Media release – The Wilderness Society, 11 November 2022

Wilderness Society takes urgent legal action to protect Tasmania’s forests and swift parrots

The Wilderness Society has lodged an urgent application for pre-action discovery with the Tasmanian Supreme Court seeking the “forest practices plans” from Forestry Tasmania (trading as Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT)) for the Snow Hill logging coupes at the Eastern Tiers. The matter is now set down to be heard on Wednesday 16 November.

“We believe that STT is unlawfully logging forests, including swift parrot habitat, in the Eastern Tiers. It has refused to make its logging plans public. And it has been refusing to publish these plans for the last two years. The community has a right to know the fate of these local forests and habitat of forest species being driven to extinction,” said Tom Allen, Campaigns Manager for the Wilderness Society Tasmania.

“Tasmania’s forests are globally significant. The swift parrot, the fastest parrot in the world and one of only three migratory parrot species, is unequivocally being driven towards extinction by the Tasmanian Government’s continued logging of its habitat.

“It’s a basic community right that the community knows who the decision-maker is on key public policy questions—which the logging of globally high conservation value forests undeniably is— and what decisions are being made about them.”