The North East Forest
Alliance has called the process used by the Commonwealth and State Governments
to adopt new Regional Forest Agreements as a superficial sham simply intended
to lock-up public native forests for private sawmillers at significant environment
cost.
North East Forest
Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh says there has been no attempt to assess or
review environmental, industry or social data, instead they are relying on
incomplete and out of date assessments undertaken 20 years ago.
’The Governments chose
to ignore the recommendation of their own reviewer for a contemporary review
that included an assessment of the effects of climate change,’ he said.
‘By rejecting the
recommendation of their own review and proceeding on incomplete and out of date
assessments the National Party have once again proven that their intent is to
lock up public resources for private companies irrespective of the
environmental costs and community interests.
Mr Pugh says NEFA are
disgusted that the Governments have not publicly released their new RFAs, so it
is not possible to know what changes they have made. ‘They are keeping us in
the dark,’ he said. ‘The only document they have released is their resource
commitments which show they are increasing the cut of high quality logs in
north-east NSW by at least 10,000 cubic metres to 230,000m3 per annum, at the
same time they are fraudulently claiming a shortfall of 8,600m3 per annum to
justify opening up protected old growth and rainforest for logging.’
‘Due to their increased
logging intensity they are intending to more than double the cut of small and
low-quality logs from 320,000 tonnes per annum to 660,000 tonnes per annum.
‘The increased logging
intensity and significant reductions in protections for most threatened species
and streams is an environmental crime.
Mr Pugh says that out of
more than 5,400 public submissions on the proposed new NSW RFAs, only 23
supported the RFAs. ‘There is no social license to continue the degradation of
our public native forests.
‘Plantations already
provide 87% of our sawntimber needs, it is time to complete the transition to
plantations and establish more plantations on cleared land, while we actively
rehabilitate our public native forests to help them recover from past abuses
and restore the full suite of benefits they can provide to the community.
BACKGROUND
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North Eastern, Southern & Eden Regional Forest Agreements Image:NSW EPA |
Here are links to NSW members of the state parliament:
List of Members, Legislative Council
If any readers wish to contact members of the Berejiklian Government in order stand up for native forests these links provide addresses, telephone numbers and, in the case of the Legislative Assembly, the names of electorates these politicians represent.
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