Committees stacked to provide 'right' outcome

David Blair, senior research officer, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

The Age, letter, 28 October 2014

First the review into the renewable energy target by climate sceptic Dick Warburton; now an inadequate report on the Great Barrier Reef written by a committee lacking independent experts, but containing coal industry representatives ("Scientific academy slams government's Great Barrier Reef plan", 28/10). Both are examples of government handpicking a review committee to provide an outcome desirable to its ideology and backers, rather than doing what is best for the country.

In Victoria we see the same thing. The Alpine Advisory Committee, which is helping rewrite the Greater Alpine National Parks Management Plan, is stacked with cattlemen and those wishing to exploit the alpine parks rather than protect the sensitive environment.

Meanwhile, the Leadbeater's Possum Advisory Group has recently rewritten the Action Statement (which dictates management) for our state faunal emblem. Who was selected to provide expertise on saving this threatened species? VicForests' chief executive and timber industry support groups are on the panel, while the two leading ecologists who have studied the species for decades are not. Furthermore, the terms of reference set by the government explicitly tied the survival of Leadbeater's Possum to the health of the extractive industry that threatens it and VicForests will get a significant part of the funding earmarked for "saving" the possum.

Forests NSW investigated over logging breaches

Ben Cubby, August 18, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald (article)

Source

Forests NSW is being forced to review its logging practices, after the discovery of a spate of new breaches including logging old-growth rainforests and destroying the habitat of threatened native animals.

The latest damage, at Girard State Forest near Tenterfield, is the fifth time in five months that the state agency has come under investigation.

The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, which oversees environmental protection licences, is conducting a joint audit with the agency of logging in the region.

The review will examine the regulations under which contractors are employed by Forests NSW, and rules protecting native wildlife, young trees and trees surrounding waterways.

The department has already handed out four penalty notices to the agency this year for breaking logging rules in the nearby Yabbra State Forest.

Damage in Girard State Forest was uncovered by a team of zoologists and botanists, working with an environment group, North East Forest Alliance.

It included a nine-hectare stand of mature trees, some of them two metres wide at ground level and 50 metres tall, which was part of a ''special prescription zone'' under the area's forestry agreement. This does not forbid logging, but requires contractors to "maintain or enhance the values that the area is zoned to protect".

The area was also part of Forests NSW's 1995 Tenterfield environmental impact statement, and part of one of the wildlife corridors the state government is striving to link up along the Great Dividing Range, from Queensland to Victoria.

Girard State Forest provides a home for koalas, stuttering frogs, sooty owls, powerful owls, golden-tipped bats and yellow-bellied gliders.

"Recent audits have exposed illegal logging of rainforest, wetlands, endangered ecological communities and now old-growth forest,'' said a spokesman for North East Forest Alliance, Dailan Pugh.

''These are what the regional forest agreement was meant to protect. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is in addition to systemic failures by Forests NSW to implement many of the measures required to protect threatened species and streams.''

Altogether, the report documented 24 recent breaches of a threatened species licence, 10 of an environmental protection licence, nine of a fisheries license and two of the site's integrated forestry operations approval.

Forests NSW, a public trading enterprise within the NSW Department of Primary Industries which plays a central role in the state's $1 billion timber industry, confirmed it was taking part in the joint audit.

''In addition, a compliance response team has been established to address these issues,'' the agency said in a statement.

''Forests NSW is committed to ensuring that the highest possible standards are maintained during harvest operations.''

The environment department said separate investigations into other breaches in Double Duke and Grange state forests were still under way.

''Once these investigations are complete and, if a pattern is identified, [the department] would consider further regulatory steps,'' a spokesman said.

Loggers lash out at claims

Bryony Triggs
Daily Examiner (article), 15th July 2010

TIMBER industry representatives have lashed out at Clarence Environment Centre conservationist John Edwards over allegations lowland rainforest and old growth was illegally logged at Grange State Forest.

Mr Edwards' claims, pub-lished in yesterday's Examiner, relate to a 15 hectare area, alleged to have been illegally logged in the forest 50km west of Grafton early this month.

The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) is now investigating.

However NSW Forest Products Association executive director Russell Ainley said Mr Edwards was “unqualified” to make the allegations.

“John Edwards and the Clarence Environment Centre are running a campaign of unsubstantiated trivial allegations to attack the good work of well-qualified and highly experienced forest managers,” he said.

Mr Ainley said less than two per cent of the available area of State Forest was harvested each year. “That is after areas of old growth, rainforest, riparian zones and other special protection areas are excluded,” he said.

He said Mr Edwards' allegations of harvesting of rainforest and old growth in Grange State Forest were “wrong”.

