Native timber harvesting in Victoria has stopped following last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling on a drawn-out case involving Environment East Gippsland versus VicForests. Sources: Timberbiz, Weekly Times
VicForests ordered the stand-down, after Justice Melinda Richards ruled the state-owned enterprise’s pre-harvest surveys were inadequate and it was not doing enough to protect two possum species – greater and yellow-bellied gliders.
VicForests CEO Monique Dawson said the order is permanent, and it was comprehensive.
“We’ve got some limited operations in some areas where there aren’t any (gliders) so we’ll keep doing what we can do. But certainly, the impact of the order is profound,” she said.
The ruling forces VicForests to resurvey hundreds of coupes, which it confirmed would take months to complete and would leave harvest and haulage contractors without work and exacerbate a sawlog shortage that has already led to the closure of one mill.
Justice Richards also ruled that VicForests had failed to meet its obligations to retain enough vegetation on coupes to protect gliders, under the precautionary principle of the Code of Practice for Timber Production.
Justice Richards left it to the parties in the case to negotiate what final orders the court should impose today, but made it clear her preference was to retain three hectares around a possum sighting and retain 60% of the trees in the rest of the coupe.
Ms Dawson said yesterday she was unaware of how many coupes would be involved.
“I’m still getting the detail through because supervising foresters are still calling crews and telling them the ones that have to shut down,” she said.
She said that VicForests was only undertaking limited operations at present anyway because of the court’s previous orders.
“But the orders are very broad because they’re for all areas of the state where there are greater gliders or yellow-bellied gliders, and they are abundant throughout virtually all of the areas that we harvest.”
MWM Logging operator Andy Westaway said most coupes would no longer be viable if only 40% of trees could be cut.
“Today we’re clearing away and parking machines,” Mr Westaway said. “The two crews are down with no work.”
East Gippsland harvest and haulage contractor Rob Brunt said the ruling marked “the end of the industry”.
“It will make most coupes impossible to harvest,” Mr Brunt said.
As for resurveying Mr Brunt said “by the time VicForests gets them done I won’t have a business left. It’s just not workable.”
Injunctions imposed by Justice Richards on the harvesting last December had already locked harvesters out of many coupes, leading to lost work, idle machinery and a sawlog shortage that has crippled many timber communities as mills slowed or stopped work.
Central Highlands harvest and haulage contractor Brett Robin said, “we may as well pack up and go home”.
“It’s been 12 months since I cut trees,” Mr Robin said. “You feel like just curling up in a ball and hiding.”
East Gippsland’s timber industry is already on the brink of collapse, with 115 workers facing the axe and warnings Orbost will become a “ghost town”.
In her ruling Justice Richards said the spotlight surveys VicForests “relies on to detect gliders are limited to a one kilometre transect through a coupe.
“This leaves most of the coupe unsurveyed and provides incomplete information about whether gliders are present and where their home range is located.
“Without knowing where the gliders are within a coupe, it is not possible for VicForests to take management actions to address risks to them.”
But VicForests has highlighted to the court that more intensive surveying at night is next to impossible, even taking Justice Richards and her associate out to an unharvested coupe to show them the difficulty of the terrain.
Gary Blackwood, who is standing down as the Member for Narracan in Gippsland at the 26 November State election described the situation as a disgraceful indictment on the State Government
He said the government had been lobbied for months to adjust the Code of Forest Practice so that it reflected exactly what has been in place to protect the Greater Glider for many years.
“VicForests have been working to a prescription that gives greater oversight to Greater Glider habitat for some years,” he said.
“A simple and transparent inclusion in the Code of this prescription and reference to the ‘Precautionary Principle’ would have closed the loophole that feral activists use to support third party litigation.
“The Andrews Government has had plenty of time to fix this issue and save hundreds of timber workers and their families from massive hardship.
“And now right on Christmas they are faced with the worst situation possible. I cannot think of any Government in our history that has destroyed livelihoods for political expediency as the Andrews Government has.”
