's possum that has been exacerbated by the 2009 wildfires,'' the letter says.

Late last year, the Baillieu government sought to boost the flagging forestry industry by allowing VicForests to offer contracts over two decades, up from the previous five-years.

The government also committed to indemnifying VicForests if a contract is broken due to changes in policy, potentially leaving taxpayers with the bill should a future government want to reduce native timber logging.

Lindenmayer says there is not enough in the mountain ash forests to meet contract timber quotas. Logging coupes are in areas that returned to life after the 1939 fires. This, Professor Lindenmayer estimates, is a finite resource which only has another 10 to 15 years left.

''At current rates of cutting, the sawlog industry will be exhausted in 15 years' time. The industry itself is on an extinction trajectory.''

In a paper published in the journal Science on Friday, Lindenmayer writes that the mountain ash are forecast to decline from 5.1 trees per hectare in 1997 to 0.6 trees per hectare in 2070.

And, the Australian National University professor says, there are just 12 months left to implement the drastic changes that are needed to save the possum.

At a briefing for government agencies including Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment last week, Lindenmayer called for a Great Forest National Park to be established in Victoria's central highlands.

Lindenmayer said logging should be reduced by half and the carbon storage capacity of the forest be harnessed by bringing in brokers to establish a carbon offset program involving big business.

Lindenmayer says exit packages should be made available to loggers who have contracts with VicForests - with the proviso that the companies exit for good. He also argues VicForests needs a ''cultural overhaul'' so forest management focuses on the carbon storage potential of the mountain ash rather than treating the trees as a source of timber and pulp.

For its part, the timber industry says logging's footprint on forests is only small and it doesn't log in old-growth forest in the highlands. ''The primary threat to the Leadbeater's possum habitat is not forestry, but fire,'' says Lisa Marty, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries.

VicForests spokesman David Walsh says it believes Leadbeater's can co-exist with timber harvesting.

Walsh says VicForests is committed to identifying and protecting potential habitat in areas where logging operations are planned and supports any review of the forest zoning system.

VicForests will factor in the impact of the bushfires on how much they log and from where.

He says medium-term outlooks shows a dip in the availability of highlands timber because of past bushfires. Sales commitments and harvest levels will be managed in line with this.

Victoria's Environment Minister, Ryan Smith, says in response to the debate the Victorian government has begun a $1.86 million project to survey endangered species.

Smith says it will help strike the best possible balance between timber production and the protection of biodiversity.

To date, the main response to the decline of Leadbeater's has centred around a captive breeding program at Healesville Sanctuary.

But the man who each year goes out into the swampy Yellingbo forest to weigh and measure Leadbeater's says the current approach is less than ideal.

Despite being the architect of the captive breeding program, Harley stresses it is not the answer in the crucial mountain forests.

While captive breeding is important, he says, the main game remains habitat conservation.

"Leadbeater's conservation will be won or lost in the mountain forests," he says.

"The foundation stone of everything is to ensure that you've got an adequate amount of high-quality habitat for a species. And if you don't have that, then nothing else you try is going to work."

Environment delay riles business

Michelle Grattan, Political editor of The Age
The Sydney Morning Herald,  December 7, 2012

BUSINESS has reacted furiously to Prime Minister Julia Gillard putting on hold plans to give the states power to deal with environmental approvals for major projects.

After a meeting with Ms Gillard and the premiers, business representatives described the atmosphere variously as ''black'' and ''frosty'' and said the perception was that Ms Gillard had caved into the Greens and environmental groups.

Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd said later the forum had heard ''a frustrating reversal'' by the Commonwealth on its commitment to deal with the growing costs of the approval processes faced by major investments.

Ms Gillard said the Commonwealth needed to secure a consistent approach from the states that met proper environmental standards. Otherwise there would be a patchwork of arrangements and a threat to standards.

Business sources said no state had said it would not sign up. Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu and New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell said they were willing to sign up there and then.