“Such areas are carefully mapped, checked on the ground and excluded from all harvesting activity,” he said.

Mr Ainley said the definition of lowland rainforest was “complex”.

“It involves a full description, transitional forms, sub alliances and a great deal of scientific interpretation,” he said. “Contrary to John Edwards' assertion, you do have to be a botanist to even start to understand the definition.”

Spiro Notaras, owner of Notaras & Sons Timber Mill in South Grafton, backed Mr Ainley's comments, declaring he felt the public was being misled by an “instant expert”.

Mr Notaras said more than one million hectares of State Forest was put into National Parks in 1996/1997, as per the Regional Forest Agreement.

“The industry paid dearly for the lock-up of the forest and the government did too,” he said.

“We've spent millions to stay there and do the right thing.

“It doesn't matter what logging operation you look at, you could find little things you could pick on. Cutting trees down is emotional for anybody.”

Mr Notaras said the Forestry Commission only logged 30 per cent of the actual area they mapped to log each year, “because of all the restraints”.

He said there was a “plan of management” for every State Forest block, which had to have National Parks and Wildlife Service and DECCW approval before a contractor started logging.

Source: http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/story/2010/07/15/loggers-conservationists-claims-grange-forest/

Conservationists slam logging backflip

Carmel Egan
The Age (article), March 29, 2009

One of Victoria's most prized but controversial cool temperate rainforest sites is being clear felled by loggers after the State Government reneged on a deal to protect it.

Logging started in College Creek catchment in the Strzelecki Ranges six days after the Black Saturday fires devastated vast tracts on the hills that rise at the southern end of the Latrobe Valley.

College Creek was one of five environmentally significant core areas declared off limits to logging by then environment minister John Thwaites in 2006. It was to have been given to the people of Victoria. The core sites were to be linked by protected wildlife corridors joining the Strzeleckis' Tarra-Bulga National Park in the east to the Gunyah Gunyah Reserve, home of Australia's biggest tree by girth, at its western tip.

But last year Mr Thwaites' successor, Gavin Jennings, jettisoned the "cores and links" agreement and signed a new deal allowing Hancock Victorian Plantations to log College Creek and other areas that had been set aside.

Environmentalists have accused Mr Jennings of caving in to the logger, which has commercial contracts to supply timber to the Maryvale pulp and paper mill.

Now 1500 hectares within the "cores and links" will be clear felled, with the 350-hectare College Creek site the first to go.

Friends of Gippsland Bush secretary Susie Zent said the site was the most politically contentious forested area in the state. "We have fought so hard to have this area saved only to have it signed away in a secret deal made against all rainforest ecologists' advice."

College Creek is Crown Land over which Hancock holds a 60-year lease. With the lifting of the moratorium on logging, Hancock is now logging the site before it is replanted and returned to the stewardship of the state.

Unlike higher-profile state forests and national parks in the Alpine region, the Grampians and the Otways, the Strzelecki Ranges are a hodgepodge of native vegetation, remnant old growth forest, regrowth, reserves, blue gum and pine plantations, freehold and Crown land. Their chequered history of compromise and trade-off, cultivation and preservation, exploitation and sanctuary has been dictated for 60 years by the needs of the timber industry and Maryvale mill at Morwell.

Hancock is contracted to supply the mill and insists logging College Creek was necessary to meet its commitments. But community groups and environmentalists have condemned the logging and accuse the Government of caving in to Hancock.

The 2006 agreement negotiated between Mr Thwaites, Hancock, Australian Paper (then owner of Maryvale mill), Trust for Nature, three local councils and community groups expired in 2008 when the parties failed to reach consensus and the company withdrew from negotiations, saying commercial conditions had changed.

Mr Jennings said this meant the Government had to negotiate a new deal with Hancock from which other interest groups were excluded. Hancock chief executive Linda Sewell said the "cores and links" agreement was not legally binding and the company gave six months' notice of its intention to walk away if a consensus could not be reached.

Pulp wood and plantation legislation gives industry lease holders the right to remove native vegetation from Crown land.

According to Ms Sewell, College Creek is a plantation established by Australian Paper for forest production in the 1970s. However, rainforest botanist Stephen Mueck believes it regenerated to become much more than a plantation.

"There is still some surviving cool temperate rainforest and some threatened fauna," he said.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Anthony Amis, also involved in negotiations with Hancock, believes the company needed to log the cores and links because blue gum and shining gum plantations in the Strzeleckis have failed.

"Hancocks are logging under unsustainable contracts that can't possibly be met due to the failure of thousands of hectares of blue gum plantation," Mr Amis said.

Original article