This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The future of long-term native forest logging agreements in Victoria is uncertain because of a row with the federal government over the need to carry out fresh scientific assessments.

Three of Victoria’s regional forest agreements (RFAs) – in east Gippsland, the central highlands and the north east regions – were extended on Monday on a short-term basis, to 31 March 2020.

Exclusive: sawmillers call for access to Victorian parks and water catchments Read more

Senator Anne Ruston, the federal assistant agriculture minister, welcomed the extensions saying they would allow the Australian and Victorian governments to deliver the long-term extension of all five RFAs as one package.

But the state environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, has written to Ruston warning that “additional work” was required to update the agreements and avoid “litigation challenging the effectiveness of the RFAs”.

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“The assessments undertaken in the 1990s … have not been kept up to date and do not reflect changes in science and knowledge, the impacts of major disruptions such as fire, nor changing social values.

“The Australian government expressly accredits Victoria’s forest management system … it is therefore in the interest of both parties that [the] system is robust, transparent and effective in meeting the objectives of the RFAs for the next 20 years,” D’Ambrosio wrote.

The minister asked Ruston to reconsider her earlier rejection of commonwealth financial assistance for “updating Victoria’s forest assessments”.

Ruston wrote to D’Ambrosio on 8 February refusing a Victorian request for $23m to do “studies, data collection and assessment activities” linked to the proposed 20-year extensions of the five Victorian RFAs.

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Ruston’s letter makes it clear the commonwealth does not intend to back new scientific assessments for the extended RFAs. “I cannot commit the Australian government to contributing resources to the collection and analysis of new data and information for the assessments in addition to that considered essential and directly relevant,” Ruston wrote.

“I believe that analysis of existing information (such as assessments, reviews, state of the forest reports, data on threatened species etc) will more than adequately allow us to make decisions on the RFAs as strategic, high level, framework documents.”

D’Ambrosio announced on Tuesday that the RFA extensions came with a package to protect approximately 2,500 hectares of “high environmental value forest” in the Kuark forest of east Gippsland, and that “all large old trees” bigger than 2.5 metres would not be logged.

In addition, a “program of landscape and pre-harvest surveys” will be conducted by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELP) “to provide greater operational certainty to VicForests and improve the management and protection of threatened species in timber harvesting coupes”.

Conservationists said the package contained no progress on creating a Great Forest national park.

Sarah Rees, spokeswoman for My Environment Inc, said: “There is nothing in this package for the central highlands, despite it being the number one issue and one of the main reasons that the government set up the forest industry taskforce.

“The government was elected with promises that it would fix these problems, and yet Dan Andrews has bought his own mill [the Heyfield hardwood sawmill] and ignored conservation problems.”

Guardian Australia revealed on Monday that a group of six Victorian sawmillers want to have their future timber supplies guaranteed by logging national parks and water catchments, or to be offered exit packages.

“Pretending everything is fine”

In the Senate on Monday, Greens senator Janet Rice asked the industry minister, Matt Canavan, if the government would rule out logging in national parks.

Canavan did rule out logging in parks, but couldn’t give a timetable for the renewal of the two Victorian RFAs which expire on Tuesday in east Gippsland and the central highlands.

After question time, Rice told the Senate, “The government is in a total mess over the logging of our native forests, managing our forests on the run … but at least Minister Canavan ruled out logging in national parks.”

“But [with] logging in native forests, the government wants to just pretend that everything is absolutely fine.”

Environment groups said they wanted an immediate moratorium on logging in all high conservation value forests.



Amelia Young, the Wilderness Society’s Victorian campaign manager, said hundreds of logging coupes had been identified for protection as far back as 2014.

Young said the crunch point had been reached because “it’s impossible now to shuffle logging around the landscape. “The system is so tightly wound up, there’s so little wood left because of decades of mismanagement, clearfelling cutting and the loss of resource after the 2009 fires.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest High conservation value areas in central highlands. Photograph: State of Victoria

A spokesman for Friends of the Earth, Ed Hill, welcomed the increased protection for the Kuark, saying: “It’s encouraging that Minister D’Ambrosio is advocating for new assessments of the climate and environmental impacts of the RFAs. However without a moratorium on logging in environmentally sensitive forests [in the meantime] the intent of new assessments would be undermined.”

“Government must learn from the closure of the Hazelwood power station and put transition plans in place before the inevitable closure of more timber mills.”