Environment East Gippsland shouldn’t be forced down this costly road but they are … and it works! If anyone would like to share in this winning strategy you can send us a few bob so they can keep it going. Donations are tax-deductible (but we understand if people have thin piggy banks after Xmas). EEG has quite a few large bills to pay now. But their work isn’t over yet! Please drink a toast to all the players tonight – the EEG lawyers, the risk taking EEG team, and the GECO and FFRC surveyors – what a force! You can donate here.

Thursday 4th Feb 2015: Legal action forces VicForests to survey

Action taken by Environment East Gippsland and their lawyers, Environmental Justice Australia, has resulted in VicForests today agreeing to halt logging and survey for rare wildlife and plants in a stand of East Gippsland’s forests rich in threatened species.

“Sadly, since mid-January and while negotiations have been going on, VicForests continued to clearfell this amazingly valuable forest where four rare and threatened wildlife and two plant species were discovered by volunteer surveyors” said Jill Redwood from EEG. “It’s a shame that so much has been destroyed in this time, in an area that clearly should have been surveyed by trained biologists before the chainsaws moved in.”

The species recorded in the Kuark forest about 30km NE of Orbost, were the Long-footed Potoroo, Yellow-bellied Gliders, a new species of galaxias fish that only occurs in Kuark, a likely new, as yet undescribed species of crayfish, and two rare plants that should have 250m Special Management Zones applied.

“We have to wonder what gems we have lost over the years because the state government’s logging company calls the shots on whether an area should have a survey before it is clearfelled and burnt.”

“Sadly, Minister Neville’s Environment Department consistently refuse to order VicForests to survey for rare and threatened flora and fauna in areas slated for logging, so it’s left up to community groups to engage lawyers” said Felicity Millner of Environmental Justice Australia.

“We welcome this belated action by VicForests in this instance” said Ms Millner.

“We will be watching closely how their actions are carried out and are leaving our options open at this stage”, said Jill Redwood.

Wednesday 3rd February marks the 19th anniversary of an agreement that has allowed the logging industry a legal exemption from Australia’s environment laws. Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland, where this exemption from commonwealth laws was first introduced says the Turnbull government is planning to instate another 20 years of this special treatment. When the agreement between the state and federal govt was signed, EGipp was promised a multi-million dollar economic boost – 400 new jobs – a bright future. There were 20 sawmills at the time – it’s now down to 5. It employs less than 0.05% of the regional workforce. The joint MR of 3rd Feb 1997 promised world class protection of old growth and biodiversity – both of which have declined rapidly in that time.
“We have one more year before this archaic agreement expires. To continue this out-dated, anti-environmental exemption to the laws for a passé and declining industry is deplorable”.

“Being exempt from environmental laws has caused the status of many forest dependent wildlife to take a nose dive. Some are now critically endangered, like the Leadbeaters Possum (Victoria’s faunal emblem) and the Swift Parrot while others like our Gliders are being added to threatened species lists”.

“We need to make native forest logging accountable” said Jill Redwood. “It’s time to bring it in line with other Australian industries and strip its preferential treatment. It has had 19 years of immunity from the law at great cost to our forests and the public purse”.

“Such critical wildlife habitat is worth far more standing than as a cheap export commodity. Our timber needs are 85% supplied by tree plantations. This is where the jobs and security for the industry is”.

“Over the past 19 years our forests in East Gippsland and across the country have been systematically clearfelled, mostly sold cheaply to overseas pulp and paper factories”.

“It’s time to set in place a new phase of valuing forests, keeping them upright and onshore for the many values they provide for Australia”.

East Gippsland: VicForests is being very cooperative in giving Environment East Gippsland (EEG) new grounds for legal action. Not only had they just commenced logging in an area which EEG believes is a rich stand of forest for rare wildlife, but bold as brass, their contractors yet again cleared right to the edge of a patch of rainforest leaving no buffer. This, after all the bad media they received when found to have destroyed rainforest near Hensleigh Creek earlier this year.

