Australian Park Enlargement Triggers Anger, Dismay
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
The good news first: the government of the Australian state of New South Wales has added 324,000 hectares to national parks, in a scheme to connect isolated protected areas. The bad news: in order to create a handful of jobs, logging of natural native forests in others areas was ramped up. And any future restrictions on logging will require compensation payments--effectively making them politically impossible. So in exchange for a once off park enlargement, policy is in place which means the rest assuredly will be logged--and logged hard, in some cases to make woodchips. Preservation of operable ecosystems and their constituent biodiversity requires more than tossing the table scraps to the dogs, and then starving him.
It is unconscionable that woodchipping of native forests for throwaway consumer paper products is occurring in Australia's remaining old-growth forests. Australia's continental ecosystem is too fragile to continue peeling away the ecosystems that provide basic needs like rain, soil, habitat and air. As long as Australia, the US and other developed countries mop up their last remaining ancient forests for little economic benefit relative to the size of their economies; their political calls for forest conservation elsewhere--in much poorer countries--and forest conservation aid projects, have little credibility. Come on mate, we expect better. Just as you expect Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia to protect their forests--we expect you to protect yours. Come clean and conserve Australia's forests, and then the good will be on you and your kids.
g.b.
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Title: Australian Park Enlargement Triggers Anger, Dismay
Source: Copyright 2000 Environment News Service
Date: April 20, 2000
SYDNEY, Australia, April 20, 2000 (ENS) - The government of the Australian state of New South Wales has added 324,000 hectares (1,250 square miles) of forests to national parks on the state's South Coast. The move has dismayed some conservation groups who say it leaves out precious areas, and it has angered timber companies who want to log parts of the newly protected region.
Announcing the decision, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr said the creation of 100 new national parks and additions to 80 existing ones "create a continuous corridor of national parks and reserves, stretching 350 kilometres (217 miles)from the Victorian border - and links from the escarpment to the coast."
The new parks include the addition of extensive areas of old growth eucalypt forest, a series of catchments of coastal lakes, and an expansion of habitat for koalas and other wildlife.
The size of the coastal Murramurrang National Park has been greatly expanded. This New South Wales coastal park is situated 280 kilometres (174 miles) south of Sydney. It features both rainforest and sandy beaches.
Carr announced that the trade off for the new National Parks is a set of 20 year timber supply agreements with forestry companies. Such agreements make future restrictions on logging operations subject to compensation claims. This means any future limits will be politically difficult for governments and environmentalists alike.
Carr announced that any timber worker adversely affected by the decision on forests would be the first to be offered work in managing the newly created national parks. "I want to assure timber workers on the South Coast that if a mill makes changes where they are processing logs, the $120 million Forest Industry Structural Adjustment Package is designed to look after them," the premier said.
Most conservation groups "warmly welcomed" the additions to the national park system but expressed concerns that many important areas have been allocated for logging. Some wood is earmarked for export as matchbox sized woodchips to the Japanese pulp and paper industry.
Spokesperson for The Australian Wilderness Society, Virginia Young, welcomed the decision to "substantially protect very important areas of forest" but was "dismayed that important areas of wilderness have been sacrificed to woodchip giant Daishowa."
"We are also dismayed that an easy opportunity to create a woodchip free zone has not been seized by the government, particularly when according to Daishowa removing woodchips from the region would at most mean four people would need to be helped to change jobs," Young said.
"The Wilderness Society will never accept that rare and precious areas of wilderness in the Deua, Badja and Wandella can be logged and will commence planning now to protect these priceless parts of our natural heritage," she said.
Speaking for the NSW Forest Products Association, Col Dorber was furious with the decision. "The NSW Minister for the Environment, Bob Debus, aided and abetted by the ideological zealots in his office, undermined the science and economics behind the southern regional forests agreement," he fumed.
The government rejected lobbying by the timber industry for an increase in the annual allowable cut from the current 42,000 cubic metres to 60,000 in the South Coast region.
"The South Coast region is capable of delivering conservation outcomes far beyond the wildest dreams of any NSW politician, whilst at the same time permitting a minimal 10 percent increase in wood allocations to saw millers," Dorber said.
"Even this is not good enough", Dorber said, "for the green zealots. Their hearts are set on nothing less than the total destruction of the industry on the South Coast."
The industry was more successful in gaining an increased allocation in the inland Tumut area from 38,000 cubic metres to 48,000 cubic metres. The government projected this increase would create an additional 15 jobs.
The director of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, Keith Muir, was appalled at the decision to increase the allocation in the Tumut region. "There was plenty of timber to meet requirements in the Tumut area, so the loss of the alpine ash forests in Goodradigbee is particularly disturbing," he said.
The NSW government decision is the latest in a series of agreements by state governments, which have responsibility for managing forests, and the federal government, which passed legislation for these Regional Forest Agreements. The federal government is offering funding for forest agreements that meet its criteria.
While Regional Forest Agreements have been signed in the states of Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, political controversy over the agreed logging operations rages.
The timber industry insists that logging of native forests should be allowed to proceed. Conservationists urge that logging be excluded from native forests and areas slated for logging protected as National Parks and wilderness areas.
Only in the state of Queensland has the government turned its back on native forests logging and brokered an agreement between the industry and conservation groups to protect the bulk of the remaining native forests and focus the industry on using the existing tree plantations.
It is an approach that The Wilderness Society's spokesperson, Virginia Young, would like to see emulated elsewhere. "Long term solutions to the forest debate in Australia will only be achieved when governments recognise the role that increasing the processing of our massive plantation estate can play in facilitating native forest protection," she said.