Twenty community groups across the Kokonnengar / Leven River catchment in Tasmania’s north-west are calling on Sustainable Timber Tasmania to cease current destructive clearfell practices, arguing that they’re neither sustainable nor primarily about timber.

The groups have identified examples of worst-practice that don’t even meet the minimal standards of STT, and which devastate maturing regenerating forest habitats, increase fire risks, and pollute critical waterways across our catchment.

The groups also call out the claims made by STT, including that, following the bulldozing of forests, the burning of the remnant ‘waste’ and monocultural eucalyptus re-seeding, they are ‘regenerating native forest’.

The community groups hope that the letter, delivered to STT CEO Steve Whiteley, Chair Rob De Fegely, Chair Forest Practices Authority Pam Allan, Chief Forest Practices Officer Anne Chatter, Chair Cradle Coast Authority Sid Sidebottom and Sheree Vertigan, will result in an independent inquiry that will protect and prioritise critical wet forest habitats and our clean catchment waterways.

Saturday, 21st March, 2025

To whom it may concern,

We, the undersigned 20 community groups, representing communities in the Leven/Kokonnengar River catchment, call on Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) to cease any further clearfelling of coupes in the Leven catchment until an independent assessment and review of the impacts of current and future operations is undertaken.

This is imperative given that current and proposed clearfell coupes on the current three year wood production plan for our catchment will have significant and irreversible impacts on the natural, social and economic values of the catchment.

Our communities actively manage, and try to protect and restore, the natural, cultural and long-term economic values throughout the Leven catchment. Many areas identified for clearfelling have not been logged since the 1980’s and have never been clearfelled to the extent of current coupe size. Many are now critically important and high conservation value habitat and aquifers.

Biodiversity impacts from so many areas being clearfelled, with the removal of irreplaceable hollow-bearing trees, is a major contributor to population decline of many listed threatened and endangered species.

Other issues from current clearfell logging practices, both completed and proposed, include adverse impacts on recreational use and local tourism, increased fire risks, amplifying the drying and heating from climate change and increased flooding risks.

Landscape Context Planning System:

The biodiversity prescriptions in proposed or recently clearfelled coupes do not adhere to Landscape Level Biodiversity Prescription objectives prescribed through STT’s Landscape Context Planning System (LCP).

Due to the extensive impact on natural values, clearfell coupe management is inappropriate for the remaining forest communities in our catchment. Past clearfelled areas show that this method of forestry is the main contributor of significant decline of long-term biodiversity and catchment health attributes.

The Long-Term Retention landscape objective of the LCP is not adhered to at a number of sites across the Leven catchment and builds on larger impacts from past clearfelling operations.

Example: The Winterbrook Forest Landscape Unit

The recent clearfell of SM11D and proposed SM11E and SM11C will greatly impact the remaining Winterbrook Forest Landscape Unit.  This Landscape Unit is unique. Its biodiversity composition is not found anywhere else in Tasmania. This composition is vulnerable as a result of the current trajectory of forestry management through clearfell. It is bordered to the South and East by exposed rock escarpment and to the West and North by clearfell and plantation coupes.

There is little remaining mature Eucalypt habitat left outside of the proposed clearfell coupes for this unit, as a result of significant clearfelling since the 1980’s. The lack of remaining mature forest in this landscape unit is coupled with poor recovery rates in clearfelled coupes that are supposed to have projected recovery to mature habitat eg MGR0015 (2015) and CGL0010 (2015) show poor signs of regeneration recovery.

This Landscape Unit holds the largest intact rainforest for the whole of the Leven catchment including several threatened forest communities and species, the extent of which is largely inaccurate or unknown based on current mapping and data observations. Winterbrook Forest Landscape Unit is one of many examples where a coupe proposal is undertaken even with a lack of available data. This is exacerbated by significant inaccuracies in the forest mapping units (TASVEG) for the area.

Other Critical Landscape Factors:

Logged Winterbrook coupe 2024

Water quality and quantity:

The Winterbrook and Tulip Tree Creek subcatchments play a critical role in both water quality and quantity. Clearfelling leads to soil erosion, which can contaminate creeks with sediment, chemicals and nutrients. Forestry operations in the headwaters of the north-west catchments has been implicated in reduced water quality for Giant Freshwater Crayfish (GFC). Juvenile GFCs are vulnerable to siltation.

Increased frequency and intensity of fire:

Clearfelling leads to drier forests. The conversion of wet eucalypt forest with rainforest compositions to drier forest (intended practice of clearfell regeneration), as well as increasing soil dryness, will increase the risk of fire. As an example: clearfell coupes in the North and West sections of the Winterbrook Forest Landscape Unit will increase the likelihood of fire impact on the remaining rainforest area.