While EEG pulls out the legal artillery, GECO held up logging today by a tree-sitter cabled down to 5 machines – immobilising operations.

This is what some call a nicely timed ‘one-two’.

Below is EEG's media release regarding the legal details. Just 24 hours after the legal letter was sent from EJA who are representing EEG, VicForests lawyers replied saying they were pulling out!

VicForests stops logging after legal action

Just one day after lawyers presented a ‘please explain’ letter to the CEO of VicForests, logging has been stopped and machinery will be pulled out of a high habitat value stand of forest where tree felling had commenced, north east of Orbost.

“We believe the logging that took place was unlawful but appreciate VicForests now suspending operations,” said Jill Redwood, of Environment East Gippsland.

“Although VicForests deny there were any breaches of the law, they have decided not to continue logging here in order to assist the State Government’s Forest Industry Taskforce. This is currently considering deferral of logging in controversial areas of high conservation value. The Taskforce is considering future issues facing the industry and protection of the State’s flora and fauna”.

“While we are heartened to see VicForests cooperation in this instance, we have also made them aware of a number of other areas of high quality habitat planned for imminent logging where we believe the law requires a survey. We are waiting to hear back and will be keeping our eye on VicForests operations in these areas.”

A logger recently posted this nasty message to forest activists on a day when they were meeting to negotiate the protection of giant trees.

HUG THIS!

This one image is so powerful, it will permanently destroy any claims of ‘sustainability’ or ‘environmental concern’ by the industry and VicForests.

The logger who posted this boastful image on an environment group’s Facebook page clearly illustrates his industry’s brazen contempt for the community.

It was posted the same day EEG and others met with DELWP on giant tree protection (21/10/15).

This is why we need urgent interim measures for giant tree protection while prescriptions are developed. There are not many of these leviathans left out there!

Ask Daniel Andrews [email protected].gov.au to urgently protect giant trees.
 

The timber industry is calling for more than a million hectares of NSW national parks to be opened to logging, including iconic natural treasures like Nightcap National Park.

This logging stands to severely disrupt and damage the habitat of a number of threatened flora and fauna species (e.g. Sooty Owl, Koala).

This koala was killed by loggers at Whian Whian, near Lismore, with the assistance of the NSW Police who prevented protesters from stopping the operation.

This is a cruel indication of what Barry O'Farrell thinks of koalas - just rubbish that must be cleared out of the way so loggers can profit from old growth forests. This was not the only animal to die, there were many others.

It's time to stop this madness. We should now be logging only plantations. The logging industry has had enough decades to plant its own resource without pillaging and plundering the last remaining ancient forests.

A lone protester sleeping on private property adjoining the logging site on Whian Whian Road was assaulted overnight by up to 12 people who caused head trauma and bleeding.

A logger hit by a falling tree branch at Whian Whian last week has passed away, the Forestry Corporation has confirmed.

The man was injured when a dead branch fell from a tree during a logging operation on private land at Whian Whian, striking him on the head.

The government knows the threats. A track built by the Forestry Corporation a few weeks ago, overseen by the EPA, has outraged forest campaigners who say it makes a mockery of the environment minister Robyn Parker’s promise that koala habitat would be maintained there and threatened species looked after. In the presence of the EPA, the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) undertook further searches of two trees and found that there were more than 20 koala scats under them.

Echo.net: Logging track a threat to koalas- survey

Areas of significant Aboriginal heritage were able to be easily identified at the logging site at Whian Whian over the weekend. The Aboriginal lawman said one of these trees was at least 400 years old. Echonetdaily was told that Aboriginal peoples would take their stillborns, miscarried and retarded babies to these trees. Another area along the logging track had such a strong force that the Aboriginal lawman ran from it.

Huge numbers of discarded logs and branches now lay on the ground adding a significant fuel load to the area, and increasing the bushfire risk to the Whian Whian community. No koalas could be seen and the moisture had disappeared. The forest was grieving the death of itself, its inhabitants and a man. The "karma" of the area is fuelled by death and destruction.