There was disagreement over the wording of the communique from the meeting. Ms Gillard has left the way open for further negotiations with the states but business wanted this made explicit in the communique while the federal government did not. In the end, the wording was fuzzy and business is concerned there will not be more negotiations.

The final wording said discussions between the Commonwealth and states and territories would continue to work through various matters.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said it was disappointing for business that progress had stalled.

He accused the Greens of running a scare campaign. ''The business community stressed through this meeting that it does not want to see a reduction in standards,'' he said. To say the business community wanted to reduce standards was a ''distortion of reality''.

Mr Shepherd said the forum's participants from business and government alike reinforced the ''non-negotiable need to protect all environmental standards''.

But business had made clear that maintaining the present system involving duplication and multiple agencies ''will risk the investments that are critical to the strength and resilience of the economy''.

A one-stop shop was critical, he said. But the BCA had never sought a uniform national approach. ''We were seeking immediate progress on removing double handling while at the same time preserving the highest environmental standards.''

He called on the federal government to commit to accrediting the states through bilateral agreements and said it should take up the offers from Mr Baillieu and Mr O'Farrell to sign at once.

Greens leader Christine Milne said Ms Gillard had found out during the past few months that she had ''made a complete muck of it'', and now had made another mistake. Instead of abandoning ''this ridiculous proposition that the Commonwealth hand over its powers to the states, what she's said is 'all right then states, you go and sort it out, come back and tell me how much of the environmental protection powers you want, and I'll hand it over to you next year'''.

Environmental powers to be kept by Canberra

Michelle Grattan and Tom Arup
The Age, December 6, 2012

The federal government blocked a state trial of cattle grazing in the Victorian Alpine National Park. Photo: Justin McManus

THE federal government will tell business leaders that it is putting on hold plans to devolve to the states power to deal with environmental approvals for major projects.

The decision is a major blow to business - which has claimed ''green tape'' is jeopardising projects worth many billions of dollars - and a victory for green groups that have complained about a watering down of standards.

In a bid to streamline and speed up approvals, the Commonwealth started negotiations with the states after the Council of Australian Governments meeting in April for decisions to be made under state legislation. But concern about state approaches to standards has made it difficult to get bilateral agreements that are comprehensive and meet standards.

Business leaders at the pre-COAG Business Advisory Forum will be briefed on Thursday on the decision, which follows high-profile spats between Canberra and conservative state governments over environmental approvals.

The Baillieu government is challenging in the courts a decision by Environment Minister Tony Burke to block its controversial trial of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park under national environment laws.

Tensions have also exploded between Mr Burke and Queensland Premier Campbell Newman over the approval process for Gina Rinehart's $6.4 billion Alpha coalmine in the Galilee Basin.

The federal government says if the states failed to properly maintain environmental standards there could be legal challenges, creating business uncertainty.

States have not yet provided assurance that the Commonwealth's high standards that flow from the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act would be met.

Given the problems, the federal government says bilateral agreements would cover, at most, only two-thirds of matters nationally, ranging between 25 per cent and 90 per cent across jurisdictions.

For example, proposals for accreditation would not cover all approvals, including some residential and commercial development, and approvals not involving land development. Not all state processes are capable of assessing all aspects of projects that may affect matters of national significance.

The problems would create a ''patchwork'' effect, the federal government says, with some processes accredited under the new system, others still with the Commonwealth and still others requiring co-operation between governments. The government will ask the states to do more work before talks proceed.

The government will instead introduce legislation to enact changes to the national environment laws resulting from a 2009 review headed by former senior bureaucrat Allan Hawke.

The changes include greater use of assessments of environmentally important landscapes to determine where major development should occur. The changes will also seek to reduce the time taken to make decisions if a project meets certain conditions, and amend powers over emergency listing of animals and plants for protection

On another COAG issue, the Australian Industry Group has appealed for Friday's meeting to make progress on energy reform. CEO Innes Willox said state concerns about Julia Gillard's electricity package were understandable ''but none should be a deal breaker''.