Category Archives: Forests

In the last issue of Rainforest News we discussed the proposed renewal of the three Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) in New South Wales. The three regions are North East, Southern and Eden. The Agreements expire between 2019 and 2021 but the State and Federal Governments have been considering the renewals for some time.

The Commonwealth is keen to see the RFAs extended. The Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, Senator Anne Ruston, told The Guardian “The Coalition government is fully committed to fulfilling its election commitment to establish a 20-year rolling life to all Regional Forest Agreements, which are the best mechanism for balancing the environmental, economic and social demands on our native forests.”

The ABC has obtained documents under Freedom of Information that show concerns have been raised within government about the legality of renewing the Agreements given that they are based on 20-year old science. Among the documents is a brief to the NSW Forestry Minister for a meeting of forestry ministers in Tasmania on 30 August 2017. It states:
“The Commonwealth is concerned that significantly altering existing RFAs may invite challenges to their validity, in the absence of new — and costly — Comprehensive Regional Assessments.
“Its preference is to extend the existing agreements. It is in both parties’ interests to avoid the need to revisit the costly CRA process”.

It appears that the NSW RFA renewals are still being negotiated with consideration of legal challenges.

In the background to these negotiations, the NSW Government has proposed a change to logging rules which are called Integrated Forestry Operations Approvals. The new IFOA is currently available for public comment.

The IFOA is so complex it is very difficult to provide a useful summary here. Excluding the Executive summary, there are 248 pages in the documents covering conditions and protocols.

However, there is absolutely no doubt that the proposed changes are designed to provide more timber from a dwindling resource. There can be no pretence whatsoever that they are intended to improve protection for flora and fauna. As a member of the Threatened Species Expert Panel stated “I find it extremely frustrating to try and contribute to a solution when the underlying driver of the wood supply agreements fundamentally restricts any chance of a balanced approach and I can see the environment being the inevitable loser in the equation.”

The new IFOA introduces a “multi-scale landscape approach” and describes four types of harvesting: intensive harvesting, selective harvesting, mixed intensity harvesting and alternative coupe logging.

Intensive harvesting is essentially clearfelling with some trees and clumps of trees retained. The intensive harvesting zone covers 140,000 ha in northeastern NSW between Grafton and Taree. Intensive harvesting is claimed to be required for regeneration of Blackbutt. The result will be conversion of the forest to effectively a Blackbutt plantation.

Intensive harvesting was already occurring in Blackbutt forests without formal approval. The Draft IFOA now legitimises the practice.

The IFOA incorporates a move away from targeted surveys for threatened species as they were too expensive. “Protecting” threatened species, including koalas, will now be based on various forms of mapping.

There are requirements for retention of some trees in clumps between 0.1 and 2 ha in area and wildlife habitat clumps which may be as small as 1.1 ha. The clumps are required to include habitat trees, feed trees, etc. Wildlife habitat clumps are also required to provide “habitat connectivity to help improve landscape connections between other retained patches of vegetation or as habitat islands within a large cutover area”. The Draft IFOA actually suggests that such isolated habitat islands, which can be little more than 1 ha in area, “improve connectivity”.

One member of the Expert Panel on Threatened Species commented on the role of clumps saying “there comes a point where the intensity of harvesting renders the entire forest no longer a forest in form or structure e.g. resembles and functions as retained clumps in farmland landscape. If the exclusion zones are sufficiently isolated they may not be functional units for many fauna. Unless the exclusion zones are close together or linked they may not actually deliver any real environmental outcomes.”

Tree retention clumps and wildlife habitat clumps are required to cover 10 to 13% of the harvestable area. So at least 87% of the forest is clearfelled. What happens to the fauna in those areas. Clearly, they will not be able to crowd into the clumps. The most likely result is that they will die.

The public consultation period ends on 29 June. Comments and submissions can be made via the EPA web site at https://engage.environment.nsw.gov.au/forests.

Keith Scott

The New South Wales government has called for public submissions relating to Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) in the state. There are two processes, the 10 and 15-year reviews of RFA performance and the extension of the three RFAs when their 20-year terms expire between 2019 and 2021.

Regional Forest Agreements, instituted between 1997 and 2001, are agreements between states and the Commonwealth intended to provide certainty to the timber industry as well as agreed social and environmental outcomes. The states involved are NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The original agreement between the Commonwealth and the states was that there would be 20-year rolling extensions.

