Gary Blackwood
I raise a matter for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change.
The action I seek is that she immediately stop supporting the environmental activist group WOTCH, also known as Wildlife of the Central Highlands.
Currently the minister supports WOTCH representatives sitting on the stakeholder reference group of the Office of the Conservation Regulator.
The minister also directs that WOTCH be given specialised survey equipment such as infra-red cameras from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning for the purposes of the group’s survey activities.
The results of the survey activities are used to withdraw large areas of forest from timber production and are acted on by DELWP without any verification.
It is interesting to note that their work is only conducted in areas that are being logged or are earmarked for logging in the timber release plan signed off by the Minister for Agriculture, not in the 94 per cent of native forest area that is set aside from timber harvesting in parks and reserves.
On their Facebook page WOTCH state that with each tree that falls, with each hectare of habitat lost, we come closer to losing these species forever.
This is typical of the emotive language used to depict a lie. With the controls in place and the pre-coupe survey work undertaken by VicForests, not one species of animal has become extinct because of timber harvesting, ever.
As an example, the Leadbeater’s possum is now found in regrowth from logging that is only 40 years of age. The areas that are harvested do not disappear. They are regrown, and this has always been the method used. Habitat trees are set aside from harvesting, ensuring animal habitat is protected in close proximity to the forward food source that will come with the regenerating forest.
WOTCH is an environmental activist group using the information gained with the support of DELWP to undermine and eventually end the sustainable harvesting of our native forests. They have strong links to Friends of the Earth, a very radical environmental activist group originating in America in the early 1980s.
This group completely disregards our rule of law. They published a book on how to monkey wrench logging equipment, as they called it, but in reality it advocates the sabotage of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which happened on many occasions through the 1980s and 1990s.
WOTCH has proven to have the same disregard for the law, conducting their surveys in breach of the curfew and the 5-kilometre and 25-kilometre travel limits of the COVID restrictions, also illegally entering harvesting coupes and breaching the safe work zone of an active coupe on many occasions.
How can the minister for environment justify giving this feral activist group legitimacy, accept their survey results and use them to remove areas from industry without even verifying their survey data that in most cases has been illegally obtained?
I call on the minister to stop providing WOTCH with taxpayer-funded equipment and remove them from the Office of the Conservation Regulator stakeholder group as they are completely conflicted with their intent to shut down our native forest timber industry.
This is an unedited extract from the Parliament of Victoria’s Hansard, 11 November 2020.
