Environment Bill Leaves Native Forests Unprotected

The Murray Watt Environment Protection Reform Bill, before federal Parliament this week, has only four sitting days remaining before the Christmas break. The legislation has drawn criticism from environmental groups including the Bob Brown Foundation, which argues the proposed reforms fail to provide secure protection for Australia’s critically endangered wildlife.

The Government is reported to still be hopeful of passing the legislation in the Senate before the last Parliamentary sitting days of 2025, with submissions on the bill closing on 5 December 2025.

Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 24 November 2025

FORESTS ON NATIONAL AGENDA AS GOVERNMENT WANTS TO LOCK IN MORE LOGGING

Murray Watt’s lifeline to loggers won’t save native forests, says Bob Brown Foundation, as forest protests continue in Lutruwita / Tasmania.

“As the ALP try to rush through substandard environment law changes this week, the native forests of Australia will not be saved unless Albanese’s government provides secure protection to Australia’s precious forests,” said Jenny Weber, Bob Brown Foundation Campaigns Director.

“Species like the endangered Greater Gliders that I saw in NSW logging coupes last night and the critically endangered Swift Parrots breeding in Tasmania’s forests need logging to cease immediately. Forests are our climate heroes and biodiversity lifeline – they must stop being flattened every day,” said Weber.

Forest destruction has been halted today in Wakaywirinu, Tasmania’s Central Highlands, to defend and preserve this sub-alpine forest country. This area is suffering the fastest clearing of native forest in Lutruwita / Tasmania.

The slow-growing forests of this high-altitude area are being rapidly flattened and turned into severely degraded regrowth forests, destined for future destruction.

Anthony Houston is blocking access to the forests. With forest defenders occupying the logging road to a forest labelled BD052A by Forestry Tasmania.

“I grew up on a farm at Ouse, so I know this country. When I was a kid, it was wild, but in my lifetime, the forest has been decimated by an industry that is losing money. Native forest logging is in its death throes and even the industry knows the future is in plantations. These beautiful forests are the lifeblood of the planet. It’s our home – why would we destroy our own home,” said Houston.

Forest destruction has been halted in Wakaywirinu, Tasmania’s Central Highlands with forest defenders occupying the logging road to a forest labelled BD052A by Forestry Tasmania.

Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 23 November 2025

MEDIA RELEASE – BROWN REBUFFS WATT’S FAULTY LOGGING OFFER

Senator Hanson-Young has it right in saying that ‘at first blush’ the so-called concession of having logging of native forests not stopped for three years, and even then to come under the same poor level of environmental control as other extractive industries, ‘falls short’, Bob Brown said in Hobart today.

“Logging and incinerating native forests and woodlands causes massive greenhouse gas pollution and is Australia’s single biggest cause of the loss of habitat for rare and endangered species.”

Watt is saying, in this double-barrel extinction and climate crisis, ‘I am the minister for protecting nature who will let the worst destroyers roll for another three years and, even then, they’ll only have to abide by the weakened laws in my bill.’

“The fact that Watt ticked this arrangement off with the logging industry, but not major forest-defending environment groups, before putting it to the Greens and Australian public, shows how mean and faulty his process is,” Brown said.

Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 12 November 2025

MURRAY WATT’S EPBC BILL WILL SINK SWIFT PARROTS

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CRITICALLY ENDANGERED SWIFT PARROTS NESTING IN THREATENED FORESTS

Bob Brown Foundation has recorded critically endangered Swift Parrots across their Tasmanian breeding territory, in multiple forests on the logging schedule, including two nesting pairs of the critically endangered parrots in a forest behind Dover.

“Murray Watt’s EPBC bills have no provision to end the destruction of native forests and woodlands, although loss of habitat poses the greatest direct threat of extinction to Australia’s flora and fauna. The blanket exemption for the logging of native forests will remain in an inexplicable move by the Minister for Environment to protect his logger mates, not critically endangered species,” said Jenny Weber, Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaigns Director.

“If passed by the Senate, the EPBC ‘reforms’ will delegate more approvals to state governments and will replicate the environmental catastrophe that has seen the flattening of native forests, pushing Swift Parrots to the brink of extinction under the Regional Forest Agreements. Australia’s forests and their wildlife need an Environment Minister who will give them secure protection and prevent their destruction,” said Weber.

“When successive governments hold the chainsaws and sentence wildlife to extinction, it is up to the citizens to take decisive action. Our Citizen Science program has been documenting and reporting swift parrots inside logging coupes for the last 5 years. Yet, logging continues in these forests where we found swift parrots. We welcome The Wilderness Society’s Supreme Court case announced today to defend Swift Parrots in two logging coupes where our Foundation documented their presence and even nests in previous years. Again last week, our Swift Parrot program detected them in these same forests, supporting the importance of this court case,” said Weber.

“The rare photographs show a breeding Swift Parrot pair at their nesting hollow in the last two weeks in a forest on the current logging schedule. During the Swift Parrot breeding season of 2023-24, parrots successfully bred in the same forest. We observed, and reported to authorities, nests in two locations, a fledgling and a chick in a tree hollow in January 2024. Yet it is still a logging coupe on the government’s logging list (coupe HP029E0), and again, parrots are nesting there. This forest is high-density foraging and nesting habitat for Swift Parrots, making it an excellent breeding habitat. The Forest Practices Authority recommends not to log such habitat,” said Weber.

“It is not due to a lack of information about the impacts of logging that it continues under the watchful eye of the state and commonwealth governments. There are reams of scientific evidence that logging is driving the Swift Parrot to extinction. Logging must end in Tasmania’s native forests – they are the only nurseries in the world for this species,” said Weber.

Images courtesy Bob Brown Foundation.

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