Tighter regulations and agreements are required to ensure the survival of nationally threatened species and a healthy ecosystem, writes Dalian Pugh.
DESPITE THE extinction and climate crises, native forest logging has political privilege as illustrated by Justice Perry’s ruling on 10 January 2024 that no new assessment was required before the North East NSW Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) was extended indefinitely by a variation in 2018.
The North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) had sought a finding that the Commonwealth and NSW Government’s extension of the North East NSW RFA in 2018 did not satisfy legal requirements and could not be relied upon to exempt logging across almost four million hectares of forests from the threatened species requirements of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act).
This is because the RFA was based on a 1997 assessment and the governments' extension had occurred without them undertaking a new assessment of threatened species and old growth, and without an assessment of climate heating.
Justice Perry considered that the law only required new assessments for new RFAs and that it is legal to extend the scope and length of an existing RFA. In this case, the RFA was extended for a further 20 years and "evergreened", meaning that it can be extended every five years forever.
Justice Perry concluded:
'The question of whether or not to enter into or vary an intergovernmental agreement of this nature is essentially a political one, the merits of which are matters for the government parties, and not the Courts, to determine.'
Given that NEFA’s attempt to achieve needed change through the courts has failed, the Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, and her NSW counterpart Penny Sharpe, need to step up and end this sham RFA.
The RFA was developed after a comprehensive regional assessment undertaken over the period 1995 to 1997, in which the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) participated on the promise that there would be a new assessment within 20 years.
The process was pursuant to the 1992 National Forest Policy, intended to identify a "comprehensive, adequate and representative" (CAR) forest reserve system and rules for "ecologically sustainable forest management" (ESFM).
In the end, the outcome was politicised, the loggers were promised minimum timber volumes and Premier Bob Carr put Mark Greenhill (now mayor of the Blue Mountains), who was then a Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union official, into his office to oversee the political decision on what should be protected and what the logging rules would be.
Not unsurprisingly, NEFA did not agree that the outcome satisfied the requirements for either a CAR reserve system or ESFM.
A lot happened over the following 20 years; prescriptions for threatened species were weakened and removed, threatened species became more threatened, logging became increasingly mechanised, logging intensity was increased to access more timber, timber volumes declined due to over-cutting, employment reduced due to restructuring and mechanisation, and climate heating became a runaway success.
After the 20 years was up, an 'Independent Review' of NSW's Regional Forest Agreements in 2018 considered a more thorough review was required to properly and objectively assess the science and evidence from the many (sometimes conflicting) studies, recommending:
'The Parties conduct a contemporary review of the native forest timber industry considering the effect of climate change, the overall conservation status of the forest, the socio-economic position of relevant rural communities and support for the industry.'
Unperturbed, Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison decided that they would not do a new assessment and, without any assessment of climate change, extended the existing RFA indefinitely as a variation.
This decision was strongly objected to in 2018 by then-opposition environment spokesperson, Penny Sharpe, who said the “science underpinning the RFAs is out of date and incomplete”, committing that “Labor will not sign off on a rollover of the RFAs until there is a proper, independent, scientific assessment of their outcomes, and the assumptions of the original RFAs are revisited”.
Out of more than 5,400 public submissions on the proposed new NSW RFAs, only 23 supported them.
Since then half of north-east NSW’s forests burnt in the 2019/20 wildfires, resulting in significant impacts on many populations of threatened species, including the nationally endangered koala, Southern Greater Glider, Spotted-tailed Quoll, Hastings River Mouse, and Rufous Scrub Bird. All of which have habitat now being logged, or proposed for logging.
Concerns have also been raised at the Federal level by the 2020 Samuel’s review of RFAs, which found in relation to matters of national environmental significance (MNES) (including threatened species):
... that the environmental considerations under the RFA Act are weaker than those imposed elsewhere for MNES and do not align with the assessment of significant impacts on MNES required by the EPBC Act.
...
There is also great concern that the controls on logging within forests have not adequately adapted to pressures on the ecosystem such as climate change or bushfire impacts… The Review considers that Commonwealth oversight of environmental protections under RFAs is insufficient and immediate reform is needed.
Climate heating and logging are increasingly stressing forests, making them more vulnerable to drought and heatwaves, as exemplified by the devastation of the 2019/20 wildfires, and at risk of ecosystem collapse.
We need to urgently begin rehabilitating forests to increase their resilience and ability to withstand climate chaos. This is not just for the survival of our unique species, but also for our quality of life, as we need forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere, cool the earth, generate rainfall, and provide reliable stream flows.
In 2020/2021 native hardwood logs (from both public and private lands) comprised just six per cent of NSW’s log production. In 2022-23, the Forestry Corporation lost $15 million logging native forests, despite being paid $31 million to deliver community services and receiving Government equity injections. There are various claims of 566-590 direct jobs generated by logging the one million hectares of native forests on State Forests in northeast NSW.
Public forests are worth far more for carbon storage and tourism than they are for logging, so why do we log them? It is time to remove the political protection for this dinosaur industry. It’s time for ministers Plibersek and Sharpe to step in to protect threatened species and step up to end this sham RFA.
Dalian Pugh is the co-founder and president of the North East Forest Alliance.
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