The Federal Government has lost a bid to delist more than 70,000 hectares of forest from Tasmania’s World Heritage Area (WHA). Sources: ABC News, The Australian, AAP
The United Nations’ World Heritage Committee, meeting in Doha, rejected the Government’s application to reverse protection for 74,000 hectares.
The area was part of 170,000 hectares added to the WHA last year under Tasmania’s forest peace deal enacted by the former state and federal Labor governments.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the Coalition had delivered on its election
promise to attempt the wind-back and accepted it had failed.
“The Committee has not approved the Australian Government’s request — Australia accepts and will consider the decision of the World Heritage Committee,” Mr Hunt said in a joint statement with parliamentary secretary Richard Colbeck.
The Coalition had argued the 74,000 hectares were degraded by previous logging and should be unlocked for the timber industry. But opponents to the move said only 8.6% of the forests had been disturbed, with the rest being pristine old-growth rainforest.
Speaking from Doha, delegates from Portugal said: “accepting this delisting would set an unacceptable precedent”.
Wilderness Society campaign manager Vica Bayley said the decision showed the world was behind preserving the forest.
“Over here in Doha, environmentalists and Aboriginal Tasmanians are together welcoming this decision because it does protect the integrity of the Tasmanian World Heritage Area and it would protect that in perpetuity,” he said.
Environment Tasmania director Dr Phil Pullinger said it was a great decision.
“They have upheld the integrity of the World Heritage convention against a full frontal attack from the Abbott Government,” he said.
The UNESCO world heritage decision for Tasmania’s forests is the latest salvo in a decades-long environmental war.
“Importantly for us in Tassie some remarkable areas of old growth forest that were trying to be opened up for logging remain protected as World Heritage wilderness areas… which is a fantastic outcome.”
Speaking from Doha, Dr Pullinger said Australia had caused itself a lot of damage by the stands it was taking at the meeting.
“They tried to use some pretty strong tactics around the Great Barrier Reef and the World Heritage Committee basically put the Government on notice … that they will be looking at endangered listing for the reef if the Government does not clean up its act.
“On Tasmania’s forests they were pretty clear that it was a poor proposal, that it could send a very bad precedent for the World Heritage Convention, and they unambiguously rejected it.”
The leader of Australia’s greens group delegation, Alec Marr, wants Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck, who argued strongly for the delisting, to resign.
Mr Marr said the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Agriculture must take responsibility for the Government’s failed bid.
“The decision by the Committee to deny World Heritage delisting of these pristine forests has shown reason in the face of ideological spin,” he said.
“(Senator Colbeck) has done massive damage to Australia’s credibility in the World Heritage Convention and should resign his position immediately.”
Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said it was a great win for forests, for wildlife and for Tasmania.
Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Secretary Ruth Langford described the decision is a win for Tasmanian Aborigines.
“This county not only holds magnificent forest, which provides medicine and good spirits for us, it is also the resting place for ancestors,” she said.
A spokesman for the Tasmanian Government said it was disappointed with the outcome but would accept the umpire’s decision.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott told a timber industry function that he wanted more forest available.
“We don’t support, as a Government and as a Coalition, further lockouts of our forests. We just don’t support it,” he said.
“We have quite enough national parks, we have quite enough locked-up forests already. In fact, in an important respect, we have too much locked-up forest.”
But one of Tasmania’s leading timber industry groups, Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, wrote to the World Heritage Committee asking it to uphold the current boundaries.
Senator Colbeck had said much of it had been logged and some “old growth” was only 60 years old.
ABC Fact Check examined the Prime Minister’s claim that the 74,000 hectares proposed for excision from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine. It found his claim did not check out, with most of the area undisturbed.
