Tony Abbott's Tasmanian wilderness claim doesn't check out

Updated

The United Nations World Heritage Committee has rejected a Federal Government application to de-list more than 74,000 hectares from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The ruling came after an intense debate between defenders of the Tasmanian Forests Agreement and some timber industry advocates.

The Prime Minister threw his support behind the application, telling a timber and forest industry dinner in March that the land slated for removal from the Tasmanian wilderness did not meet UNESCO's world heritage criteria and was not pristine.

"One of the first acts of the incoming Government was to begin the process to try to get out of world heritage listing 74,000 hectares of country in Tasmania, because that 74,000 hectares is not pristine forest," Mr Abbott said.

"It's forest which has been logged, it's forest which has been degraded, in some cases, it's plantation timber that was actually planted to be logged."

His comments came just 11 days before the Coalition won the Tasmanian state election.

ABC Fact Check found Mr Abbott's claim about the state of the forests didn't check out. Here's the fact check and its findings:

The claim: Tony Abbott says the 74,000 hectares the Government is proposing to remove from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine.

Tony Abbott says the 74,000 hectares the Government is proposing to remove from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine. The verdict: Expert analysis suggests more than 85 per cent of the area has not been logged, and that there is only a small amount of degradation or plantation timber. Further, UNESCO does not require an area to be "pristine" in order to be listed as a World Heritage Area.



The Tasmanian wilderness

The Tasmanian wilderness in the state's south-west was placed on the World Heritage List in 1982, and is described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as "one of the last expanses of temperate rainforest in the world".

Renowned for its old growth forests, limestone caves, and some of the tallest flowering plants in the world, it covers almost 1.6 million hectares, or roughly 20 per cent of the state.

The World Heritage Area was extended in 1989, 2010, 2012 and 2013.

It is the 2013 extension of 172,050 hectares that the Abbott Government now wants to roll back by just over 74,000 hectares. The 2013 extension increased the listed area by around 12 per cent. The Government wants to remove almost 5 per cent of the increased listed area.

The locations of the Government's proposed changes to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area are shown here.

The UNESCO world heritage process

UNESCO has specific criteria for inclusion on the World Heritage List.

Being "pristine" is not one of them, as UNESCO recognises "that no area is totally pristine and that all natural areas... to some extent involve contact with people".

A site must be considered to have "outstanding universal value" and meet at least one of 10 broad selection criteria including architectural, historical, cultural or natural attributes.

It was UNESCO that in 2012 recommended consideration of "further minor modifications to the boundaries of the property" in Tasmania.

This followed agreements in 2011 and 2012 involving the federal and state governments and stakeholders such as conservationists, unions, and forestry and timber industry groups.

UNESCO expressed concerns that interim protection had not been given to areas adjacent to the wilderness area under the intergovernmental agreement between the Gillard federal Labor and Giddings state Labor governments.

In a 2013 submission to UNESCO which resulted in the most recent expansion, the Gillard government gave justifications for the inclusion of various areas of land under the heading "Contribution to the Maintenance of the Outstanding Universal Value".

It details the significant plants and animals, and refers to the need for a "rational and contiguous boundary" as well as "forest connectivity" between protected areas.

The 2013 submission supporting the 172,050 hectare extension also notes past logging activity and sealed roads in included areas, and explains exclusions to the proposed new boundaries such as mining and forestry activity and hydro-electricity infrastructure.

The Government's 2014 proposal

According to its January 2014 submission to UNESCO, the Abbott Government is seeking to "remove areas from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area that the Government considers detract from the overall Outstanding Universal Value of the property and diminish its overall integrity".

The excision of around 74,000 hectares would, according to the formal proposal to UNESCO, "result in the removal of a number of pine and exotic eucalypt plantations as well as areas that have been logged".

It lists 13 areas, and the justification for removal of each is because it contains "disturbed areas", "logged/degraded areas" or "plantations and logged/degraded areas".

Proposed excisions from Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, in hectares Dove River 748 Upper Mersey 3,906 Great Western Tiers-Eastern 5,924 Great Western Tiers-Northern 3,668 Upper Derwent 16,193 Florentine 1,375 Mount Field 5,390 Mount Wedge-Upper Florentine 10,580 Styx-Tyenna 3,099 Weld Snow Range 5,778 Huon Picton 6,587 Hartz-Esperance 6,873 Recherche 3,918 Total 74,039

Condition of the areas proposed for removal

The 2014 submission does not specify what proportion of the total 74,039 hectares has been logged or degraded or planted with exotic species.

The Environment Department's submission to the Senate inquiry on behalf of the Government also lacks any detailed assessment of the condition of the 74,000 hectares.

ABC Fact Check asked the Prime Minister's office for evidence to support his claim "that 74,000 hectares is not pristine forest".

Evidence has not yet been supplied.

Fact Check asked Environment Minister Greg Hunt what proportion of the area proposed for excision has been degraded or logged.

Mr Hunt's office replied but did not address the question. Instead his spokesman said: "The Government is seeking the removal of about 4.7 per cent of the property, while still retaining high value tall forests and giant trees in the Weld-Snowy Range, Huon Picton, the Great Western Tiers and the Styx-Tyenna regions."

