Urbenville-based logging company Rojech Pty Ltd were fined $15,000 earlier this month over logging operations near the entrance to the Border Ranges National Park in Kyogle Shire. They were also issued an ‘Official Caution’ for breaches under the Local Land Services Act.
A ‘Formal Warning’ was also issued to the landowner for not adequately ensuring compliance by the harvest contractor who was operating under a Private Native Forestry (PNF) agreement.
Kyogle Environment Group (KEG) members had witnessed the logging aftermath near the entrance to the Border Ranges National Park and, with the help of local ecologists, identified potential breaches and reported the operation to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Northern Rivers is considered a biodiversity hotspot and is recognised as one of the richest and most diverse regions for flora and fauna in Australia.
No DA
The EPA’s investigation led to the discovery of 133 illegal logging projects, that had all failed to comply with Kyogle Council requirements of a development application (DA).
‘Since 2013 landholders have been required by the Kyogle Local Environment Plan (LEP) to obtain consent for logging by submitting a development application (DA), despite this the Local Land Services (LLS) since issued 133 Private Native Forestry approvals, without any preparing DAs or obtaining consent from Council,’ explaind North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) spokesperson Dalian Pugh OAM.
‘The private logging fiasco in Kyogle Shire highlights the problem of the LLS approving logging without requiring that landowners first obtain development consent from councils where legally required.’
160,000 acres approved for logging
Kyogle Environment Group Chair, Tori Bail, says more than half of all private native forests, totalling 160,000 hectares, under freehold title in the Kyogle Shire are approved for logging.
Kyogle Shire Council Mayor, Kylie Thomas, stated to the ABC in November 2022. ‘We’ve got a history in Kyogle of a strong timber industry, and the fact that it is still functioning today is a testament to generations past and present and how well they are managing their land. Why would we get in the way of that?’
Logging compliance needed
KEG wants a newly elected State government to adequately resource the EPA to carry out a satisfactory forestry compliance regime that doesn’t place prime reliance on community reports and is armed with detailed flora and fauna mapping. It also wants a process of ratification of dual consent so Councils can assess environmental and community infrastructure impacts from a local perspective.
‘Regulation without adequate compliance is basically useless,’ says Ms Bail. ‘We may never know what unchecked damage has been done to our local forests from this bureaucratic neglect.’
Mr Pugh said that, ‘even the PNF Plan that maps areas to be excluded from logging (threatened ecological communities, rainforest, old growth, wetlands, heathland, caves. rocky outcrops, Aboriginal sites, riparian buffers, slopes over 30 degrees) does little to review or assess environmental constraints.
‘LLS, and before them the EPAy, have been grossly negligent in approving unlawful PNF logging operations across NSW, including in environmental zones.
‘A 2018 review by the Department of Planning identified that across north-east NSW “4% (14,182 ha) of the PNF Plan area falls into council ‘forestry prohibited’ zones” and “30% of the PNF plan area (110,578ha) is in zoning where “forestry requires development consent”.
‘PNF plans are just simplistic desk-top assessments, limited to within the property, that require no surveys for threatened species, and disregard applicable strategies and policies, including those of Councils.
‘Other landholders are required to submit DAs for far more benign activities, and these give an opportunity for neighbours and affected communities to have their say, and account taken of impacts on local amenity, roads and bridges.
‘On 2 December 2022 Kyogle Shire Council wrote to all 133 PNF operators with LLS approvals since 2013 informing them their operations are unlawful, and requesting they submit DAs and obtain consent before proceeding.’
On the North Coast more than two million hectares of eucalypt forest is on private land. In 2018 the Department of Primary Industries identified that all regulatory exclusion categories (including old growth) cover 25.6 per cent, of the total area of private native forest in north-east NSW, indicating that around one and a half million hectares of the North Coast is potentially available for logging.
‘No wonder Australia leads the world in biodiversity loss,’ said Ms Bail.
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