Environment East Gippsland responds to Timber Act lawfare loophole must be closed: Forest and Wood Communities Australia and also to questions from ARR.News.
This story relates to the ARR.News Ongoing Debate: Bushfires, Logging, Burns and Forest Management
A voice for our forest’s wildlife
East Gippsland in the far SE corner of Australia, has long been seen as the stronghold of many natural values including old growth and rainforests and remarkable wildlife species that evolved with and still depend on these healthy, intact habitats. Its ancient links to Gondwanaland can still be found.
One of these is the incredible tree-living marsupial, the Greater Glider. It is the largest of our gliding possums and can sweep over 100m using the outstretched webbing between front and back legs. Although conserving species shouldn’t consider an animal’s appeal, they are adorably fluffy and have a stunningly long tail.
In the Central Highlands its numbers have plummeted by a staggering 80% in just 20 years. In East Gippsland that swift decline in the population is calculated at 50%. This is extremely alarming. The Greater Glider was formally listed as threatened in 2017. Measures have been put in place to protect them but they are rarely effective let alone enforced.
Wildlife ‘Arks’ under threat
The horrendous 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires impacted almost 80% of East Gippsland, including its National Parks. Untold animals were burnt to death and their habitat destroyed.
Greater Gliders are now closer to extinction than ever before. The small remaining unburnt refuges are critical not only for Gliders, but rare owls, quolls and other species, all listed as threatened with numbers in frightening decline.
The laws are meant to protect values such as rainforests, old growth, rare plants, wildlife, and town water catchments. Despite this, the state logging monopoly VicForests, has continued to clearfell with reckless or no consideration.
Many regional communities strongly believe this old industry’s unbridled access to public land needs reviewing.
“There’s something terribly wrong with this current system when courts and the community are forced to carry out the role of government to enforce the laws and protect our threatened wildlife”, said Jill Redwood, coordinator of EEG.
“This is like leaving it to the community to police vandals and burglars out on the streets”.
Environment East Gippsland says it was forced to initiate costly legal action to protect these precious forest ‘arks’ because the government and its compliance section were taking no action to enforce its own laws.
“These legal actions are costly and time consuming. It speaks volumes about the broad-based community support for protecting forests and wildlife that so many people have been willing to volunteer their time and expertise and to contribute financially.”
EEG says that the logging industry’s dramatic claims leave themselves wide open to exposure.
“The oft-heard claim that they only log in a tiny percent of forest each year neglects to mention that the forest they are targeting is the top 10% of the highest biodiversity areas. They manipulate these ‘facts’ by including in their figures expanses of beautiful mallee, alpine snowgum, coastal scrub and other large tracts of forest that they actually have no commercial interest in cutting down”, said Ms Redwood.
“We are also told hundreds of people are out of work. But logging contractors are either moved into forests where Gliders have not been found or are paid stand-down money.”
“The logging lobby group, Forest and Wood Communities Australia (FWCA) made the astounding claim that Greater Gliders are prevalent in logged forest. This is at odds with logic, Glider biology and detailed research. “Gliders require mature trees with large hollows, are killed en-masse in logging operations, are extremely vulnerable to post-logging fire management, don’t move beyond 2-3 hectares, can’t live in regrowth and have slow reproductive rates.
Currently VicForests is defending itself against nine legal cases brought by various regional environment groups. It has also tried and failed many times to achieve the world’s top environmental certification label, awarded by the Forest Stewardship Council. This was due to it failing on the criteria of sustainable logging and breaches of state laws.
“VicForests claims to regrow all logged forests with the same type of forest that was originally there. In reality, it does neither.
“The loss of so much habitat and biodiversity over 50 years of clearfelling is now beyond excuses, misinformed claims and reckless subsidised management of our public places. Concern over this is not just confined to ‘inner city greenies’ or ‘vigilante extremists’, it is widespread and growing. Those now speaking out against logging and advocating a rapid shift to plantation resources include bee-keepers, deer shooters, 4WDers, mountain cattlemen and many ordinary rural people who don’t have large vested-interest lobby groups to represent them.
“Just as whaling is now frowned upon and there are alternatives to whale oil, cutting down natural forests will also be unacceptable, especially in light of the need to quell weather extremes and moderate climate.
