There is now bipartisan support in Tasmania for limited logging of trees within parts of the state’s World Heritage-listed wilderness. Source: ABC News
Last month, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee urged the Australian and Tasmanian governments to ban commercial logging within the zone. Both governments have defended limited access to specialty species trees by craft timber workers, and now the State Opposition has backed that too.
Speaking at a craft timber workshop near Hobart, Opposition Leader Bryan Green said he wanted a bipartisan approach to the issue.
“I’ve written to [Resources Minister] Paul Harriss today to request a briefing and to suggest that we take a bipartisan position,” he said.
Mr Green said he was throwing his support behind limited specialty species harvesting within regional reserves and conservation areas only.
“[We support] sensible management in the area that was once a buffer to the World Heritage Area that now is part of the World Heritage Area.”
Environmentalists are outraged at Labor’s position, which they argue contradicts the spirit of the peace deal when Labor was last in power.
They also argued any specialty species harvesting is inconsistent with World Heritage status.
Peg Putt from lobby group Markets for Change said products sourced from such timbers would be unacceptable to the market.
“Logging the forests of the World Heritage Area for specialty species is really the equivalent of killing elephants for ivory – unacceptable, unwarranted, and unnecessary,” she said in a statement.
“We believe that many woodworkers do not want to work with wood logged from the outstanding World Heritage forests of Tasmania, and neither will consumers be prepared to buy anything made from this source.”
Environmentalist Jenny Webber said Labor’s support for logging contradicted the UNESCO decision and said it would result in damaging the values of the “globally significant” forests in the Upper Florentine, Styx and Weld Valleys.
She said nobody had been more responsible than Mr Green for “wasteful logging and burning of specialty timbers” in recent years.
The World Heritage Area covers almost one fifth of the state. It is mostly national park, although parts classified as conservation area, regional reserve, or Future Potential Production Forest land, could at least hypothetically be made available for limited timber harvesting.
The Tasmanian Government has ruled out mining or “large-scale” logging within the area but has not yet indicated whether it will amend a draft management plan to reflect those restrictions.
Specialty timber groups believe they were left with an extremely restricted resource after the Tasmanian Forest Agreement was finalised in 2013 and new tracts of forests were declared off-limits.
The agreement was repealed by the current Tasmanian Government in 2014.
