BLICKS RIVER GUARDIANS AWARDED THE PRESTIGIOUS TOGA

 MEDIA RELEASE 

6 October 2025

 Blicks River Guardians has just been awarded the prestigious TOGA (Triumph Over Greed) Award from the North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) for their record-length successful forest protection actions (The Clouds Creek Glider Reviver) to protect the "Clouds Creek Greater Glider Sanctuary". 

The Glider Reviver stopped industrial logging at Clouds Creek for 420 working days (January 2024-September 2025) and ensured that these globally significant forests were protected from logging. This was the second biggest block of native forest ever attempted to be logged in this region by the Forestry Corporation of NSW.

 Blicks River Guardians protected these remarkable forests from logging and they were recently placed under a logging moratorium and identified for inclusion in the Great Koala National Park by the Minns Government. We warmly welcome this outcome and look forward to urgent gazettal of the National Park to allow the process of repair to begin and to commence the rebuilding of fauna populations decimated by massive recent logging across the Dorrigo Plateau.

Travelling from the highlands of the Gumbaynggirr Nation on the Dorrigo Plateau to the lowlands of the Bundjalung Nation south of Casino key members of Blicks River Guardians, Meredith Stanton and Mark Graham, were honoured to receive this award. This was particularly the case considering that the previous recipient (in 2022) was a leading conservation visionary, the man who first proposed the Great Koala National Park, Ashley Love.

“The NCEC's TOGA award recognises the efforts of every one of us who held space at the Glider Reviver over the 84-week campaign on beautiful Gumbaynggirr country... and all those cheering us on!,” said Meredith Stanton,

“It is not very often that grass roots community triumphs over corporate greed, yet in this instance, so satisfying to know that local koalas and greater gliders, our river systems and all future generations will be the beneficiaries of our sustained efforts to save Clouds Creek greater glider forests as intact habitat,”

“Unlogged, these catchments forests have a 15–20-year head start towards climate resilience. That's why we need to stop logging all our forests now and begin the restoration process inside the 476,000-hectare national park.”

 Blicks River Guardians extends the deepest gratitude and respect to all our many partners in our ongoing actions to ensure a healthy living future for the Blicks River. The Blicks River is the catchment draining the western parts of the Dorrigo Plateau, a major tributary of the Nymboida River.  This river provides drinking water to about 100 000 coastal residents between Sawtell and Iluka.

Mark Graham said, “Ending logging in the catchments will prevent extinctions, ensure our region and its economy will have the clean and adequate water needed for the survival of all industries including agriculture, fisheries, retail and other services and tourism industries, will provide generations of work needing substantial labour inputs over decades to come, to stabilise our regional climate and capture and store carbon in the landscape. Our forests provide us with the only path to a safe and viable future,”

 “Forests deliver water security, destroying them with industrial logging takes away the water security that we all need. We must now switch immediately from logging and destroying public native forests for a massive loss to taxpayers to the restoration and repair of forests.”

Blicks River Guardians hope all of the Great Koala National Park will be protected from mining too, but particularly the drinking water supply catchments on the Dorrigo Plateau which must be made into National Park or Nature Reserve because lower classes of reserves (such as State Conservation Areas) allow mining and there are growing concerns across the community about poisonous mining proposals under consideration on public lands in this catchment.

     - Blicks River Guardians

WOOD-FIRED POWER STATION REJECTED BY INDEPENDENT PLANNING COMMISSION

 MEDIA RELEASE 

Conservation Groups Welcome Independent Planning Commission’s Rejection of Proposal to Increase Landclearing for Electricity

North East Forest Alliance and North Coast Environment Council welcome the IPC’s rejection of Verdant Earth's proposal to restart the closed coal-fired Redbank power station, using trees obtained from clearing more than 20,000 ha of land a year, to spew 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

On the September 15, the Independent Planning Commission refused the development application from Verdant Earth Technologies Ltd to restart the Redbank Power Station at Warkworth using biomass instead of coal tailings as fuel.

“Burning forests produces higher CO₂ emissions than burning coal, so it is madness to replace coal with wood to generate electricity as it undermines our transition to a low carbon economy”, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“It is particularly galling that in this case the proponents claimed that burning 850,000 tonnes of biomass per annum would result in no CO₂ emissions at all, when in fact the power-plant would release 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ through its smokestacks each year, thereby significantly increasing atmospheric carbon when we urgently need to be transitioning to non-polluting solar and wind power.

“This is compounded by the fact that the biomass was intended to be obtained by clearing native vegetation, which is contrary to the need to restore and increase native vegetation as it is the only means we have of removing carbon from the atmosphere at scale. 

“The Independent Planning Commission rejected the proposal on the grounds that there had been no assessment of the environmental impact of increasing land clearing in western NSW from the current 6,635 ha per annum to over 20,000 ha per annum” Mr. Pugh said.

“It is madness in the midst of our current biodiversity and climate emergencies to contemplate cutting down the homes of a multitude of species and burning them to release more carbon into the atmosphere”, said Susie Russell from the North Coast Environment Council.

“This is the culmination of a six year community campaign against generating electricity by burning wood, and specifically this proposal that had initially proposed to take timber from north coast forests.

“The IPC meeting with stakeholders in Singleton last month received many presentations from both concerned locals, environment groups and biodiversity experts, critical of the proposal.