Dailan Pugh , from the North East Forest Alliance, says an inspection of the site last week showed high-use koala habitat trees had not been properly protected.

He says it's a special site adjacent to the Nightcap National Park.

"What we're dealing with here are threatened species, including nationally threatened species," Mr Pugh said.

"We have all sorts of laws aimed at protecting threatened species, unfortunately they're poorly applied, they're poorly worded and in this case even though there is the potential to provide a modicum of protection, that's not being taken."

"On private property they're not legally required to look for threatened species. So legally, if there's a record of a threatened species or they find a threatened species, for a number of those they've got to implement exclusion zones and they've got to move to protect them".

Mr Pugh said loggers have singled out 43 Parks and other conservation reserves in the region.

"There's lots of very important areas here and we've just got to make sure that we don't lose them."

According to new figures, each of the four native forest operations run by the Forestry Corporation of NSW made a loss, combining for a total loss of $7.9 million.

Don't let this koala die in vain!
Richard Jones Possum Creek NSW

Take Action on Forests

Tasmania's forest industry has rejected a Greens plan to ban logging in high conservation value forests.  The Greens says 300 jobs would be lost but more than 700 created through the strategy.  Even job creation is not enough to move the die-hard destructive mentality.  Both Labor and Liberals support Gunns pulp mill and neither is proposing any new forest reserves.
Trees up to hundreds of years old cannot be replaced overnight, despite how "sustainable" the logging is supposed to be!

Governments fail to see the value of forests when they can't see the trees as anything but resources to plunder, or "manage", for economic benefits and jobs.

Tasmania's forest industry has rejected a Greens plan to ban logging in high conservation value forests.  The Greens says 300 jobs would be lost but more than 700 created through the strategy.  Even job creation is not enough to move the die-hard destructive mentality.  Both Labor and Liberals support Gunns pulp mill and neither is proposing any new forest reserves.

Mr Bartlett signalled that on the hot topic of forestry, Labor wanted to ensure the logging of old-growth forests would continue in the long-term.  I believe old-growth will always be part of Tasmania's (forestry) mix.

The manufacture and sale of high value products from special timbers provides employment for more than 2,000 Tasmanians and generates about $70 million for the state each year.   The vast majority of wood from these forests (approximately 80%) goes into short lived products such as paper and cardboard which decompose and release carbon very quickly. So, carbon storage in wood products can never make up for the loss of carbon storage in old growth forests.

An alliance of forestry companies in Tasmania has launched an advertising campaign warning of the risks to the economy if all old growth logging is stopped.  Forests remain silent inside the consciousness of people who are environmentally illiterate! 

Governments fail to see the value of forests when they can't see the trees as anything but resources to plunder, or "manage", for economic benefits and jobs.

Who will publicise the risks to our heritage, our air, water, homeless native wildlife,  and additional greenhouse gas emissions when old-growth forests are destroyed?  By their very nature, these trees take hundreds of years to replace themselves, yet we, the public, are supposed to be so myopic that the ephemeral financial returns from logging old growth forests should over-ride the value of these ancient sentinels, guarding the wealth of natural ecosystems?

It may appear as if nothing is changing in forests, but countless natural cycles are silently at work every day and night. Old growth forests have a high level of biodiversity, and logging  causes disturbances and destruction.

Conserving the nation's forests and woodlands is one the easiest, cheapest and fastest ways that we can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve carbon storage.

Many of the RFA old growth forests protected in Tasmania consist of trees of little use to the timber industry. Despite repeated requests for solid evidence supporting such ‘statistics’ as “90% of the Upper Florentine Valley is reserved from logging,” data and maps supporting such claims have failed to materialise. We do know, however, that most of the ‘protected’ country in the Upper Florentine consists of buttongrass, scrub and high-altitude moorlands, with very few tall-eucalypt forests reserved.  Only 22% of Tasmania’s original tall-eucalypt forests have been reserved. 