Sustainable biodiversity populations (Mature hollow-bearing forests):

The current clearfell practices are non-renewable in terms of mature hollow-bearing tree retention and recovery. Clearfell coupes are targeting the few remaining mature Eucalypt forests in key biodiversity landscapes in the Leven. Mature hollow-bearing forests are already greatly diminished in the Leven and its adjoining catchments (Blythe and Forth/Wilmot). The Leven is experiencing extinction lag for a number of species from past clearfell activities and continued removal of this critical and non-renewable ecological attribute through clearfell will be greatly compounded.

Pests, weeds and pathogens:

Roading and logging operations will move pests, weeds and pathogens into relatively intact areas in our catchment.

Edge effect:

Impact also extends far beyond designated STT native forest coupes via ‘edge effects’ into reserve or protected forests, and into adjacent privately owned lands.

Coupe size and extent:

A number of subcatchments have been targeted with large coupes and multiple clearfelling in short timeframes. There is not enough time for landscape and biodiversity recovery under this current regime.

The Aims of the Sustainable Timber Tasmania Corporation:

The current practices of STT’s clearfelling activities not only threaten our catchment but are incompatible with the stated aims of your corporation.

STT claims to “regenerate” clearfelled forests, but what has occurred in the forests in the Leven are forest ecosystems clearfelled, burned, then seeded with monocultural eucalypts. The resulting growth is neither forest nor plantation and certainly not a “regenerated” forest returning to its original species composition, which therefore alters the forest vegetation mapping units.

The claim that STT regenerates clearfelled forests back to ‘native forests’ is simply not what is happening, is not sustainable, and is a claim that cannot be backed up by what is happening in the Leven catchment.

In closing, we call on you to re-examine the current management plan and associated clearfelling practices being used to meet required quota targets.

We urgently call your attention to just three exemplars of high conservation value native forest being targeted for clearfell in the Leven catchment:

  • Proposed Winterbrook coupe 2025

    The Winterbrook Valley [coupe: SM115D and SM111C],

  • Tulip Tree Creek [coupe LG015E and LG012J],
  • Dial Range [coupes DL011A & C] and Loyetea cluster [LW013 A,B & C, LW005E and LW014A].

Other areas of impact in the Leven include:

  • The Alstergren Rd Cluster: LG015H (shows up as contingency but has a FPP, it also has WTE buffer zones);
  • Six coupes west of Mount Tor: Large cluster with impacts on major creeks running off Tor and into Catley Creek and Leven (This area is similar to the Winterbrook area, 650-750 alt, waterways and is hemmed in by ridges and plantation).
  • LG026A (Leven Road), MT008D, MT008B (impacting Catley Creek/Leven River) MT008B is listed as aggregated retention so it must be greater than 25% old growth), MT010C, MT010F, MT010G (which together impact at least nine major creeks that run from Mt Tor).

Current modes of management are inadequate and do not meet the community’s expectations that public forest management will ensure long-term catchment and community health. We call for an end to the clearfell of these and all high value native forests, until an independent assessment of the impacts of current and future operations is undertaken.

Our groups and community members are willing to work with Sustainable Timbers Tasmania, the Forest Practices Authority, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania, the Cradle Coast Authority and other government and non-government organisations to manage the Leven into a truly sustainable future.

Yours sincerely,

The Leven Community

Collated and Authored by Lyndon O’Neil, Ben Marshall, Brenda Marshall, Helmut Schwabe, Peter Stronach, Iona Flett and Ash Bulgarelli.

Supported by the undersigned 20 groups supporting the Leven Catchment.

Riana Cat Project, Ulverstone Coastcare, Loyetea Landcare, Friends of Reid St Reserve, SOLVE – Save Our Loongana Valley Environment, Friends of Dempsters Creek, Friends of the Leven, Turners Beach Coastcare, Wilmot Willow Busters, Birdlife Tasmania, Friends of East Buttons Beach, Wildcare Friends of Penguin to Cradle Trail, Sulphur Creek / Preservation Bay Coastcare Group, Central North Field Naturalists, Tasmanian Student Landcare Association, Healthy Country Services and Consulting, NorthWest Environment Centre, Protect Our NW Forests and Penguin Coastcare

UPDATE:  As of 10th April, STT have declined to respond.

Ben Marshall is a member of SOLVE – Supporting Our Loongana Valley Environment – solvetasmania.org