Media release – Guy Barnett, Minister for Resources, 3 November 2021
Another day, another Greens stunt
Predictable calls by radical environmentalists, such as the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF), to shut down Tasmania’s sustainable native forestry overlook the fact that sustainable forestry management plays an important part in the solution to climate change.
Tasmania’s forestry sector has been globally recognised as being one of the best managed and most environmentally and sustainable forest estates in the world.
In any given year, less than 1 per cent of native forest on Permanent Timber Production Zone land is harvested.
And, each time wood is harvested from our native forests, it is regrown as native forest, ensuring a sustainable forest industry into the future whilst sequestering carbon.
Further, the commitment to maintain an extensive and permanent native forest estate has been a key commitment of Tasmania’s Regional Forest Agreement, with the most recent Australian State of the Forests report showing that Tasmania’s native forest cover has increased over the past two decades.
Our approach is backed in by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who stated:
“Sustainable forest management can prevent deforestation, maintain and enhance carbon sinks and can contribute towards GHG emissions-reduction goals. Sustainable forest management generates socio-economic benefits, and provides fibre, timber and biomass to meet society’s growing needs”*
The Tasmanian Government welcomes the commitment of the Australian Government by signing the leader’s declaration on forests and land use at Glasgow. It is in line with our approach to sustainable forest management in Tasmania and does not mean an end to native forest harvesting.
In fact, the declaration has also been welcomed by the Australian Forest Products Association, the peak national forestry body.
As the Greens and BBF well know, deforestation as they claim does not occur in Tasmania.
Either they know this and are choosing to deliberately misrepresent our sustainable forest industry or they are scarily uninformed.
*Chapter 4, IPCC special report on Climate Change and Land, August 2019
Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader and Forests spokesperson, 3 November 2021
COP26 Forests Agreement Requires Tasmania to Act on Logging
The pressure is increasing for the Tasmanian Government to end the clearfelling and burning of native forests.
At COP26 in Glasgow overnight, leaders of 124 nations – including Australia – signed on to the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
The Declaration acknowledges the profound importance of forest and land carbon sinks in mitigating the worst impacts of global heating. It commits signatory nations to investing in forests and accelerating landscape restoration.
Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, signed on to the Declaration. It’s the first positive symbolic step on climate that he has taken, but it is significant.
Australia is now committed to halting forest loss and investing in restoration.
This means the Gutwein Government needs to act and end the unscientific madness of native forest logging, before 2030.
Dr Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens Safe Climate spokesperson
The Glasgow Declaration brings international focus on the critical importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature. The Declaration, which commits Australia to halt and reverse the loss of all forests, is part of the global collective effort needed to arrest unsustainable global heating.
Our endangered and threatened animals and plants rely on native forests for food and shelter. Every time an old forest is clearfelled and burned in Tasmania, vast quantities of carbon are released into the atmosphere, global heating is accelerated, and irreplaceable habitat is lost.
These forests take more than a century to recover the carbon that’s been lost through logging, burning and woodchipping.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signed a call for “all leaders to join forces in a sustainable land use transition”.
The Tasmanian Government can no longer justify industrial native forest logging and burning, or the broadscale clearing of land. The Gutwein Government needs to overhaul our forestry, environment and planning laws and policies to ensure we can immediately transition to this sustainable land use.
At Glasgow, 124 world leaders have agreed on a pathway to a safer future. We welcome this Declaration, and expect the Premier to provide a statement of his government’s actions in response.
Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 3 October 2021
ENVIRONMENTALISTS WON’T COP MORRISON’S FOREST FRAUD
Bob Brown has called out the PM Morrison’s signature on the COP26 declaration on deforestation calling it a ‘forest fraud.’
In Glasgow yesterday, Scott Morrison signed up to ‘halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030’. Today, forestry mouthpiece Minister Duniam said this did not amount to a ban on native forestry but was the opposite,” Bob Brown said.
“The PM is trying to deceive the public by signing up to a declaration he knows will do nothing to protect Australia’s native forests from industrial logging,” Bob Brown said.
“In fact, the Prime Minister and the logging industry are already spinning the declaration as permitting an increase in logging in Australia because our logging is ‘sustainable’ compared with elsewhere in the world. There is no mention of biodiversity or species extinction. This declaration has tricky and deceptive language that is designed to mislead people,” Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.
“Morrison’s government and the logging barons are gloating that they can use this declaration as cover to continue demolishing native forests as the planet is heating and many rare and endangered species including, the Koala and the critically endangered Swift Parrot and Leadbeater’s Possum are being pushed to extinction by this destruction,” Jenny Weber said.
“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires fast climate action and deep emissions cuts that can only be achieved by tough actions in all sectors. Action is needed to lock in an immediate end to forest loss across Australia. The world’s forests serve as irreplaceable carbon sinks and biodiversity refuges, but, when logged and burnt, emit megatonnes of greenhouse gases.,” Jenny Weber said.
“COP 26 is headed for a massive disappointment for the people of the world. We are in an existential crisis, where humans are using almost two planets worth of living resources on a finite Earth. Here in Australia, we will keep taking action for the immediate end to native forest logging and deforestation alongside our fellow citizens who are standing up to halt fossil fuel expansion,” Bob Brown said.
