Pioneering Australian Forests Process in Trouble
8/6/99
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Title: Pioneering Australian Forests Process in Trouble
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 6, 1999
Byline: Andrew Darby
CANBERRA, Australia, August 6, 1999 (ENS) - Australia's attempt to
solve its repeated sharp conflicts over native forest logging in a
series of binding agreements is now precariously balanced.
Long opposed by environmentalists, the Regional Forest Agreement
(RFA) process has been jolted by a conservative state government's
decision to bow to community pressure to improve green outcomes.
The decision of the Western Australian state government to
unilaterally modify an RFA has angered the Federal Government. It
said the process was damaged, and mass job losses would result. One
West Australian timber business already in difficulties shut this
week with the loss of 170 jobs.
The backdown comes at a particularly sensitive time for the federal
government, which is preparing to bring a bill, designed to entrench
RFAs, into a hostile Senate.
Under the RFA process, government scientific studies are carried out
with limited public input before final decisions are made on which
forests are to be logged, and which reserved in joint federal-state
agreements.
The first RFA was signed in the island state of Tasmania in 1997,
where some of the most contentious forests border its wilderness
World Heritage Area.
In Western Australia for several years a slow building protest has
focussed on its native eucalypts found nowhere else in the world -
jarrah, karri, and marri. Though most of this huge state is desert,
native forests occupy about 2.5 million hectares, (6.25 million
acres) in the far south-west bordering the coast.
Woodchipping based on karri and marri forests began in Western
Australia 23 years ago, taking an estimated 15 million tonnes.
Jarrah, a rich deep red hardwood, has long been regarded as one of
Australia's most beautiful dressed timbers.
Environmentalists calculate the area of unlogged old growth forest in
WA at about 350,000 hestares (825,000 acres), and say that more than
half is available for logging in the future.
The state's RFA was prepared in the face of increasing environmental
protests from a remarkably diverse group of people, including the
coach of Western Australia's Eagles national league football team,
Mick Malthouse.
Nevertheless, the coalition government of Richard Court signed the
RFA with Canberra in May.
The West Australian Forest Alliance calculated that as one result,
around six percent of the original old growth jarrah forest would be
left. Over winter the alliance ramped up protest action. A series of
camps have blockaded logging blocks, while in the capital, Perth,
rallies and political pressure has come out of suburban homes onto
the Court Government.
Late last week after protracted negotiations, Court announced he
would "accelerate changes" to forest management in Western Australia.
The logging of some forests will be curtailed, a faster move will be
made to plantations, and greater financial aid given to timber
communities where logging would be phased out.
The Forest Alliance warned that old growth forests still face serious
damage, and it is continuing its campaign. But the National
Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) said the Court decision was a
cave-in to green zealotry.
"It has ramifications for impending RFAs in other parts of Australia
and will serve to seriously undermine industry confidence in the
durability of the process," said NAFI executive director Warren Lang.
The Federal Forestry and Conservation Minister, Wilson Tuckey,
predicted it would cost 1,000 direct jobs.
Tuckey has already promised to bring a Federal RFA bill into the
Australian Senate in its upcoming August session. It would ensure
compensation provisions of RFAs are legally enforceable against his
government, thus entrenching industry security.
But in an additional blow for the whole process, he has foreshadowed
problems getting the bill through a chamber where the government is
in minority.