Many people were left wondering as to why the Nationals embarked on a move that would create division within the NSW coalition and potentially see the Nationals being branded as uncaring, when it comes to koala protection.
Activist driven policy (a pig’s ear) dressed up as leading edge environmental policy (a silk purse) will do that to politicians, whose constituents have been jammed by lock up and neglect environmental policy. From the day the Koala State Environment Planning Policy (Koala SEPP) was announced, it appeared the fix was in.
If the Koala SEPP is a major leap forward in koala protection, why was the policy, with heavy socio-economic impacts, signed sometime on Friday 20th December 2019, two business days before Christmas, in the middle of the largest ever wildfire emergency in NSW history? Why was the SEPP signing announced via a Department of Planning press release, instead of the Environment or Planning Minister signing the release?
The bureaucrats who have developed this policy have consistently claimed the new SEPP APPLIES to a smaller area than the former Koala SEPP 44. They claim SEPP 44 applied to almost 54 million hectares, with no comment as to how many hectares were affected.
They neglect to say that the new SEPP EFFECTS a much larger area due to the increase in koala feed trees from 10 to 123 species. The need for breeding koalas has been softened to a single koala record in the past 18 years, so the area of core koala habitat is now much greater than under SEPP 44.
The koala has been used as an icon, to justify the addition of an initial area of 6,368,645 hectares of private property shaded pink on the Koala Development Application Map, to the NSW parks and reserves system. An unquantified portion of the 24,874,389 hectares of the Site Investigation Area for Koala Plans of Management Map shaded blue, will also be added to this informal reserve system over coming years. By comparison, there is about 7.2 million hectares currently in the public land parks and reserves system in NSW.
The cost of the failure of government land management agencies to protect koalas in public conservation reserves from wildfires, is being shifted to private property owners, without compensation. This would seem to be perfectly fair, for the policy bureaucrats and the Minister for Planning and Minister for Environment safely domiciled in the leafy suburbs of Sydney and bearing none of the social and economic costs of the Koala SEPP.
Not so the representatives of the electorates most affected by the Koala SEPP, who six months after the Koala SEPP came into force, better understand how the SEPP will exacerbate the biggest threat to koalas living in rural landscapes. That risk is megafires, which negatively impact koalas, all other biodiversity, farms, rural communities and fringe urban areas.
The Nationals are also coming to grips with the economic cost to their constituents, the greatly expanded area of core koala habitat will have on farming activities, including those farmers who generate income from timber production. The Koala SEPP also potentially increases the risk of future wildfires.
The 51 page Koala Habitat Protection Guideline specifies in part:
On contiguous blocks under one ownership and greater than one hectare, any “core koala habitat should not form part of the Asset Protection Zone (APZ). The APZ should occur beyond any koala habitat.”
The Planning Minister Rob Stokes MP confirmed by letter that “Activities that do not normally require development consent, such as clearing for fences, clearing native vegetation regrowth, and clearing in accordance with the 10/50 Vegetation Code of Practice are not subject to the Koala SEPP. However, where land is identified as core koala habitat in an approved Koala Plan of Management (KPoM), clearing restrictions will apply. To be more specific, Private Native Forest Codes of Practice prohibit forestry operations on land identified as core koala habitat.
The 6.3 million hectares of Koala DA mapped land and an unknown percentage of the 24.8 million hectares of KPoM land, designated as core koala habitat, will be choked in green tape when it comes to fuel reduction burning approvals.
The banning of thinning, harvesting and management of understorey, in millions of hectares of core koala habitat, will mirror the public land lock up and neglect management regime. This regime of three-dimensional fuel loaded forests, underpinned the infernos that took a huge toll on koalas and all other biodiversity on NSW public land in the 2019-20 fire season.
If the Departments of Planning and Environment bureaucrat’s objective was to protect koalas, under the Koala SEPP and Guideline, they have failed.
Other failings of the SEPP include, no consideration of alternative policy options, including an active and adaptive management approach, negligible consultation with truly affected stakeholders and no socioeconomic study being undertaken to document the other negative impacts of the SEPP.
The sequential rollout of the SEPP and then the Guideline, meant the full impacts of the combined documents could not be fully understood by Ministers, until months after the Koala SEPP was signed. This appears to be part of a process of bureaucratic obfuscation. This is not an approach that policy professionals would endorse.
(Obfuscation – “the bureaucratic art of making something obscure, unclear or unintelligible.”)
Just to rub more salt into the wounds, the Koala DA mapping, that underpins the SEPP & Guideline, contains significant errors. Landowners currently have to pay consultants to undertake surveys and prepare reports to get the errors corrected.
What is the solution? The SEPP and Guideline should be thrown out. To develop a policy that actually conserves koalas and the uncounted species of flora and fauna decimated by the 2019-20 and earlier megafires, the government must engage policy staff that have an understanding of active and adaptive management principles and do not base environmental policy on terra nullius ecological beliefs.
Peter Rutherford is spokesperson for South East Timber Association (SETA) and is a well-respected forestry scientist of 40 years standing.
