In September 2021, the Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, made a shock announcement that all native forest logging would cease in 2024, at the end of the current 10-year Forest Management Plan. The decision was made without consultation with the timber industry, public, or government agencies.
The reasons for the decision were to save the forests and preserve the carbon stocks. And yet, despite the fact strip mining for bauxite completely removes the forest and its carbon stocks, as well as the soil that the forest grows in, mining for bauxite will continue.
Bauxite mining started in Western Australia near the historic sawmilling town of Jarrahdale in 1963. Agreements were signed by the government and continue to be honoured by subsequent governments. The size and rate of mining were initially estimated to be around 30 acres or 12 hectares per year.
In 1961 when the Alumina Refinery Agreement Act 1961 was first debated in Parliament, the few politicians that questioned the wisdom of allowing bauxite mining in state forest were assured that the area to be mined would not exceed 12 hectares per year. The Minister for Industrial Development, Charles Court (later to be Premier from 1974-82), had this to say in Parliament:
“It is anticipated that the total clearing for the first year would be in the order of 30 acres; and for subsequent years, and so long as the company was on an output of 550,000 tons per annum, 25 acres. I stress these acreages because I think it has been conveyed in the public mind that huge areas will be involved all the time, and we will have ugly scars all over the place from one end of the State to the other”.
However, during the first decade of operations, a total of 490 hectares was cleared for bauxite mining. The Forests Department expressed concern about the mining expansion in the jarrah forests in its 1970 Annual Report:
“The current level of mining activity in forests areas is of major concern. The over-riding powers of the Mining Act in respect of State Forests and timber reserves which date from the early days of gold mining coupled with the marked increase of mining activity, has given rise to the greatest threat the forest estate has experienced”.
The government ignored these concerns as clearing for bauxite reached 2,040 hectares in the 1970s. It represented a five-fold annual increase in production after Alcoa’s second refinery was constructed at Pinjarra in 1972. In a short span of only 15 years, the area of state forest cleared annually for bauxite mining had grown from 12 to 200 hectares per year.
Up until the mid-1970s, the two refineries were serviced by three mine sites near Pinjarra and Jarrahdale. This soon changed after new legislation in 1976 and 1977 allowed the expansion of bauxite mining with new refineries at Wagerup and Worsley. The Wagerup refinery on its own doubled bauxite production and forest clearing rates.
This continued expansion of the bauxite industry in Western Australia led to a report by the Western Australian Division of the Institute of Foresters of Australia (IFA) in 1980. The IFA recommended an upper limit on the forest areas to be cleared and mined and called for the exclusion of healthy jarrah forests from mining operations.
Again, these concerns were ignored. In the decade to 2019, 10,260 hectares were cleared for bauxite mining, giving a total of 31,170 hectares, a far cry from what was envisaged initially to ensure there were no ugly scars from one end of the jarrah forests to the other.
The 10-year Forest Management Plan is a comprehensive policy document that governs the forest management activities within the public forests in the south-west. It includes recommendations for conservation reserves, the amount of timber that can be harvested each year, and the conditions under which it is done. It is finalised after extensive public consultation.
Yet despite the early concerns of the Forests Department and the IFA, leases under the State Agreement Act 1961 allow strip mining of bauxite over 47 per cent of the public forests in the south-west of the state outside the auspices of the Forest Management Plan, and thus operate with little public scrutiny or input. Moreover, the comprehensive Forest Management Plan has no control or influence over the mining activities that are allowed to continue under the government’s new policy.
The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) approves mining expansion proposals. In May 1995, the EPA assessed the expansion of production at the Wagerup Refinery to 3.3 million tonnes per year and associated bauxite mining by Alcoa. The EPA made it clear “the purpose of this assessment is to consider the environmental acceptability of the proposed expansion, rather than reconsider whether the existing approved operation is environmentally acceptable”. They claimed the expansion did not increase the mining area, “rather it increases the rate of mining within approved areas”.
In a further EPA report in November 2020, to assess the increase production at the Wagerup Refinery to 4.7 million tonnes per year and associated increases in bauxite mining, there was no mention at all of the forest areas to be cleared, nor the impacts on the forest. The EPA did not consider water “as a key environmental factor for the revised proposal”. Alcoa certainly did, as they had to thin the rehabilitated regrowth in the catchment twice to maintain sufficient water supply for their own operations.
The EPA has a very narrow scope when assessing the environmental impacts of bauxite mining. They simply evaluate whether the vegetation type affected is already represented in reserves. They do not regard expansion as an increase in the mining area since the whole mining lease is already approved. They don’t consider cumulative impacts, nor do they consider water values. In contrast, in the last Forest Management Plan there was a significant focus and debate about soil compaction associated with machinery used in timber operations.
Whereas native forest harvesting operations are under constant scrutiny and continually wound back due to excessive environmental controls, bauxite mining can expand significantly with little environmental scrutiny. As a result, the best and healthiest jarrah forests are targeted without any recompense.
Premier Mark McGowan ignores these contradictions and offers a benign environmental justification to end logging in native forests. But at the same time, his government oversees ongoing clearing and rehabilitation operations in the prime jarrah forests north of Collie with less environmental scrutiny.
Robert Onfray has worked as a professional forester in various parts of eastern Australia over 33 years. He was fortunate to spend 14 years in north-west Tasmania managing freehold land, now owned by Forico.
