North East Forest Alliance
(NEFA), 27 August
2018:
The North East Forest Alliance has accused the
NSW Government of fraudulently claiming a shortfall in high quality logs
available from State Forests in north-east NSW to justify their wind-back of
environmental protections and intention to log oldgrowth forest and rainforest.
NEFA today released
a review of timber
yields and modelling for north-east NSW over the past 20 years that
has identified a number of serious problems with yield estimations and
allocations from the region that will be referred to the Auditor General.
"The most
significant issue revealed is that the Government has removed hardwood
plantations from yield calculations to concoct a yield shortfall to justify
removing environmental protections, while apparently intending to reallocate
plantation timber to low value products for export" says report author
Dailan Pugh.
"According to the
Government's data there is absolutely no need to log oldgrowth forests, or to
remove other existing environmental protections to satisfy current timber
commitments.
"The Natural
Resources Commission (NRC) turned an identified surplus of 37,000 cubic metres
per annum of high quality sawlogs from State Forests in north-east NSW over the
next hundred years into a claimed deficit of 8,600 cubic metres per annum by
simply excluding hardwood plantations from their calculations.
"The NRC's claim
that 'it is not possible to meet the Government’s commitments around both
environmental values and wood supply' is based on a lie. Nowhere do they
identify that they excluded plantations. They did this to create the pretence
of a shortfall.
"Plantations
already provide some 30,000 cubic metres(14%) of high quality hardwood log
commitments per annum, with yields projected to increase up
to 75,000 cubic meters of high quality logs per annum into the
future.
"NSW Taxpayers have
spent $27 million just since 2000 establishing hardwood plantations explicitly
to provide high quality logs to take the pressure off native forests.
"It is outrageous
that the Government has excluded plantations to concoct a shortfall in timber
from State Forests in order to justify increasing logging intensity, reducing
retention of habitat trees, removing protections for numerous threatened
species, halving buffers on headwater streams, as well as now opening up
oldgrowth forest and rainforest protected in the Comprehensive Adequate and
Representative (CAR) reserve system for logging.
"The Government
recently issued an Expression of Interest for 416,851 tonnes per annum of low
quality logs from north-east NSW, of which 219,000 tonnes (53%) is apparently
to be obtained by downgrading all timber from the 35,000 ha of north-east NSW's
hardwood plantations to low quality logs and committing them in new Wood Supply
Agreements aimed at the export market.
"Three NSW
Environment Ministers (Parker, Stokes and Speakman), along with the Environment
Protection Authority, repeatedly promised that the new logging rules
(Integrated Forestry Operations Approval) would result in no net change to wood
supply, no erosion of environmental values, and no reductions in the CAR
reserve system.
"Instead of
honouring their promises, in a blatant ploy the Government has changed the wood
supply, by surreptitiously excluding plantations, to justify erosion of
environmental values and reductions in the reserve system.
"NEFA calls upon
the NSW Government to honour their promises by reinstating the intended role of
plantations in providing high quality sawlogs to take the pressure off native
forests, and to use the resultant timber surplus to reinstate the environmental
protections they are intending to remove", Mr. Pugh said.
Port
News, 28
August 2018:
I noticed in the report
by the NSW Government DPI’s principal research scientist, Dr Brad Law, which
was published in the Port News on August 1that he claims recent
audio recordings of male koalas in the hinterland of our state forests revealed
evidence of up to 10 times the previously estimated occupancy.
Well obviously if this
was the first time audio study of male koalas in the breeding season had been
carried surely finding any koalas at all would be an increase in findings. The
Australia Koala Foundation showed that one male koala 'Arnie' a dominant male
occupied a home range of 43 hectares in area so no doubt the study took
precautions to not record the same koala in other of the 171 sites.
Each site however did
not always record even one or two scats. The evidence proves only 65% of the
171 sites tested held one koala and the scats do not prove in any way a home
colony had even once existed at these sites.
Dr Law rejoices that in
his study that heavily logged, lightly logged and old growth forest areas
showed similar results which seemed to suggest that logging of our NSW State
Forests has no effect on koala numbers.
Really?
In a study by the
recognised koala expert, Dr Steve Phillips, commissioned by our own PMHC he
found that most of the suitably sized koala food trees have already been logged
out.
So WTF do they eat?
This no harm heavily
logged forest claim by Dr Law will get a real test soon when the NSW Government
introduces intensive logging in “Regrowth B” area. A map obtained under GIPA by
the North Coast Environment Centre indicates 142,818 ha. of our north coast
state forests between Taree and Grafton will be clear-felled.
Any small trees left
will be hauled away to the soon be established Biomass Plants at Taree, Kempsey
and Grafton and now it seems a new “renewable energy” diesel manufacturing
plant at Heron’s Creek. “Renewable” meaning over the next 100 years.
Any regrowth in the
intensively logged forests will likely be sprayed and Blackbutt monocultures
planted.
Oh, and so no damage is
done to the forest populations of koalas and protected animals and plants small
clumps of forest will be left.
How a male koala will
roam to the next paradise island of the living dead to breed without being
attacked by wild dogs or run over by logging trucks is not discussed in the
literature.
Even Dr Law did not
bother to defend his government’s offset scheme which will according to
evidence presented at the PMHC Koala Roundtable result in local extinction of
koalas in the Port Macquarie local government area…..
