Two aggressive loggers get off with a rap over the knuckles for violently assaulting two community members

 

It was two arrests and two court judgments long delayed - with little in the way of deterrence at the end of proceedings.

News of the Area, 25 June 2023:

Two men appeared in Coffs Harbour Local Court on June 14 in relation to an incident in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest in June 2020.

Michael Luigi Vitali from South Grafton is charged with common assault against local ecologist Mark Graham.

Grafton man Rodney James Hearfield is charged with common assault and assault occasioning bodily harm against Andre Johnston.

Both men pleaded ‘not guilty’ and the matter will be heard next in Coffs Harbour on August 16......

Echo, 16 January 2024:

The Coffs Harbour Local Court has found two forestry workers guilty of assaulting two members of the community on a public road in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest on 25 June 2020.

NSW Upper House Greens MP Sue Higginson reported the guilty finding, which was handed down by the court yesterday, in a press release.

Ms Higginson said the assaults had been recorded on a mobile camera device by a Forestry Corporation Officer.

The two forestry workers were, at the time, employed by logging company Greensill Bros that was contracted by the NSW Forestry Corporation, a state owned corporation.

The forestry workers were not charged immediately following the assault, and one of the victims was instead targeted and charged by the Coffs Harbour Police.

The officer who handled the matter attempted to withhold the video footage of the assaults from the victims and the public, according to Ms Higginson. He is no longer a police officer.

‘Today’s judgement is well overdue and is the end of a harrowing experience for the two victims, Mark Graham and Andre Johnston,’ Ms Higginson said.

‘Mark and Andre were on a public road, in a public forest, when the forestry workers approached, threatened and then assaulted them all while being filmed by an employee of the NSW Forestry Corporation…’

‘The initial investigation into these assaults resulted in the charging of one of the victims, Mark Graham, who is a forest ecologist.

‘The NSW Police, after discussions with the Forestry Corporation charged Mr Graham with approaching forestry operations, those charges were wrongly pressed and were later withdrawn.

‘The fact that Mr Graham was charged for a crime when he was a victim of what the Magistrate described as a violent assault on a public road, in a public forest, and it was captured on video, can only be described as a wilful miscarriage of justice.

The Magistrate noted that the evidence showed the police officer who handled the situation had been helpful to the guilty men and took a serious dislike to the victims of the assaults.

‘The video evidence is confronting and unambiguous.’ Ms Higginson said.

‘Two members of the community, who are acting in a friendly and non-threatening manner, are approached by two agitated and hostile forestry workers who then proceed to assault them, demand their personal property and shout threatening abuse at them.

‘It is gross and brutal and shows the level of impunity that forestry workers are afforded from their actions when the local police then charge the victims of the assault instead of the perpetrators.’

‘It is a good day for justice, as slow and bumpy as this road has been for Mark and Andre. There must be a strong response from the Government.’

Blue Mountains Gazette, 16 January 2024:

The Forestry Corporation is under pressure to blacklist a logging contractor after its workers attacked two environmentalists in a NSW forest.

It's been three-and-a-half years since Mark Graham and Andre Johnston were assaulted on a public road during a day trip to the Wild Cattle Creek State Forest, where logging was under way.

On Monday, the pair got their day in court with a Coffs Harbour magistrate finding two employees of Greensill Bros had committed common assault.

The environmentalists are now demanding Greensill Bros be banned from any further logging work for the NSW government-owned Forestry Corporation.

They also plan to pursue a corruption complaint against the Forestry Corporation, saying one of its direct employees who was overseeing the logging operation filmed the assault but failed to intervene.....

"Immediately following the assault in 2020 neither of the forestry workers were charged and one of the victims was instead targeted and charged by the Coffs Harbour police."

Ms Higginson said the charges were laid after discussions between the police and Forestry Corporation.

Mr Graham has told AAP he was dismissed by police when he went to report the assault in June 2020 and was instead to go and "get a job".

About six months later he was charged with being within 100 metres of logging machinery.