Senator Richard Colbeck, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, provided Fact Check with two tables, which he says are based on information from Forestry Tasmania, the state government agency responsible for managing state forests. There is a discrepancy of 511 hectares between the total area in the Federal Government's table shown above and the Forestry Tasmania tables shown below, which does not affect Fact Check's analysis.

Table 1 - Area of old-growth in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area proposed area for removal:

Forest class Area (ha) Not old growth 46,040 Old growth 28,530 Total 74,550

Table 2 - Forest classes in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area proposed area for removal:

Forest type Area (ha) Mature eucalypt forest 33,030 Partially harvested 2,340 Mature with regrowth 4,150 Unaged regrowth euc 8,720 Aged regrowth euc 5,480 Myrtle rainforest 5,760 Other native forest 2,630 Plantation 10 Unstocked and non-forest 12,430 Total 74,550

Senator Colbeck says the areas classified as partially harvested, mature with regrowth, unaged regrowth and aged regrowth "clearly demonstrate previous disturbance and total 20,690 hectares". He says in some of the areas there has been a history of harvesting since the 1800s.

He also says "further reinforcement of the degraded wilderness values of the area" is demonstrated in a wilderness inventory rating contained in a state government report published in 2003.

What the experts say

Fact Check also consulted with a range of experts who have studied the region.

The federal and state governments commissioned detailed research from an Independent Verification Group under the direction of the industry, union and environmental groups who signed the Tasmanian Forests Agreement.

As a member of the expert group, Professor Brendan Mackey from Griffith University undertook a scientific assessment of areas including those that later became the 2013 boundary extension. Professor Mackey has recently conducted a fresh analysis of natural forest cover and disturbance in the 74,000 hectare area now in question.

Professor Mackey says only a small percentage of the area the Government seeks to have excised has been industrially logged or is plantation forest.

Based on his analysis of the 74,000 hectares, he says "86 per cent is natural forest that has not been industrially logged and 4 per cent is heavily disturbed".

The land proposed for excision contains tall eucalypt forests which the World Heritage Committee previously found to have outstanding universal value, and plantations make up only a tiny fraction of the land in question, Professor Mackey says. "There is some eight hectares of eucalypt plantation in the areas proposed for excision, five hectares of which is in the Florentine Valley, and there is an apparent 0.008 hectare of pine plantation."

Most of it consists of forests dominated by tall trees that were alive when Europeans invaded Australia... Most of it lacks any exotic plant species. Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick

Peter Hitchcock, an international environmental and heritage consultant who has advised the Australian government on aspects of the Tasmanian Wilderness listing, including the 2013 extension, agrees. "The area of so called 'pine plantation' is 80 square metres - about a third the size of a tennis court - and had already been harvested," he said.

Mr Hitchcock says only 322 hectares of the 10,563 hectare Mount Wedge-Upper Florentine area, or around 3 per cent, has been logged.

Mr Hitchcock, who was a commissioner on the Helsham Inquiry into Tasmanian forests in the 1980s, says most of the logging in Mount Wedge - which sits between Lake Gordon and Lake Pedder - is decades old and regrowth is well advanced.

He also challenges the Federal Government's submission to UNESCO that the 748 hectare Dove River region near Cradle Mountain contains "disturbed" areas. "There is no evidence of logging and the only evidence of any disturbance is a property access road across the north west corner," he said. "The remainder appears pristine rainforest and woodland, mostly on very steep slopes."

Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick from the University of Tasmania has also studied the area facing excision and says most of the 74,000 hectares has not been logged.

"Most of it consists of forests dominated by tall trees that were alive when Europeans invaded Australia," Professor Kirkpatrick said. "Most of it lacks any exotic plant species."

Most of the rest of forest proposed for excision is in pristine or near pristine condition. Sean Cadman

In his submission to the Senate inquiry, environmental consultant Sean Cadman, who worked with Mr Hitchcock on his assessment of the region for the 2013 expansion, said the 2013 submission to UNESCO from the former government "made it clear that areas of logging and some plantations would be included and made provision for the restoration of these".

Mr Cadman said his examination of satellite data indicated that much of the regenerated forest in the 74,000 hectares has recovered from earlier logging, and that "most of the rest of forest proposed for excision is in pristine or near pristine condition".

Mr Cadman's submission said he was still working on a "full spatial analysis" of the data used for the independent verification group. "The preliminary findings of my analysis using IVG data would indicate that the Australian Government does not have case for the excisions based on the justification in the recent documentation," he said.

Fact Check asked Greg Hunt's office whether he agrees with the expert assessments suggesting no more than around 14 per cent of the area has been logged, but no reply has been received.

The verdict

The Prime Minister told the timber industry dinner the 74,000 hectares proposed for excision from the listed area is not pristine forest.

He said the 74,000 hectares has been "logged... degraded... in some cases it's plantation timber".

However, expert analysis suggests more than 85 per cent of the area has not been logged, and that there is only a small amount of degradation or plantation timber. The tables provided by Senator Colbeck indicate a higher level of degradation but still show a majority of the area has not been disturbed.

Further, UNESCO does not require an area to be "pristine" in order to be listed as a World Heritage Area.

Mr Abbott's claim doesn't check out.

Sources

Editor's note (27/03/14): This fact check has been updated to include information provided by Senator Richard Colbeck.

Topics: environment, forests, federal-government, liberals, abbott-tony, tas, australia

First posted