Threatened forest in the Weld Valley, bordering the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Photograph: Rob Blakers.

How would you feel if you were given a stay of execution – only to find the executioners turning up to take you away regardless? Tragically, that’s what’s happening to high conservation value forests in Tasmania right now.

The Tasmanian Forestry Agreement was supposed to protect these precious forests. Instead, they are being logged and having roads driven through them.

2012 began badly for the Agreement, with governments announcing a conservation outcome that protects a range of forests that weren’t going to be logged – while perversely allowing Forestry Tasmania to bulldoze ahead with business-as-usual logging in forests promised for protection.

Forestry Tasmania is cultivating conflict by failing to plan new logging coupes in non-controversial areas. Instead, this government agency is pushing ahead with new logging areas and new roads, some up to 2.5 kilometres long, in pristine forest areas that the Agreement says should be protected by now.

Recent work by an independent team of experts that went into Forestry Tasmania to verify their logging plans revealed that it had mislead Government and stakeholders about its contractual obligations to supply wood to Malaysian veneer company Ta Ann.

Meanwhile Forestry Tasmania is ensuring that supply to Ta Ann causes the maximum level of conflict with the community and undermines community expectations for forest conservation.  

A case in point is logging coupe BB21E in the iconic Weld Valley. This coupe has never been logged, is spectacular mixed aged eucalypt forest and is less than100 meters beyond the site of the longest running community blockade south of Hobart, the Weld Ark.

Thousands of people visited this area over a period of well over a year, exploring the area, studying the forests and defending the roading and logging that was planned at the time. Around 50 people were arrested when the camp was finally broken up by police and a road extended further up the pristine valley.

Now, when logging should have stopped, when there is need for a conflict-free space and when there is a unique opportunity to agree on an outcome that protects forests and helps rebuild the industry, Forestry Tasmania sees fit to push in a new road and begin logging this coupe in a highly sensitive area.

Fixing the crisis in the Tasmanian forestry industry means fixing Forestry Tasmania. It has been out of control for too long, logging special forests, wasting tens of millions of dollars and completely failing to be accountable to the people who own the forests: the public.

A solution is right in front of us: reform Forestry Tasmania and implement the Agreement now, to give the conflict-free space for ongoing negotiations.  Independently verified data about the forests and industry needs will soon present and negotiations will seek to finalise a durable resolution that protects identified forests and restructures the industry. With your support, the Wilderness Society will be working to make sure that happens.

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Tags identifying the route of a new road into a High Conservation Value forest in the Weld Valley, Tasmania. Photograph: Vica Bayley

Bad things traditionally happen on Friday the thirteenth and this date didn’t bode well for the conservation agreement that could have protected critical areas of Tasmania’s native forests.

The Governments’ Forest Agreement clearly states that all logging will stop in 430,000 hectares of high conservation value forest areas. But despite the Premier and Prime Minister’s promises of protection for these unique and important forests in Tasmania, logging continues in forests of World Heritage significance.

Released on Friday, 13 January, the outcome of the conservation agreement lived up to the date’s negative reputation by failing to deliver meaningful protection for threatened forests.

Last Friday should have been a celebration of an historic milestone that protects rainforests, ancient giants and critical habitat for endangered species like the Tassie devil - but instead governments have accepted Forestry Tasmania’s business-as-usual logging in iconic forests like the Weld and Picton Valleys and Ben Lomond.

Forestry Tasmania is running rogue

Forestry Tasmania, the state-owned logging agency, continues to running amok by flouting the Government’s Agreement and planning logging and road building operations in highly controversial areas. To solve the conflict over Tassie’s forests, governments need to urgently pull Forestry Tasmania into line, ensure it works to implement their Agreement and stop it from logging areas of high conservation value.

This ‘rogue agency’ has been shown to have provided misleading information to governments and stakeholders and is bulldozing ahead with logging in places like the Weld Valley. Machines working in some areas are pushing new roads, some over 2km long, into untouched areas, opening up pristine forest that should have been protected from logging.

Fixing the conflict over forests in Tasmania will take government action to fix Forestry Tasmania. While it is running rogue, it will continue to undermine government attempts to reach a lasting resolution that delivers the meaningful forest protection agreed under the Agreement and meets expectations of the broader community.