One of the many contentious aspects of RFAs is that forestry operations carried out under an RFA are exempt from the provisions of the Federal government’s principal environmental legislation, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

A major purpose of RFAs was to provide certainty to industry by defining areas available for logging and meeting conservation objectives by, nominally, establishing a Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative (CAR) reserve system. The notion was that having met conservation demands with the CAR reserve system and provided guaranteed wood supply to industry, everyone would be happy. That, of course, did not happen and should never have been expected to happen.

Underpinning logging was an agreed system of Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management (ESFM). In reality, ESFM was little more than a description of a system — a plan on paper — and has done nothing to prevent serious decline in a range of forest-dependent species such as the koala, greater glider, yellow-bellied glider, Leadbeater’s possum. Of particular concern is the loss of tree hollows on which many species depend.

In essence, the concept of RFAs was politically motivated, ignorant, scientifically untenable and naively expected to end the long history of forest protests. It was simply not rational to assume that over 20 years no new information would come to light requiring new reserves to be created to protect wildlife. And it was not intelligent to assume that forestry agencies’ estimates of wood supply would be correct. History has shown that they are rarely, if ever, correct.

There is also substantial evidence that native forest logging results in significant greenhouse gas emissions and that stopping harvesting in native forests could greatly assist Australia meet its emissions reduction target.

The reality is that wood volumes contracted to NSW sawmills can not be supplied. In 2014, the NSW government spent $8.55 million buying back the allocation of high-quality sawlogs to Boral in the North Coast region. Announcing the buy-back, the then Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, said “Our North Coast forests are certified sustainable but projections show that without this buyback we would have needed to dramatically reduce the volume of timber supplied to industry after 2023 to ensure the forests continue to be healthy and productive.” The buy-back involves 50,000 cubic metres annually for nine years.

Ms Hodgkinson said “This buy-back from the biggest player in our native forest timber industry, Boral, secures the long-term viability of the industry as a whole by bringing the supply of timber from the region’s forests back to a sustainable level.”

It is interesting to note that the South East Queensland Forests Agreement, which transferred 450,000 hectares of state forest to national park and was intended to end native forest logging in the area by 2024, was achieved by buying out Boral which operated the largest hardwood sawmill in the area. (The LNP withdrew the government from the SEQFA during its term.)

As the wood supply from state forests becomes more and more difficult, there have been calls from industry and politicians to not only release national parks for logging but to allow logging within national parks. Industry representatives in NSW have claimed that logging in national parks will be good for vulnerable species. At the national level, former Senator Richard Colbeck is leading the campaign for “nil tenure” whereby all public land is managed with the same objectives.

The NSW National Parks Association is leading the campaign against native forest logging in that state. Their web site provides guidelines for making a submission to the Environmental Protection Agency which is conducting the reviews of the RFAs. The URL is https://npansw.org/publications/reports-and-submissions.

Make a submission
If the RFAs are renewed, all of the problems will continue for another 20 years. Wildlife populations will continue to decline, timber supply will decline and there will be increasing pressure to convert national parks to wood production.

Submissions on RFA renewals close on 12 March.
Details for making submissions are on the NPA web site.

Keith Scott

The simple fact that the native forest industry is fundamentally unsustainable has confronted governments around the nation. Victoria is faced with, on the one hand, the possible extinction of its faunal emblem Leadbeater’s Possum, and on the other, closing down the native forest industry with potential job losses.

The issue came to a head early this year when Australian Sustainable Hardwoods threatened to close its mill at Heyfield in Gippsland, Australia’s largest hardwood mill, if it did not get 130,000 cubic metres of logs annually for 20 years. Such an allocation was, unsurprisingly, impossible. The government is still trying to find a solution.

The lack of resource has been blamed on buffer zones that were set up to try to save Leadbeater’s possum. Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, proposed opening up protection zones for logging and said he would ask Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg to review the status of the possum which is listed as critically endangered. Mr Joyce said “While I understand the conservation of the Leadbeater’s possum is important, forestry is not a principle threat to the population.” The Australian National University’s Professor David Lindenmayer criticised Mr Joyce’s call, saying there were fewer Leadbeater’s possums left than giant pandas, and downgrading the classification of the species would be “absolute insanity”.

While this issue continues to be debated, a proposal for a Great Forest National Park in the Central Highlands north-east of Melbourne is gaining momentum.

Great Forest National Park
The proposal for a Great Forest National Park involves transferring 353,213 ha of State Forest to national park which combined with existing parks would produce a total reserve area of 536,755 ha. The proposal has attracted support from internationally acclaimed environmentalists, David Attenborough and Jane Goodall.