Ms Higginson represented Mr Graham in that matter and has accused police of trying to withhold video evidence of the assaults from both victims, and from the public.

The charge against Mr Graham, of being too close to logging machinery, was eventually dropped in May 2022.....

No convictions were recorded with Michael Luigi Vitali and Rodney James Hearfield both put on 15-month good behaviour bonds.

The Forestry Corporation and Greensill Bros have declined to comment.

AAP has also sought comment from police.

NSW Government's Forestry Corporation in the news, November 2023

 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 2023, p.3:

Forestry activists allege the NSW government-owned Forestry Corporation has breached regulations more than 1200 times in recent logging operations in Tallaganda State Forest, one of the last strongholds of the endangered greater glider.

AAP General News Wire, 14 November 2023:

The Forestry Corporation of NSW has been slapped with a new stop work order, amid concerns about efforts to protect endangered greater gliders.

Logging has been shut down in a second NSW forest amid claims the Forestry Corporation failed to properly look for den trees an endangered glider needs to survive.

The Environment Protection Authority has ordered the state-owned corporation to immediately halt harvesting work in parts of the Flat Rock State Forest near Ulladulla.

The watchdog has accused the corporation of failing to conduct detailed, thorough searches for den trees used by endangered southern greater gliders, as well as vulnerable yellow-bellied gliders.

It's the second time the Forestry Corporation has been accused of incompetently conducting habitat searches in recent months.

Harvesting has also been shut down in the Tallaganda State Forest, southeast of Canberra, after the EPA found multiple den trees in an area where the Forestry Corporation said there was only one.

The corporation later admitted it looked for den trees during the day when nocturnal greater gliders would have been asleep.

EPA officers went to Flat Rock this week after receiving a complaint from conservationists who went to the area to do a den tree search.

Members of South East Forest Rescue said no den trees were recorded by the Forestry Corporation but they spotted a greater glider leaving what appeared to be a hollow-bearing den tree on Sunday night.

When the EPA officers arrived on Monday, they also identified what appeared to be a greater glider den tree within 30 metres of logging.

“The EPA alleges that FCNSW has not conducted detailed and thorough searches necessary to identify all Greater Glider and Yellow-Bellied Glider den trees within the Flat Rock State Forest compartment," the watchdog said on Tuesday.

The EPA also said the Forestry Corporation had identified 137 glider sap feed trees, making it likely a family of yellow-bellied gliders was active in the area.

"Yet no den trees were identified," it said.

“Den trees and their surrounding habitat are critical for the gliders’ feeding and movement and removal of habitat removes shelter and food, making the gliders vulnerable to harm."

AAP has sought comment from the Forestry Corporation.

South East Forest Rescue staged a protest Flat Rock on Monday, after discovering the den tree.

"Again, conservationists have shown the absurdity of the Forestry Corporation looking for nocturnal species during the day," spokesman Scott Daines says.

Kita Ashman is a threatened species ecologist with WWF Australia and says there are alarming similarities between Flat Rock and Tallaganda, where conservationists also identified unlogged den trees.

"In both cases it’s been left to citizen scientists to record greater glider den trees. A deeply disturbing pattern of behaviour is emerging that cannot be allowed to continue."

Greens MP Sue Higginson says it's time for the NSW government to step in.

“It is clear that Forestry Corporation are either wilfully disregarding their legal obligations to operate consistently with their approvals or they are too incompetent to adequately conduct operations in a lawful way,'' she said.

1 Earth Media, 14 November 2023:

A magistrate dismissed a charge of ‘enter a forest w/o permission if prohibited by notice’ after the police failed to provide prima facie evidence to prove their case against Susie Russell. She has called the police action a S.L.A.P.P. – Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Veteran forest defender Susie Russell defended herself in the Forster magistrates court on Tuesday November 14. The judge’s ruling meant that Ms Russell did not have to provide her evidence and she can now put the long drawn out matter to rest.

Ms Russell, a member of the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) had been arrested at the 9 January 2023 protest at Bulga Forest, west of Port Macquarie.