PM needs to take control

With your support, the Wilderness Society is urging both governments to deliver on their agreement and end logging in these unique and important forests. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been in Tasmania and should have used her meetings with Tasmanian colleagues to take control of the forests Agreement and make sure logging would stop in identified areas.

The protection of these forests is a cornerstone of the Agreement. It is time for both Governments to show leadership and deliver on their commitment to protect Tassie’s forests.

All there in black and white

Clause 25 of the forest Agreement, signed in August 2011, states that:

The State will immediately place the 430,000 hectares of native forest identified in Attachment A … into Informal Reserves… - Not delivered

Clause 36 states that:

Prior to formal legislative protection of the areas of reserve identified in Clause 29, and until completion of the independent verification process in accordance with clause 20, the 430,000 hectares referred to in Clause 25 will be protected under a Conservation Agreement… - Not honoured

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John Biggs is a fifth generation Tasmanian, academic, traveller, writer and a bequester for the Wilderness Society. Having lived overseas for much of his working life, he has returned to his native Tasmania where he spends much of his time writing.

His latest book, Tasmania Over Five Generations: Return to Van Diemen's land? is a unique ground level look at Tasmania's social and politcal progress from colonial times to the present (link below). Here John talks about his influences and inspirations.

How did you first come to get involved with the environment movement?

At school in Year 8 in 1947. Anton Chauncy of Chauncy Vale Wildlife Sanctuary at Bagdad, near Hobart, offered Hobart schools the chance to build a hut in the sanctuary for nature study. Hutchins school was the only one to take up the offer. Our science teacher took us up there in the backs of two lorries for several trips over about 6 months.

We camped while building the hut and subsequently we went up several times, nature spotting and bushwalking. That was the best experience that school offered me. It was subversive, because it eventually brought me round to embracing a philosophy of the interconnectedness of nature, and following that, my political views changed.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for the environment?

Trying to grow vegetables. I have brown fingers, and what vegies survived my inept gardening didn't survive the wallabies and possums.

What Wilderness Society achievement are you most proud of?

Winning the Franklin, although I wasn't in Tasmania at the time. TWS was then the Tasmanian Wilderness Society led by Bob Brown, but the national TWS morphed out of that. Most recently, I'm proud of TWS for stalling the Gunns pulp mill particularly by communicating with buyers of woodchips and especially by alerting Sodra and other potential backers to the scurrilous way the mill was pushed through, that it hadn't been assessed for its certain damage to environment, health and economy, and that it had not got a 'social license'.

Who/what inspires you?

On a personal level, music. On a political level, people who challenge the system.

What’s your favourite wilderness area in Australia?

I was brought up in Tasmania and although I have spent most of my life outside Tas I retired back here: guess I've been imprinted. Favourite areas rainforests and mountains, in particular the Tarkine, Cradle area and the Blue Tier.

What do you think is the most urgent environmental challenge facing us at the moment?

The challenge to the environment by neo-liberal economics. That includes climate change at the big end, caused by the suicidal greed of mining and energy corporations; and close to home, the trashing of Tasmania's forests by a series of governments and government agencies like Forestry Tasmania who are so incompetent they lose huge amounts of money while doing so. It 's beyond belief what's going on here.

What do you like to do when you’re not working?

As a retiree, I'm already doing what I like to do -- which is writing. I've just finished a book on Tasmanian politics as seen through the eyes of five generations of my own family. I set my latest novel Tin Dragons in NE Tas, which is one reason why the Blue Tier is special for me. So when I'm writing I'm not sure whether I'm working or I'm not working. At any rate, when I'm not writing I like travelling and bushwalking -- much of which provides the input for more writing.

What is your favourite quote or saying?

Depends how old I am. As a callow youth I would have identified with the Chinese proverb: "Across the river is a girl with breasts like peaches, and I cannot swim." In adulthood, two similar sayings strike me: "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men" (Abraham Lincoln); and "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" (Edmund Burke).

Today, when we are faced with the greatest challenges to our planet by greedy power-struck bastards, the worst things are to sin by silence and for good people to do nothing. The good news is that at last we, especially young people, are realising that -- as we are seeing in the Occupy Movement.

Tasmania Over Five Generations: Return to Van Diemen's land? is being launched in Launceston on 3 February 2012 in Petrarchs and in Hobart on 4 February in the Hobart Bookshop. Find out more about John and his latest book.

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Threatened forests on the slopes of Ben Lomond. Photo by Geoff Law

This is an Opinion article from our Tasmanian Campaign Manager, Vica Bayley, that appeared on the The Mercury's website.

