The
O’Farrell Coalition
Government
corporatized state-owned
Forests NSW on 1 January
2013 and renamed the organisation Forestry
Corporation of NSW.
The company is headquartered at
West Pennant Hills in metropolitan Sydney, New South Wales.
It
is one of the largest forestry companies in Australia today and
produces around 14 per cent of the timber harvested in Australia.
This
corporation manages est. 2 million hectares of state forests, along
with around 200,000 hectares of softwood plantations and 35,000
hectares of eucalypt plantations.
Est.
30,00 hectares of state forest are harvested for timber each year by
more than 100 contractors who undertake harvesting and haulage and
other aspects of its operations on behalf
of the Forestry Corporation.
The
combined take from state forests and plantations is around 50 million
tonnes of timber annually.
Nominally
all individuals and groups in the state are considered potential stakeholders in
the Forestry Corporation of NSW. Except that all regional residents get for being stakeholders is an ongoing loss of both wildlife habitat and forest trees in the districts in which the Corporation operates.
The
Corporation’s native timber harvesting is focussed on north east
NSW and it is looking to forestry plans on private land and logging
in currently protected forest areas to supply it with native timber
into the future.
In
October 2020 the Environment Protection Authority (EPA)
commenced five prosecutions against Forestry Corporation of NSW in
the Land and Environment Court for
allegedly felling trees in protected areas in northern NSW, including
trees in core koala habitat in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest.
This is not the first time the Forestry Corporation has been caught allegedly breaching the terms of its licence and I suspect it will not be the last.
Commercial logging is not the only issue of concern. So is land clearing generally.
According
to the NSW
Valuer-General’s Office, on 1 July 2019 there were
2,603,793 individual property lots in New South Wales.
Of
these 238,842 are private properties zoned rural
and classified as either non-urban,
primary production,
rural landscape or
rural small holdings.
The
NSW North Coast contains 56,095 or 23.4% of all these private rural property lots, the North-West contains 14,143 lots,
Northern Tablelands 11,864, Murray 10,353, Hunter
15,950, Hunter Coast 6,357, Central West 20,688,
Central Tablelands 18,972, Riverina 17,924, South
Coast 18,974, South East Regional 20,164, Sydney Central 3, Sydney Coast South 11, and Sydney
Coast North 1,208.
Currently owners of those private rural properties which are situated near bushland in 10/50 Entitlement Clearing Areas have an almost unfettered right
to clear trees within 10 metres of their house and farm sheds, as well as underlying
vegetation under trees for a further 50 metres, as a bushfire
protection measure.
However, in addition to this proven effective bushfire measure, now the Berejiklian Government is also progressing another amendment introduced to the Legislative Assembly on 10 November 2020 - this time an amendment to the Rural Fires Act 1979 titled Bushfires Legislation Amendment Bill 2020.
This amendment if passed will allow the owners of all 238,842 of these private rural properties in New South Wales to clear trees and vegetation within 25 metres of a property’s boundary with adjoining land and, lays down processes so that these landowners can ensure their immediate neighbours do the same - thus making the land clearance in effect 50 metres wide.
A specific measure that does not appear to be included in recommendations found in the Final Report of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry dated 31 July 2020.
A potential 50 metre open space on all four sides of up to 56,095 private rural properties on the NSW North Coast from the Mid-Coast to the Queensland border represents a significant tree cover and habitat loss.
Of
course after 232 years of land clearing this degree of native vegetation clearing is no longer required on a great many
properties because barely a tree stand survives in some districts.
This
is an aerial view of a section of the Moree Plains showing its typical landscape in 2020:
According to the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, by mid 2018 bulldozing of bushland nearly tripled around Moree and Collarenebri after safeguards which existed in Native Vegetation Act 2003 were repealed by the NSW Baird Coalition Government, with 5,246 ha of Koala habitat destroyed at a rate of 14 ha
per day in 2017-18.
Moree has a history of opposition to any checks on the ability to clear land. In 2014 this sadly led to the killing of an Office of Environment and Heritage compliance officer and the later conviction of a prominent landowner for murder with a sentence of 35 years imprisonment.
The
Guardian,
27
March 2020:
Land-clearing
approvals in New South Wales have increased nearly 13-fold since the
Coalition government relaxed laws in 2016, according to a secret
report to the state cabinet by its Natural Resources Commission.
The
report, marked “Cabinet in Confidence”, was commissioned by the
government in January 2019 under an agreement between the Liberals
and Nationals to review land clearing if applications exceeded
20,000ha a year. The commission handed it to the government in July,
but released it only after the Independent MP Justin Field threatened
legal action…..
The commission found more than 37,000ha were approved to be cleared last financial year, almost 13 times greater than the annual average rate across the decade to 2016-17. Approvals jumped more than 70% after the rules covering land clearing changed at the start of 2019, rising from 25,247ha in the final quarter of 2018 to 43,553ha in the first three months of the new year.
The commission found the extent of the land clearing and what is described as “thinning for pasture expansion” was putting the state’s biodiversity at risk. The government had promised to protect between two and four times as much land as it cleared, but had failed to do that in the majority of the state.
It also highlighted the lack of an effective monitoring and compliance regime to ensure laws were enforced. In a six-month stretch between August 2017 and January 2018 there was 7,100ha of unexplained land clearing. It was 60% of the clearing in that time....
The Nature Conservation Council of NSW said the report showed the National party was incompetent. Its chief executive, Chris Gambian, said it was a damning assessment of how the government had handled what was supposed to be a signature reform.
“This report is alarming because land clearing is a key threat pushing most of the state’s threatened species towards extinction,” he said.
“Koalas and other vulnerable species are being smashed from every direction, by bushfires, drought, logging and land clearing. Land clearing is one of the few threats we can tackle directly, but the National party is preventing this government from doing what is needed.”
Gambian called on the government to release regulatory maps that were still not available two years after promised.....