A sad little advertisement with so much unspoken environmental loss attached

 

Logging & sawmilling contractors established 2021
Dundurrabin, Trenayr, Armidale NSW
Clarence Valley Independent
4 October 2023

In the space of three days state-owned Forestry NSW has apparently thumbed its nose at the Land & Environment Court and exposed itself to the international community as an environmental vandal

 

Echo, 1 September 2023:

Aunty Alison and Aunty Lauren on Gumbaynggirr Country at Newry State Forest. Photo supplied

Gumbaynggirr Elder Uncle Micklo and the oldest and most senior Gumbaynggirr Elder living on Gumbaynggirr Country Uncle Bud Marshall brought a successful application to the Land and Environment Court (L&EC) that halted logging at the Newry State Forest on 22 August. They were supported by Gumbaynggirr elders Aunty Alison and Aunty Lauren.

The Judge accepted an undertaking from Forestry to stop all logging in the forest to allow for a site inspection by Gumbaynggirr Elders of sacred and significant sites in the forest that the NSW Forestry had been logging. It had been arranged for the elders to go for the inspection on Friday, 1 September, however, at the last minute they were contacted by NSW Forestry to cancel the site inspection.

The Judge also accepted an undertaking that the stop on logging should extend to the substantial hearing set down for November 14, 16 and 17 in the L&EC.

‘Last night (31 August) Forestry said they were going to call off the site inspection, then they said they wanted to delay for another two weeks. They are due back in court on Tuesday (5 September) and the site inspection is supposed to have taken place,’ said Al Oshlack, from the Indigenous Justice Advocacy Network who helped organise the stop work order. [my yellow highlighting]

‘We had a driver organised and they were going to go out to a number of sites in Newry Forest today (Friday, 1 September). Everyone is really upset because they have been locked out for a long time by Forestry with fences and cameras etc in place.’

Mr Oshlack told The Echo that Forestry appears to use a person named Mr Potter to sign off on their cultural heritage requirements. However, Mr Oshlack said they have been unable to find any Gumbaynggirr people who either know Mr Potter or who have been consulted about sacred and cultural sites in the area by Forestry NSW.

‘We have been asking around to find out if anyone knows who Mr Potter is but we haven’t been able to find anyone who knows this person so far,’ Mr Oshlack said.

‘I spoke to Gumbaynggirr people who have been looking for him and they said “We went to five different Gumbaynggirr families and no one has heard of him.”….

The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 2023:

Professor Helge Bruelheide, professor of botany at the University of Helle in Germany, was stunned by what he has seen exploring the forests in and around the promised Great Koala National Park on the state’s North Coast this week.

“It is spectacular. All the variants of this Gondwana rainforest – cool and warm, temperate rainforest and also the subtropical rainforest – is something that is so unique globally that you wouldn’t find it in this particular combination elsewhere,” said Breulheide, one of the leading scientists in his field, who visited with 30 of his colleagues from around the world as they prepared for a conference on forest preservation to be held in Coffs Harbour next week.

Professor Helge Bruelheide at Border Ranges National Park, north of the proposed Great Koala National Park.

“It’s incredible walking through the forest and seeing a different tree every 5 meters. It is unique in the world. And it is also ancient, what we have seen remnants of a vegetation that is long gone on Earth. Australia is a bit of an ark conserving this fantastic biodiversity.

“I mean, I knew that from the books but touching it and seeing these wonderful trees is something different. We were completely shocked that this was being logged for paper pulp and timber. Particularly this type of forest, we really couldn’t understand that.” [my yellow highlighting]

It was not just the fact of the logging that stunned, but Bruelheide, but the nature of it. Rather than so-called single-stem logging that is common in places like Germany, where single trees are targeted and removed, loggers here take out whole sections, leaving behind a few trees in compartments (a section of forest identified for logging) that have been identified as critical feed or habitat trees for some endangered species.

“I feel like I was time travelling back to the 60s when this was all over the place,” says Breulheide of what he saw inside a patch of the Moonpar State Forest identified on the Forestry Corporation website as Section 345…..