It is a year to the day since former Premier David Bartlett and Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke announced they would support an agreement that promised to end Tasmania’s long-running forest dispute and that logging would stop in high conservation value forests.

Yet a year on, forests continue to fall in the Tyenna, Picton, Ben Lomond and Upper Derwent.

And that’s because Forestry Tasmania, the government-owned business that manages our forests, has ignored its owner and not redirected logging into the hundreds of thousands of hectares of publicly owned native forests that are still available for logging. This is despite a year of requests to do so and receiving a formal direction from the Tasmanian Government in March.

An end to logging in these forests is a critical component of the Principles agreement and the subsequent Intergovernmental Agreement signed by both governments in August. Ongoing logging in areas promised for protection heaps more and more pressure on the forest Agreement and the opportunity it offers for Tasmania to move on.

Gunns exit

A buyout for Gunns to exit the industry has been delivered and native forest log demand has consequently dropped. Displaced workers have been supported to find new futures and contractors have options to exit the industry with dignity. Yet logging continues despite the best efforts of many to deliver a binding agreement.

This means that important forests many Tasmanians expected to see legislated as new National Parks and reserves are being logged when they shouldn’t. Perhaps planning for this, the Premier and Prime Minister agreed on a specific clause to offer compensation to avoid logging.

Sticking to the terms of the Agreement will be real test for both Governments. Nervousness about the delivery of the conservation pillar of the Forests Agreement has been a topic of public debate since its signing and public scrutiny will be high.

However, allowing Forestry Tasmania to keep logging the forests will not only undermine the Governments’ Agreement, cost us precious forests and the opportunity for a resolution to the conflict over forestry. It will also cost us cash.

The most recent Auditor General’s report states that to remain a going concern, Forestry Tasmania’s directors will rely on "ongoing support and adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future." That’s code for more taxpayer money to stay afloat.

Then late last week, it was announced the most profitable part of Forestry Tasmania’s business, its share in softwood plantations, would be sold off to finance debt and maintain cash flows. Privatising this public asset not only represents a band aid solution for a broken business model, it preempts a government review into the future of the organisation, lauded as a critical step in understanding the way forward.

Worse, it rings serious alarm bells about what Forestry Tasmania thinks about its own future and the Governments’ Forest agreement. At a time when the rest of the world and the Forest Agreement are working to shift logging from native forests into plantations, Forestry Tasmania is bulldozing a backward-focused pathway with logging and road building in controversial native forest areas and selling of its profitable and socially acceptable plantations.

Forestry Tasmania agenda

But then Forestry Tasmania has form in pursuing its own agenda at the public’s expense. In 2006 a Federal Court judge found that “manipulation” of Forestry Tasmania’s expert evidence presented in his court was "regrettable".

The judge said that "at the urging of an officer or officers of Forestry Tasmania" the expert deleted a critical sentence from his affidavit. That sentence read: "The longer the status quo of conservation management for this species is maintained the higher the risk of extinction to the species based on current knowledge."

More recently, an Upper House inquiry into Forestry Tasmania’s financial performance reported it "failed to take adequate strategic action in a timely manner". Additionally "the Committee found it a difficult task to obtain clear answers from Forestry Tasmania ... They were reluctant to answer questions and provide appropriate documentation as expected."

Whether it is an Upper House Committee, the Auditor General or citizen commentators, there appears a common analysis that Forestry Tasmania is unaccountable, has long failed to adjust to changing circumstances and is in dire financial straits. Now it is also clear it has long ignored the writing on the wall, defied government direction and pushed ahead with native forest logging that drives community conflict, loses Tasmanians money and damages their unique environment.

Now there is a new opportunity to turn around this trend and deliver an outcome that helps Tasmania move on from divisive debate and end this debilitating drain on the public purse. Reform of Forestry Tasmania is desperately needed and long overdue. Responsibility for this sits squarely with the State Government and the choices appear stark. Deliver the Forests Agreement and restructure Forestry Tasmania into an accountable, transparent entity working for the public good.

Or pour more public money into propping up a failed business model that delivers nothing for Tasmania’s triple bottom line. To implement the Intergovernmental Agreement, Forestry Tasmania needs to be brought under control and made to realise that business as usual is no longer an option.

The original article can be seen on the The Mercury website.

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