The threat of prosecution by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has led to Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW) ending logging plans in Tallaganda State Forest.
This follows an investigation, and possible prosecution, by the EPA for failing to conduct adequate assessments for threatened species. A stop work order (SWO) for logging in Tallaganda was issued to FCNSW in August 2023 after a dead Greater Glider was discovered near logging.
Reports from 2023 had estimated that NSWFC had breached regulations 1,215 times in logging operations in Tallaganda State Forest, one of the last strongholds of the endangered greater glider.
‘When I walked through the logged areas of Tallaganda it was heartbreaking. It has been important to expose this destruction to as many people as possible. This must be a turning point. Australians want action. That starts with permanently protecting Tallaganda State Forest,’ said Dr Kita Ashman, Threatened Species and Climate Adaptation Ecologist, WWF Australia in November 2023.
FCNS failing lawful responsibilities
However, FCNSW are still conducting logging in state forests where they have failed to identify habitat for threatened species and were to recommence logging in Flat Rock State Forest yesterday, 31 January said Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson.
However, FCNSW are still conducting logging in state forests where they have failed to identify habitat for threatened species and were to recommence logging in Flat Rock State Forest yesterday, 31 January said Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson.
‘The Forestry Corporation are logging forests without fulfilling their lawful responsibilities to identify and protect habitat trees for threatened species, including those that depend wholly on old hollow-bearing trees and the EPA is now allowing it to continue. It is extinction logging, there is no other way to describe what is happening,’ said Ms Higginson.
‘The Forestry Corporation’s decision to end their plans to log in Tallaganda has only occurred because the EPA used their regulatory powers in response to community reports of unlawful logging. We know that the community has reported at least 8 other instances of non-compliance and unlawful logging by Forestry Corporation in our public native forests since the end of last year, so why has the EPA not acted and issued stop work orders in these forests too?
‘Flat Rock State Forest is about to be logged and neither the EPA or the Forestry Corporation have identified Greater Glider habitat trees, despite community records and evidence demonstrating their presence. The relief from the community, that Tallaganda has been removed from the current logging schedule, is overshadowed by the fact that other habitat for threatened species is being logged and more areas are at imminent risk from logging.
‘The community has picked up where Forestry Corporation and the EPA have failed. They are doing the work and making the reports, but logging is still set to commence in areas where it should not lawfully be allowed to.
‘Forestry Corporation is a state-owned corporation, it is the public who own this logging company, but they have become a rogue operator that is trashing critical areas without completing their responsibilities. The EPA must act on the advice and evidence of the community and immediately issue stop work orders in all forests where there is evidence that threatened species habitat has not been recorded and protected and is instead being destroyed,’ Ms Higginson said.
The only thing needing cutting down, is Forestry NSW.
Premier Chris Minus, needs to get off his couch and act.
Since when do Greens MPs farm? Bit hypocritical owning all those cleared paddocks without a single tree in sight yet campaigning against hard-working timber industry workers in the Northern Rivers who supply Aussies with timber for their homes. Let he who is without timber in their house cast the first stone. Why don’t you go to a local sawmill and leave your preconceived ideologies at the door and actually learn something. Talk to plantation owners and understand what animals do when harvesting starts.
Peter is that the only message you gleaned from this article?
Why don’t YOU go to a local ecologist and leave your preconceived ideologies at the door and actually learn something? This is not about the plantiations you referred to (where in the article does anyone say plantations shouldn’t be harvested?), but our publicly owned native forests being trashed by a heavily-subsidised loss-making corporation, resulting in the ongoing and cumulative devastating impacts on already threatened forest-dependent native flora and fauna species , depleted soils and decreased water quality. It is well known what happens to animals when the “harvesting” starts (- because harvesting is such a nicer and misleading term than the more accurate “clearfelling” term); At least four decades of robust science have informed us of the huge death rate caused by the process, then afterwards through starvation, feral animal predation or killed by bushfires, which have all pushed populations below critical thresholds from which they cannot recover.
*Talk to environmental scientists and understand why so many forest dwelling animals are on the verge of extinction, and why maintaining the remaining forests is essential for climate change mitigation.
*Talk to a lawyer and understand the horrendous legal exemptions granted to Forestry Corp to facilitate their destructive industry, not granted to any other industry in Australia, yet they STILL regularly fair to comply these pathetic regulations with hundreds of prosecutable breaches every year.
*Talk to a hydrologist about how the reduced protections for forest streams and their headwaters have negatively affected water quality, rand the rate and volume of runoff, and subsequent worsening of floods.
*Talk to a bushfire expert about the increased forest drying caused by these practices has lead to an increase in the likelihood of bushfires, and how the density of regrowth increases intensity fuel loads, which subsequently increases bushfire intensity.
*Talk to neighbouring land owners and land managers about their frustration with Forestry Corp failing to implement feral animal control with ferals spilling over and spreading to other tenures, even after their clearfelling, let alone year-round, despite their legal obligations to do so and the proven impacts of feral animals.
*Talk to an economist or accountant about how this is totally unviable from an economic viewpoint.
*Talk to the public who want their forests properly managed with all the ecosystem services they provide, who value trees standing and animals not extinct, and for their intrinsic beauty.
There is nothing sustainable about the Forestry Corp practices or business model. The evidence and philosophy behind its cessation is incontrovertible and irrefutable. The practice is indefensible.
BTW I suspect Ms Higginson’s farm was cleared several decades ago…. not like she went out & destroyed a whole remaining forest herself is it? The photo shows a glimpse of an area the size of a decent backyard, laughable you’ve decided that is the entirety of her farm and see fit to abuse her based on that. I would wager there is a whole farm plan with areas set aside for revegetation already heavily planted.
Excellent response.
We need to stop with the moronic finger pointing/and hominem type of argument to “win” our stances which just obfuscates the real problems and need to act on them.
Farm land is already done. Just because you are a green doesn’t mean you can’t try and fix the environment in your way (sustainability farming anyone?) etc.
This is about the law doing sweet fart all to protect WHAT IS LEFT which is becoming almost nothing. Also Don Owens comment below is rather facile and another example of the obfuscation method. Immigration is going to happen, end of story. We have VAST tracts of land that we could give a billion immigrants that would barely impact the biodiversity.
The real problem is the idiots that refuse to invest in quick growing replantable forests and insist on mowing down the old guard forests which are the last bastions for the barely alive Australian flora and fauna. We need to do renewables all over the board and immediately.
But no. Let’s pound our chests and make Murdoch weep with delight as his divide and conquer strategy pays dividends. These evil lying greens. These boat people immigrants. How fkn dare they. Oh yeah. *Points finger and yells at the clouds*
FCNSW are logging native forests, not plantations, and they are doing it faster than it can regenerate . If we didn’t,t have such a high population growth , largely from immigration, we would,t need to destroy our forests, a point the greens seem to ignore.
Taxpayers pay 10s of millions every to year to subsidise this joke .Reasult …Wiping out complete eco systems one at a time .Cause. Stupidity.
FCNSW have been losing money for over a decade.
Taxpayers pay to keep FCNSW alive. Presumably the timber goes mostly to private market where it’s sold back to you after hitting the local sawmill for way more $$.
Amazing. No raging post from greggy here!
Can someone do a ring around the hospitals to check he’s ok. AKA Ivor