Mike Brady, Daryl Hutton, Chris Stafford, Australian Forest Contractors Association general manager Carlie Porteous and Brian Wheelan at the Traralgon meeting
Logging contractors in Central and West Gippsland with virtually no work, a large mill in Orbost running out of log supply, while a new poll shows Victorians overwhelmingly support home grown timber for housing. Source: Timberbiz
Welcome to the paradox and crisis facing Victoria’s forest industry; the native forest sector, largely based in Gippsland, is at a virtual standstill due to legal action by environmentalists and decisions by the Supreme Court, as demand for native hardwood because of its beauty, strength and durability remains high.
At the same time, a lack of investment in softwood pine plantations and supply chain issues have led to high prices and a shortage of housing timber – and the state election is only two months away.
Logging contractors from West and Central Gippsland met in Traralgon recently to discuss the hardwood issue.
“There is absolutely no urgency from the government,” said Chris Stafford, a logging contractor from Neerim South in West Gippsland. Similar meetings were held in Bairnsdale and Marysville.
The dozen or so at the Traralgon meeting have millions of dollars of expensive equipment lying unused, and workers threatened with pay cuts or unemployment,
This comes as the latest independent audit shows VicForests in 2020-21 was 94% compliant with the code of forest practice; the logging contractors, part of VicForests staff, are largely doing their job properly.
Parkside, Orbost’s second largest employer with 37 staff, has only a few loads of log supply. Like the Mectec mill at nearby Newmerella, it will have to lay off its casual work force and put permanent staff on annual leave. If these mills close, along with the contracting businesses that supply them, the direct timber losses in the Orbost/Marlo area will be 115.
Meanwhile, new polling has found overwhelming public support for the state government to invest in homegrown timber.
The chief executive officer of the Victorian Forest Products Association, Deb Kerr, said a UComms poll in the Keysborough district showed that an average 86% of voters agree that Victoria should grow more trees for timber production.
“More trees in the ground will help secure Victoria’s future timber supply. A lack of vision for forestry by successive state governments, bundled with high demand and a growing population, is now creating a perfect storm,” she said.
Ms Kerr said 90% of Ash forests were injuncted by the Supreme Court’s 21 December decision in relation to protecting the Greater Glider.
“VicForests has won five out of now 12 cases. Before the courts are two jointed litigations about the Greater Glider. The case has been heard, and the judge is yet to hand down her decision,” she said.
The Greater Glider is at the heart of the current situation. The Andrews Government’s November 2019 announcement that it would close the native forest industry by 2030 included its policy on the Greater Glider through an Action Statement.
The Glider is widely distributed along Australia’s east coast, from central Queensland to eastern and central Victoria, including in the Strzelecki and Strathbogie Ranges. A 2018 Arthur Rylah Institute Assessment report estimated a Glider population of 69,000 in the Strathbogies.
The Glider is now declared ‘threatened’ under state law and ‘vulnerable’ under Commonwealth law, its population having declined in recent decades.
DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) in a website comment said the reasons were unclear, but factors included habitat loss and fragmentation, bushfires, planned burns, threats from predators, climate change impacts and drought, and timber harvesting.
The Greater Glider Action Statement No 267 noted that “timber harvesting only occurs in a relatively small proportion of the total area of habitat occupied by Greater Gliders”.
Timber harvesting is only carried out in about 5 per cent of Victoria’s native forest.
The action statement said about 26% of Glider habitat was in formal parks and reserves, with an additional 14% protected in Special Protection Zones in State forest. Of the remaining area, about 43% fell in the General Management Zone or Special Management zone of State forest.
To protect the Glider from timber harvesting, the initial policy stated that if five or more Gliders are found within a spotlight kilometre, 40 per cent of the eucalypts across each harvesting coupe must be preserved, including live, hollow-bearing trees.
This management action, DELWP says, replaced the existing prescription in the Code of Practice for Timber Production until the Code was reviewed and amended accordingly.
The action statement is not yet formally part of the regulatory framework (in law), but the Conservation Regulator will monitor compliance “until Code amendments are made”.
Glider policy was tightened after the 2019-20 bushfires, with stricter requirements particularly in East Gippsland, and in July this year conservation advice was updated as part of the federal State of the Environment Report.
VicForests maintains that its new policy of retention harvesting, in contrast to clear-felling, can retain up to 80 per cent of forest stand, and dovetails with the actions recommended in the Greater Glider Action Statement and subsequent policy updates.
VicForests now puts the action statement requirements in place, prioritising live, hollow-bearing trees, when it finds three Gliders per spotlight kilometre, not the previous five.
“An analysis overlaying all detections (from the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas and VicForests Species Observations layer) made post-harvest in timber harvesting areas in Vic since 1980, found that the species can persist in timber harvesting regrowth areas of very young age,” VicForests says on its website.
VicForests also says that its protective measures after the fires were highlighted in the recent Victorian RFA review as a “good model that could be more widely applied around Australia”.
The review also noted that VicForests’ retention harvesting, and regenerations systems should result in improved protection for threatened species and result in more resilient state forest ecosystems.
In the Supreme Court ruling last December, Justice Richards dismissed the Greater Glider Action Statement, saying it was not a legislative instrument.
Ms Kerr and Narracan MP Gary Blackwood, who is the Opposition spokesman on forestry, maintain that if the Environment Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, gazetted the 40% rule into the Code of Timber Practice, it would gain the legislative power that the court had to recognise.
“For the cost of $100 (the cost of gazetting the management plan for the glider into the timber code) they could stop the third-party litigation and let the native forest industry return to the coupes approved for harvesting in VicForests’ timber release plan,” Mr Blackwood said.
Ms D’Ambrosio’s office has said the protection of Greater Gliders was complex and “any changes require proper assessment”.
Ms Kerr said the fate of injunctions would need to wait on any subsequent appeals that may occur.
“If appeals occur, this could potentially take another one-to-two years. I expect litigation to continue,” she said.
