Four Corners on native forest logging in Victoria

From Victorian National Parks Association-

Did you catch ABC’s Four Corners last week?

The investigation took a close look at what’s really happened since native forest logging in Victoria was supposed to end. Despite $1.5 billion of public money to transition away from native forest logging, it’s still smashing landscapes.

And there’s more the program didn’t have time to cover. Loopholes that go even deeper. It’s time our elected reps take action.

Four Corners traced trees from Tasmania being shipped to Victorian mills.

But it’s not just forests in Tasmania being exploited. We’ve seen logging trucks turning up in places they have no business being. Trucks full to the brim of native eucalypts leaving Yarra Ranges National Park, Silvan water catchment and the newly legislated Wombat-Lerderderg National Park.

The logging transition has failed to deliver for nature. The loopholes left behind are the size of logging trucks.

Here’s what Four Corners didn’t have time to unpack.

Not one of the 1.8 million hectares of forest where native forest logging “ended” has been given permanent legal protection, even though the government promised it would lead ‘the largest expansion to our public forest reserve system in the state’s history’.

Old laws remain, and in April the Allan Government quietly released a new framework that allows commercial native forest logging under a different name, with fewer protections and no public consultation.

It’s already causing damage inside our national parks. Greater Gliders and ancient hollow-bearing trees have been destroyed in Yarra Ranges National Park, and forests in the Wombat-Lerderderg National Park have been flattened.

The specific loopholes keeping this going that need to be closed:

• The new State Forest By-Products Framework allows trees from public land to be sold to sawmills and firewood companies, with no independent oversight, no enforceable standards, and no public consultation.
• The Forests Act 1958 still allows permits to be granted for removing trees from native forest on from public land.
• State planning schemes still allow logging on private land.
• The Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1996, which underpinned long-term supply deals to access forests in the central highlands has never been repealed.
• The Great Outdoors Taskforce recommended all of these loopholes be closed. That recommendation has been ignored.

We’ve been tracking these loopholes closely and pushing for change. And we can’t do it without you. Please support VNPA. 

Victoria’s forests and the Greater Gliders, Leadbeater’s Possums and Powerful Owls that call them home deserve a real end to native forest logging. Not a rebrand.