Vica Bayley
In an arrogant display of provocative forest policy, logging of coupe F042F in the Upper Florentine began just days after the Federal Court decision and continues today. Logging of two contentious coupes in the Weld Valley began this week. One of those, a 90ha clearfell coupe to be cablelogged, is adjacent to Glovers Bluff and the recently constructed Forestry Tasmania tourist lookout.
The Upper Florentine is an area the Prime Minister promised to protect to 2004. He failed to honour that promise, a failure acknowledged by information sheets published on the Howard/Lennon deal and comments by Federal Forestry Minister Senator Eric Abetz. Despite this public promise, the Federal Government is prepared to sit back while logging in that area violates its own threatened species laws. Worse still, the taxpayer is subsidizing it with money from the Community Forest Agreement.
FORESTRY Tasmania’s appeal of the Wielangta Decision in the Federal Court reinforces a call for a suspension of logging in the Upper Florentine and Weld Valleys.
Despite the Wielangta ruling, Forestry Tasmania disagrees with the law and continues to carry out logging of known threatened species habitat. This continues to breach the EPBC act and is therefore illegal.
While Forestry Tasmania appeals the decision, the precautionary principle should apply and logging should cease in all known threatened species habitat. In normal circumstances, there is an expectation on anyone found guilty of carrying out illegal behaviour, to stop that behaviour. The Federal Government should insist on this. Yet Forestry Tasmania flouts the law and continues the destruction of precious habitat.
In an arrogant display of provocative forest policy, logging of coupe F042F in the Upper Florentine began just days after the Federal Court decision and continues today. Logging of two contentious coupes in the Weld Valley began this week. One of those, a 90ha clearfell coupe to be cablelogged, is adjacent to Glovers Bluff and the recently constructed Forestry Tasmania tourist lookout.
The Upper Florentine is an area the Prime Minister promised to protect to 2004. He failed to honour that promise, a failure acknowledged by information sheets published on the Howard/Lennon deal and comments by Federal Forestry Minister Senator Eric Abetz. Despite this public promise, the Federal Government is prepared to sit back while logging in that area violates its own threatened species laws. Worse still, the taxpayer is subsidizing it with money from the Community Forest Agreement.
There is a sad irony in aspects in Forestry Tasmania’s grounds of appeal — that the court made findings not justified by the evidence, misconstrued the evidence and ignored significant evidence.
In his summary judgment, Justice Marshall found that there was ‘manipulation of … expert evidence’ and that this occurred ‘at the urging of an officer or officers of Forestry Tasmania’. Among others, he infers a member of Forestry Tasmania’s executive; Dr Hans Drielsma, is one of those officers.
It is hoped that Forestry Tasmania and its officers act in the manner expected of public representatives during the appeal. It is also hoped that they act on their legal and moral responsibilities, heed public requests and stop logging in areas of high conservation value forest with identified habitat for threatened species.
The responsibility should be on Forestry Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government carry out their operations in a way that abides by the law. If they can’t, they should cease those logging operations. In continuing to destroy forests of recognised threatened species habitat, Forestry Tasmania, the government and the logging industry are snubbing their collective noses at the law and bulldozing on with the status quo of illegal logging.
From the judgement, The maniipulation of evidence: pg_20_judgement_FT_evidence_manipulation.pdf
Vica Bayley The Wilderness Society
And, from The Age: Illegal logging adds fuel to bushfires