Tasmania is the largest exporter of woodchips in Australia, exporting more than all the other states combined. 

This year, ironically, is the UN Year of Biodiversity, and next year is the Year of Forests.

As our population swells, more natural resources such as forests will be considered as assets to plunder for economic benefits!  Our natural heritage, and ecosystems, are continually under threat from industry and developments.

We are already world-leaders in wildlife extermination, and Tasmania is famous for the genocide of its indigenous people, destroying Lake Pedder, exterminating the Tasmanian Tiger and for the current threats to the Tasmanian Devil.   Logging native forests destroys homes, creates stress and robs wildlife of habitat. We humans are not part of their ecosystems, and removing trees increases fire risks.

Unless we declare all our old-growth forests and remaining native vegetation as part of our national park system, the logging mafia will continue to threaten, bully and dominate our State governments.

(Photo: devastation at the Styx old growth forests - Wikipedia commons)

A recent poll shows the Labor government of Premier David Bartlett is in trouble, with the Greens polling well. Unless there is a late surge in support for David Bartlett's Labor or Will Hodgman's Liberals, one or other of them will be governing in minority after March 20, ending 12 years of ALP majority rule.

People can relocate, retrain and be resourced in other industries.  Trees up to hundreds of years old cannot be replaced overnight, despite how "sustainable" the logging is supposed to be! 

(photo: Styx logging sign)

Our old-growth forests do not owe us, non-indigenous people of Australia, a livelihood.   We owe it to next generations a nation with its natural wealth intact and viable through preservation, and honouring our heritage and non-human species.

Sir (Hans) Wilhelm Ernst Hans Franz Heysen , OBE (8 October 1877–2 July 1968) was a well-known German Australian artist. He was particularly recognised for his watercolours of the Australian bush. He won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting a record nine times. Heysen was a conservationist far ahead of his time. He fought to preserve the flora of the Adelaide Hills—particularly the great red gums and white gums—and repeatedly warned of the dangers of destroying the natural environment. He also recorded the human activities of the region in great detail.

Hans Heysen's watercolours portrayed the river red gums as the guardians of inland Australia. He wrote: "The red gums in the creek beds fill me with wonder; their feeling of strength of limb, of vigour and life, suggest the very spirit of endurance."

Apparently, the “spirit of endurance” was no match for those in power who see not the forests but $$ in logging profits! If logging continues when 80 per cent of the landscape along the Murray has already been cleared, what is their future?

The NSW Labor government was once a conservation trailblazer. During the 1990s, forest management in eastern NSW was totally overhauled and in subsequent years millions of hectares of national parks were created towards a National Forest Policy targets for ecosystem protection in the escarpment and coastal forests and into the north-west.

However, even before the Victorian government’s outstanding decision to remove 90% of its forests from production, NSW forests provided five times the volume of timber compared to Victoria, from only 1.5 times the forest area.
.

This region is known to provide habitat for at least 69 plants and animals threatened with extinction, including species such as the Barking Owl, Regent Parrot and Southern Bell Frog.

National Resources Commission Report

Now a new Government report has painted a bleak picture for the future of the Riverina's iconic red gum forests.

A recent 260-page Natural Resources Commission (NRC) report finds the forests under serious stress, with many of the trees dead or dying and raises doubts about the capacity of some areas to continue to support wildlife.

The wetlands are a nationally important region recognised for sustaining large water-bird colonies. They form a part of the extensive lower Lachlan river wetlands and rely on river flows from the upper Lachlan, with the tributaries of the Belabula and Abercrombie Rivers.

If the drought conditions continue in line with climate change predictions, much of the existing forests that are home to numerous threatened species will not survive even in their current condition. The preliminary assessment of the forests was undertaken by the commission at the request of the Premier, Nathan Rees, following a long battle by environment groups to stop logging in the region.

The report says conditions in the Werai Forest are so bad that it could be gone within 50 years if drought conditions persist.