The proposed reserve would, of course, mean a reduction in timber production. Proponents of the reserve argue that it would produce a major boost for regional economies.

Professor David Lindenmayer, Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU, is a leading proponent of the Great Forest National Park and has articulated the case for the reserve. An abbreviated extract is provide below.

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The Central Highlands of Victoria are home to the world’s tallest flowering plants, the Mountain Ash, and one of Australia’s most endangered mammals, the Leadbeater’s Possum. Both are threatened by ongoing clearfell logging and bushfires.

To ensure their survival, I would argue we need to create a new national park, not only to protect possums and forests, but carbon stocks, water supplies, and lower the risk of bushfires. Here’s the evidence.

Extinction and collapse
The Central Highlands region of Victoria is located around towns such as Healesville, Kinglake, Toolangi, Warburton, Marysville and Woods Point. The region includes the vast majority of remaining (and declining) Leadbeater’s Possums, Mountain Ash, the most carbon dense forests in the world; and supplies most of the drinking water for the city of Melbourne.

But the Mountain Ash forests are threatened by recurrent and widespread industrial clearfell logging and major bushfires (including the Black Saturday fires of 2009).

The result is that we now have 1,886 hectares of old growth forest, spread across 147 different patches. This is estimated to be 1.5-3%of the historical area of old growth forest.

The population of large old hollow-bearing trees has collapsed. These are a critical habitat for the animals that use them, including Leadbeater’s Possum. There is a high risk that the possums will become exinct in the next 20-40 years.

And as forests regrow from logging, they are at increased risk of re-burning at high severity.

Leadbeater’s Possum and Mountain Ash forests have persisted for tens of millions of years, surviving major wildfire events. But in just the last few decades the possum is at risk of extinction, and the forests are at risk of ecological collapse.

The threat of clear felling
The one factor that has demonstrably changed this ecosystem in the past century and created these risks has been intensive and widespread industrial clear felling. Clear felling has a number of significant detrimental effects in Mountain Ash forests.

Clear felling kills animals outright. Logged areas are unsuitable for animals that depend on hollow-bearing trees for over 150 years.

A bigger reserve
To preserve Leadbeater’s Possum, and in fact the entire Mountain Ash forest ecosystem, we need a bigger national park in the Central Highlands. There are already reserves and national parks in the area, but these need to be expanded and connected to deal with the threats facing Leadbeater’s Possum and Mountain Ash forests.

The new national park is important as it removes the key process – industrial clear felling – that is threatening both the Leadbeater’s Possum and the Mountain Ash forest

Why do we need to expand our reserves in the area?

First, the current reserve system is too small to support a viable population of Leadbeater’s Possums, particularly if there are more fires in the next 50-100 years.

Second, a large ecological reserve provides a greater chance for natural fire regimes and growth of large old trees to be restored.

Third, as Mountain Ash forests store vast amounts of carbon, a new national park will be critical to maintaining carbon stocks. The park would therefore be critical to any policy to reduce carbon emissions. Our studies clearly indicate that clear felling significantly depletes carbon storage in Mountain Ash forests whereas allowing stands to grow through to mature or old growth significantly increases carbon storage (even in the event of a major wildfire).

Fourth, water yields from Mountain Ash catchments are maximised when forests are dominated by old growth stands.

Location, location
The new park needs to connect key areas of habitat for Leadbeater’s Possum, and also connect existing reserves. Connectivity like this promotes the dispersal of the possums through the forests, including those recovering after wildfire.

The national park must encompass areas of existing old growth forest and also areas where environmental modelling indicates old growth will develop in the future.

The park must also be big enough to be larger than major disturbance events such as wildfires. This will ensure there is sufficient habitat to support viable populations of Leadbeater’s Possums.

At the same time as creating the park, pulp and timber yield from the Mountain Ash forests must be reduced. Mountain Ash forests have already been over-cut, and to maintain a sustained yield from the forests at the same time as setting aside the Great Forest National Park will even further increase over-cutting. This is because it will concentrate industrial clearfelling on a reduced area of available forest.

Economic benefits
A new Great Forest National Park would be a major economic boost for Victoria. It would be particularly helpful for regional economies like those around Marysville still rebuilding after the 2009 wildfires.

Victorian governments have never seriously advertised the fact that, within 1.5 hours from the MCG, you can find the world’s tallest flowering plants and some of the most stunningly beautiful environments on the Australian continent.

Keith Scott