The NSW Forestry Corporation has been issued two new fines, totalling $60,000, by the Environment Protection Authority for failing to comply with a clean-up notice in Mogo State Forest.
The EPA has charged that the Forestry Corporation did not construct creek crossings in compliance with best practice and that an ongoing risk to downstream water quality is being caused by the Corporation’s failure to conduct remediation works.
Greens MP, Solicitor and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said, ‘The Forestry Corporation has once again ignored their environmental protection obligations and failed to comply with an order by the EPA, this has now cost the NSW community $60,000 in fines and has allowed water pollution to continue as a result of shoddy work and logging.
‘The criminal track record of the Forestry Corporation is shocking, with unlawful logging and fines essentially built into their business model. It’s one thing to claim to “make mistakes” while logging, something that has caused significant environmental harm and cost NSW hundreds of thousands of dollars, but in this case – the Forestry Corporation just flat out failed to respond to an instruction from the EPA.
‘This is maladministration at its worst,’ she said.
‘Destructive, costly, and profitless logging in public native forests is not just about the loss of habitat and the increase in fire risk, every living system that is connected to the forest is negatively impacted too. This includes the headwaters of our coastal rivers and estuaries.’
Unfit
Sue Higginson says the Minns government must recognise that the Forestry Corporation is misusing public resources and is not fit to be allowed to continue.
‘Our environment and our community deserve to have accountable, regenerative and best practice management of our forests, not this current state of affairs where a publicly owned company wrecks the environment and ignores its legal obligations.
‘There will be more and more crimes committed by the Forestry Corporation as the damage they have done to our forests continues. Their failed industry has harmed their own product so much so that they are now increasingly desperate to log trees in more and more irresponsible ways. It has to end,’ Ms Higginson said.
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