(dead red river gums - Wikimedia commons)

Gary Rodda, Forests NSW Riverina regional planning manager, said that in any given year about four per cent of the 110,000 hectares of river red gum available for harvest was selectively harvested.

“The red gum forests are sustainably managed for a range of social, economic, and environmental benefits that flow on to the community,” Gary said. “This harvesting process is carefully managed to ensure a patchwork of tree sizes and ages in the forest, which means there is a good selection of habitat for fauna and flora,” Gary said. Can anything in nature be harvested forever?

Recent History

In 2007 The non-government National Parks Association of NSW (NPA) alleged the Government had not completed the required environmental impact statement before allowing logging of red gum forests along the Murray River. In September, Primary Industries Minister Mr Macdonald suspended logging in the 11 red gum forest compartments the NPA had complained about. The NPA found two endangered species - koalas and the black-chinned honeyeater.

2008 , THE New South Wales Government was accused of illegally logging almost 20,000 hectares of listed red river gum wetlands in the Riverina. "An estimated 7202 hectares of Ramsar wetlands and 1043 hectares of superb parrot breeding habitat (were) being logged …or are planned for logging in the next three months." However, this was denied by Ian Macdonald! A truce was called when Mr Macdonald agreed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the logging if the NPA dropped its legal action.

In May, 2009 , it was reported that A superb PARROT was about to cost 1000 workers their jobs because the Federal Government has ordered a NSW timber industry to shut to protect the bird! No mention that the parrot was under threat from logging its home, its habitat!

The Daily Telegraph then learned that Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett's department issued a stop-work order to the State Government, a move the industry claims could wipe out the entire southern NSW town of Deniliquin.

(swift parrot)

A Forests NSW briefing note obtained by The Daily Telegraph warned 11 sawmills would be forced to close overnight and 800 people would lose their jobs along with the closure of an industry worth $60 million to the NSW economy.

How often do we hear the argument of “jobs” and “economic benefits” to endorse environmental damage? The goalposts are continually moved in favour of communities and human benefits. It is a battle for the red gums vs a few short-term economic benefits and jobs that shouldn’t have been created in the first place. What about sustainability, often mentioned but rarely considered.

Tens of millions of paddock trees shelter livestock, nurture wildlife and save long-cleared farmland from appearing as bare as the desert. Surely if this devastation was caused by a “pest” species, shooters would be employed to “manage” them!

The Government in 2008 notes the National Parks Association report that has found a threatened species in the State's Red Gum forests. Detection of these species in State forests that have been managed for timber supply and grazing for many generations confirms that Forests NSW forest management practices are “environmentally sound”! Really? Nothing kills threatened species faster than loss of habitat.

The Ramsar listing that was supported by both the NSW and Federal Governments listed “timber harvesting” as one of the many uses of the Ramsar site. Maybe Ramsar needs to redefine conservation of wetlands.

UPDATE: August 2009
The Natural Resources Commission is undertaking an independent assessment of the River Red Gum Forests. This is a critical opportunity for us to press for the creation of new National Parks and as the NRC is accepting public submissions
The Red Gum forests act as filters for the river - if the New South Wales Government is serious about protecting the health of the Murray River, then it needs to protect our River Red Gums.

Write a submission for a new national park

Download a kit to write your own submission for the creation of a new national park.

An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Forests NSW’s timber harvesting and associated road works in south-western NSW has gone on public exhibition today, Minister for Primary Industries Ian Macdonald said.

The EIS, prepared by independent consultants, covers red gum forests in the central Murray, lower Murray and Murrumbidgee, and includes the towns and surrounding communities of Deniliquin, Barham, Balranald, Narrandera and Darlington Point.

“Public submissions will be received by Forests NSW up until
The EIS can also be viewed and downloaded from the Department Industries’ website

Do “jobs” and “economic benefits” always have to win over the environment? The new national park should ensure a wildlife corridor for our diminishing waterbirds and other wildlife.

Email Premier Nathan Rees here by filling out the form