The State Government in Victoria has released a new Parliamentary Library paper examining the State’s native timber industry, the debate about its future, the varied and at times competing interests, policies, philosophies and approaches that influence a sector with multiple stakeholders. Source: Timberbiz
In May this year the Victorian Government announced a ban on timber harvesting in native forests to take effect from the start of 2024, six years earlier than had originally been planned.
The ban will bring to an end a long-standing practice in Victoria and accelerate the transition to a plantation-only timber industry in the state. It has been welcomed by conservationists, but criticised by other stakeholders.
On the eve of this significant change the paper – Victoria’s timber industry in a time of transition written by Ellie Florence and Angus Tonkin – outlines Victoria’s legislative and regulatory framework and provides an overview of the intersecting stakeholders, debates, policies, legislation and economic factors that make up the Victorian forestry sector, as well as the future challenges and directions facing the industry.
It includes a brief history of Victorian forestry from Indigenous land management through colonisation to the environmental conservation movement and contemporary forestry priorities and practices.
The paper says that the accelerated timeline and changes to departments and ministries through the election cycle had left certain parts of the legislative structure around forestry unclear.
“VicForests has been deregistered, with its operations to be absorbed into other areas of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, though it is yet to be determined what this reallocation of responsibilities will look like with regard to a number of factors including the legislative, zoning, and regulatory frameworks, the redistribution of responsibilities within Government and its various agencies, stakeholder representation on bodies such as the Victorian Forestry Industry Council, management approaches in land previously part of AO, and how the re-routing of forestry to plantation-based supply will affect industry participants in both the short and long term,” the paper says.
Considerable challenges remain for the industry and the paper explores these, including the question of how to manage forests for their many values, and not just for their resource values. This is explored in the context of industry transition, traditional owner involvement, biodiversity loss, climate change, bushfire risk and a range of other issues.
The paper can be downloaded here.