“They were proposing to clear land 600 kilometres from the power station, woodchip it, store it and then using B doubles, truck it to the Hunter Valley. There was no accounting for the emissions from any of that process which would have been fuel intensive. The whole project just didn’t stack up,” Ms Russell said.

The ALP’s 2024 NSW Labor Platform states:

3.112 NSW Labor recognises that burning timber and cleared vegetation for electricity is not carbon neutral and is neither clean or renewable energy, and therefore forms no part of a credible strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Labor will introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity.

“We call upon the NSW Government to urgently implement their commitment to introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity, to stop any repeat of this madness” Mr. Pugh said.

-  North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) & North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) .

 

 

GOVERNMENT SLEIGHT OF HAND WEAKENS GREATER GLIDER PROTECTIONS

North Coast Environment Council Media Release

2^nd February 2024

The NSW Government is being tricky with its numbers, suggesting they have improved protection for Greater Gliders when they have actually weakened it according to NCEC Vice-President, Susie Russell.

Instead of being honest with the people of NSW and acknowledging that we can’t have all the unique and precious animals our forests still support AND a native forest logging industry. The animals need undisturbed forest and the other rampages across the landscape leaving devastation in its wake. It is one or the other. They are lying when they suggest we can have both.

“Today’s announcement by the NSW Environment Protection Authority, removing the requirement for Forestry Corporation to look for Greater Gliders, and other animals home den trees prior to logging is another nail in the coffin of these already endangered creatures.

“It looks like nature has lost and the Government is opting for telegraph poles, pallets, floorboards and woodchips rather than koalas, owls, quolls and gliders.

“The Government needs to immediately begin to buy back wood contracts to take the pressure off our wildlife,” Ms Russell said, “because animals like endangered Greater Gliders die when their den trees die, and they die when their home range is cleared by logging machinery. That’s one reason they are endangered, and the EPA is meant to protect the environment, not the logging industry.”

 

CLIMATE CHANGE, FORESTS AND RIVER CATCHMENTS

On last week’s International Day of Forests  Dailan Pugh, President of NEFA (the North East Forests Alliance), called on the NSW and Federal Governments to act immediately to better protect our forests because they are so vital to the well-being of humanity as well as to other life forms.

He said, “Forests improve our health, generate rainfall, cool the land, regulate streamflows, sequester and store carbon, reduce flood risk by storing water and slowing flows, reduce landslips by reinforcing soils, and support most of our biodiversity.”

He pointed to the recent warning by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that many forests have been severely affected by climate heating, with many forest ecosystems likely to collapse if heating exceeds 1.5°C for too long.

While reducing climate heating requires urgent and effective action to limit carbon emissions, our forests also have a vital role as they remove existing carbon from the earth’s atmosphere.

Along with many other conservationists Mr Pugh and NEFA have been campaigning for the cessation of public native forests logging in NSW as a way of turning around both the accelerating climate and biodiversity crises we are facing.

Following Mr Pugh’s pleas for urgent forest action, the North Coast Environment Council’s (NCEC) Susie Russell commented on the independent inquiry into the floods. While welcoming it, she stated that its findings, like those of the earlier bushfire inquiry, might not all be acted on.

Furthermore she added, “It shouldn’t need much investigation to reveal that the catastrophic north coast floods resulted from the compounding influences of: decades of logging and clearing in the upper catchment and along the gullies, creeks and rivers; rising greenhouse emissions leading to rising global temperatures, particularly ocean temperatures and thus massive evaporation leading to the ‘rain bomb’ event; and the failure of engineering solutions.”

“Without a widespread well-funded Total Catchment Management plan that stops the ongoing destruction and begins a serious program of catchment repair, this disaster will be repeated all too soon,” Ms Russell predicted.

            - Leonie Blain

Published in the "Voices for the Earth" column in The Clarence Valley Independent , March 30, 2022.

 

PREVENTION BEST OPTION

MEDIA RELEASE

 NORTH COAST ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL

October 10 2020

“North Coast local governments need to be proactive and precautionary in identifying high conservation lands and water supply catchments that should be off-limits to mining,” said North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) President, Jim Morrison. 

“Mining exploration on the Dorrigo Plateau and in the Coffs-Clarence water catchments could have serious impacts on regional water supplies. That means everyone downstream of the mines from towns, villages and farms to local industries, particularly those that depend on clean water like agriculture, horticulture, grazing and fisheries,” he said

“There are exploration projects going on right now, to determine whether open cut mines for a range of minerals are viable. These include cobalt, copper and gold.

“Hundreds of square kilometres of land in these catchments now has mining leases over it. Councils need to get active and determine which areas are critical to maintaining clear and constant water supply to north coast communities. 

“They also need to be working with aboriginal communities to assist them in identifying sites of important cultural heritage. And they need to work with local communities and government agencies to identify areas of high conservation value for biodiversity.

“We shouldn't be waiting until companies have spent millions of dollars on exploration and have an expectation that their mines will go ahead, before saying 'NOT HERE'. 

“The reality is we can't rely on the State Government to protect our natural environment. There are too many examples from across NSW where they have allowed mining projects to go ahead in critical water catchments, like the coal mines that have cracked river beds in the Sydney water catchment, and in ecologically sensitive areas like the Leard forest which is being cleared for a mine.

“Local government and community will need to work together to defend the environment we all depend on, or it will be degraded and destroyed. 

“We're calling on the Clarence Valley and Coffs Council to start informing their ratepayers about exploration happening in those catchments,” Mr Morrison said.