2017-10-12
Key govt advisory body warned against old growth forest changes
Media Release Thursday 12 October 2017
- New documents have revealed that the Conservation and Parks Commission, which provides scientific advice to the Environment Minister, warned against controversial new procedures for assessing WA’s old growth forests.
- The documents, tabled this week in Parliament at the request of South West Greens MLC Diane Evers, include emails sent in February and March between the Director of the Conservation and Parks Commission and a senior bureaucrat in the former Department of Parks and Wildlife (now DBCA). The emails discuss draft procedures to determine which areas of WA’s native forests are ‘old growth’, and thus warrant protection from logging.
- The procedures, adopted 28 March, have been fiercely criticised by the WA Forest Alliance and the Barrabup Conservation Group, who are working to save old growth jarrah forest at Barrabup outside Nannup, for deviating significantly from the criteria used until now.
- In the documents, CPC Director Roland Mau warns DPaW acting Director of Forest and Ecosystem Management Jason Foster that DPaW’s draft ‘Procedures for the Identification, Assessment and Demarcation of Old Growth Forest’ will have, quote: “profound ramifications for the mapping of old growth forest”.
- Mr Mau further warns that DPaW’s new threshold for how few stumps per hectare are allowed before a section of forest is considered too disturbed to be considered old growth will mean that even an area that is unambiguously old-growth forest may not be protected. He also cautions Mr Foster that an example provided by DPaW of how the new procedures would be applied “appears to have the objective to minimise the outcome regarding old-growth forest”.
Ms Evers said the correspondence between the CPC and Mr Foster, who is a former advisor to the Environment Minister in the Barnett Government, backed the community’s and the Greens’ concerns about the procedures.
“These documents confirm that the new procedures will not accurately identify nor protect all of WA’s old growth forests,” Ms Evers said.
“It is clear the highly qualified staff at the Commission warned DPaW that the new procedures will mean areas of old growth forest will not be properly recognised or protected, but it does not appear that the Commission was adequately heard.
“The Forest Management Plan required that these procedures would be developed in consultation between Conservation and Parks Commission and the Department, but the final version of the procedures largely reflects what the Department wanted, not the Commission, even though the Commission has until now been responsible for assessing WA’s old growth forests and has more than a decade’s experience in doing so.
“The new procedures were finalised by Mr Foster on 28 March, when the current Environment Minister had barely been two weeks in the job; the Minister says it was done without his knowledge.
“While this may absolve him from blame, it is essential he steps in now and goes back to the Conservation and Parks Commission for its unimpeded advice on how old growth forest assessments should be conducted.
“The Minister must also retract the old growth assessment for Barrabup forest that he released last Friday as it was done as a first ‘test case’ using the new procedures and it has produced the highly unlikely conclusion that less than 10 per cent of the proposed harvest area is old growth – a figure that falls well short of the expectations of experienced individuals who have surveyed the area.”
Note to media:
Copies of the new and former procedures, tabled papers and questions asked in Parliament available on request.