The
historic Forest Agreements were signed in 1999, but has the Integrated Forest
Operations Approval (IFOA) achieved its stated objective of meeting the
principles of Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management (ESFM)? The official evidence shows it has not.
The Auditor General's “2009 Performance Audit” stated “native forest managed by Forests
NSW (FNSW) is being cut faster than it is growing back”, and “current yield from native forests is
not sustainable in the long term”.
Over-logging has seriously negative flow-on effects for biodiversity,
conservation of which is pivotal to meeting ESFM principles.
By 2012, none of the required 5 yearly reviews of the IFOA had been
undertaken. The 2009 Final Report on “Progress
with Implementation of NSW RFAs” found FNSW's performance in delivering
biodiversity outcomes in logged forests, could not be measured. That report
identified an, “absence of any real
comparative data on this issue”, adding this “makes it virtually
impossible to determine whether there is improvement or not”.
Boral's
failure to obtain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation in 2013, shows
the FSC believed logging processes carried out by FNSW harmed high conservation
values, i.e. endangered species and communities.
One
glaring example of FNSW’s duty of care failure, is their continued release of
harvest plans calling for high intensity logging rates, which they know triggers
the devastating Bell Miner Associated Dieback (BMAD), which threatens eucalypt
forests across NSW. (FNSW was represented on the BMAD Scientific Working Group
which nominated the disease as a Key Threatening Process.)
The Final
Report acknowledged that the EPA's compliance monitoring and enforcement had “attracted
considerable and largely adverse comment from submitters”, recommending the
need “to give priority to audit and compliance activity, and that auditing
be closely scrutinised as part of the NSW Review”.
A 2014
inquiry into the EPA's (Environment Protection Authority) performance found the agency had repeatedly failed in
this regard. It has been rewarded by the
Government with a significant boost to its operating budget. However, the EPA
is currently working on an IFOA “remake” which will eliminate many of the
biodiversity protections they were previously supposed to enforce. Threatened
species are the big losers.
-
J Edwards
This post was originally published in the "Voices for the Earth" column in The Daily Examiner on 31 August, 2015