Overview of a Moonpar State Forest Section 345 in May 2023

Moonpar State Forest Section 345
IMAGE: via @CloudsCreek, 7 May 2023

Closer view of segment of Moonpar State Forest Section 345, May 2023, showing felled native trees. SNAPSHOT: Google Earth Pro

Click on images to enlarge

The people of the Northern Rivers, wider New South Wales and the rest of Australia have been warned that the hands of the climate crisis clock are at 30 seconds to midnight, but it's business as usual

 

Australian climate scientist Dr. Joëlle Gergis, ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society and a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, has recently written: 

“The climate disasters unfolding in the northern hemisphere are a sign of what’s in store here, as governments fail to act on the unfolding emergency…..

...the possibility that the Earth might have already breached some kind of global “tipping point”. The term refers to what happens when a system crosses into a different state and stays there for a very long time, sometimes even permanently. We know that once critical thresholds in the Earth system are passed, even small changes can lead to a cascade of significantly larger transformations in other major components of the system. Key indicators of regional tipping points include dieback of major ecological communities….” [my yellow highlighting]

Such observations give pause for thought.

However, the elected Mayor of the third tier governing body for the Clarence Valley Local Government Area (LGA), Cr. Ian Tiley, is apparently comfortable with the idea of personally failing to act when it comes to any proposed phasing out of logging native forests in public hands within this LGA.

At least that is the impression he gives during a photo opportunity with representatives of the state government-dominated NSW logging industry.

Presumably Mayor Tiley is willing to ignore the fact that in 2021 & again in 2022 Australian university researchers warned that logging is not just increasing the risk of severe fires, but also the risk to human lives and safety.

Logging increases the probability of canopy damage by five to 20 per cent and leads to long-term elevated risk of higher severity fires, including canopy fires. Canopy fires are considered the most extreme form of fire behaviour and can be virtually impossible to control. 

It has also been known for the last two decades that intact tree canopies can buffer against rising and increasingly record air/land temperatures due to the thermal insulation of forest canopies which protects biodiversity, allowing native flora and fauna to survive climate change-induced heat extremes better than those living on open land.

Even the NSW Dept. of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources in Land Condition in the Clarence River Catchment: Report 1 - when addressing forestry as a land use - admitted back in 2014 that:

Management of forested areas for bushfire control purposes can threaten adjacent areas, cause habitat loss and encourage erosion. Public debate on this issue has been centred around the in-situ environmental impacts of the process but smoke drift over nearby population centres and the post burning effects on water quality after erosion events also impacts water supply for urban and industrial purposes. [my yellow highlighting]

Commercial logging activity occurs within the Clarence River catchment area and logged state forests do catch fire - as evidenced by Ellis State Forest near Dundurrabin south of Grafton during the 2019-20 bushfire season.

Like many other communities in the Northern Rivers region during the 2019-20 bushfire season, communities in the Clarence Valley can attest to the physical difficulties of living for days and sometimes weeks under smoke palls loaded with gases and particulate matter (including PM2.5) with a potential to affect the health.

According to the Dept. of Health's Bushfire smoke and health: Summary of the current evidence, 6 August 2020:

The Global Burden of Disease Study has shown that outdoor PM2.5 is the most important environmental risk factor in Australia, responsible for 1.6 percent of the total burden of disease in 2017. 

Evidence shows that the likelihood of an individual experiencing health effects as a result of exposure to PM2.5 depends on a number of factors. These include: the concentration of PM2.5 in air, the duration of exposure; the person’s age and whether a person has existing medical conditions (particularly cardiorespiratory disease or asthma).

It is also acknowledged that while this document focusses on the evidence relating to the physical effects that may occur as a result of bushfires smoke, bushfires have much broader mental health and societal impacts.

Clarence Valley Independent, 30 August 2023:

*click on image to enlarge*

“The Mayor also expressed his personal view, describing the timber industry as vital to the Clarence Valley.” 

I wonder if  Mr. Tiley will still be of that opinion over the next high-risk seven to seventeen years......