“All of this furore over native forest logging obscures the reality that farm-grown trees and plantations supply nearly 90% of the wood produced in Australia. It provides secure jobs in an industry which is far less conflict ridden, and is financially and environmentally viable and socially acceptable. This is the future.
Related stories: Timber Act lawfare loophole must be closed: Forest and Wood Communities Australia; A Greater Future with Gliders: Kinglake Friends of the Forest responds.
Questions from ARR.News
ARR.News: Do you agree/ believe that skilled foresters and sustainable forestry plays an important role in having forests in their optimum condition, which in turn makes them best able to support a balanced biodiversity?
EEG: Genuine sustainable forestry is where an industry buys its own land, plants and tends the tree crops (as farmers would a vegetable crop), pays for all of its own costs and water use, harvests the crop and replants. This is plantation forestry which now provides 90% of all of Australia’s timber needs.
True native forests require both species and age diversity to remain healthy. Forestry, as practiced for the past 50 years, has been a management regime of conversion. Recent evidence and research show that 50% of logged ash forests are now barren weed infested ground, and mixed forests also have a staggering 30% failure rate after logging. Many of these once beautiful forests remain wasteland years after logging. What is coaxed back is little more than a single species industrial tree crop that suits commercial priorities. The biodiversity of the original forest is lost, along with 500 years of stored carbon in the soil and forest biomass, rain-making abilities, water filtering, air purifying, climate moderation and of course as wildlife arks.
ARR.News: Have you ever, or would you, discuss with skilled foresters how to find the right balance of native forest harvesting and management to allow for suitable habitat for the gliders and other threatened species?
EEG: We have discussed logging practices with many skilled foresters. But even amongst trained foresters there is a wide divergence of opinions and experience.
Past and current management has and still is causing massive ecological damage. Regardless of the various names now given to logging, such as variable retention, or adaptive management, to be economically viable, it still requires massive machinery causing massive disturbance. This suits industrial style logging which requires economies of scale, but it does not suit forest ecosystems that have not evolved with such clearing.
It is not just the threatened Gliders and Owls we need to consider, but the thousands of components, from delicate lichens, a multitude of invertebrates and plant associated fungi, to the larger species that must have the large old trees with hollows, and the healthy nectar-producers.
ARR.News: Do you agree/ believe that leaving forests completely untouched significantly increases bushfire risk (harmful to wildlife) and that more controlled mild burning (eg cultural burning) is needed to reduce bushfire risk and have forests in their optimum condition?
EEG: It has become a very simplistic catch-cry of needing to burn forests to stop them burning. Under whatever management regime, indigenous or with government helicopters and teams with drip-torches, there is no one-size-fits-all burn plan.
Natural healthy forests have their own fire-proofing. In fact core samples taken in areas across Australia show a 50 fold increase in fire since white settlement. It is a myth that indigenous people burnt the entire landscape regularly.
Ground burning kills the very part of many forests that naturally digests the fallen leaves and bark. This is generally termed ‘fuel’ and a seen as a negative. It’s also essential habitat and the bottom of the food chain. Fungi, invertebrates, small digging and scratching mammals and birds all help keep the forest floor breaking down into humas, a version of compost that maintains soil dampness, soil food, retains moisture and keeps the understory damp and cool with its own microclimate.
Without considering the forest type, whether it’s south facing and shady or a wet gully, has multi-layered canopy structure, older mature trees with tree heads way above the ground and so on, burning and logging can be very counter-productive.
The peer-reviewed research carried out by two experienced forest scientists from the ANU proves that logging and thinning can increase fire risk and after a logged forest begins to regrow as a thicket of single aged sapling, it can also burn far more severely.
Opening up the canopy and understory to more light and wind by logging, burning and thinning has the effect of drying the forest out. Burning as a blunt instrument is likely to be more of a political placebo. Unless clearing and burning is done within 40m of human assets it is often counter productive and extremely costly. Those hundreds of millions could be far better spent improving the fire safety immediately around homes and communities. Despite requesting the science that informs fire and logging management, the state agencies have been unable to produce any credible peer-reviewed science to show what informs its management.
Further references provided by Environment East Gippsland on burning.
