Far too precious, rare and valuable

Vica Bayley

ONE love. One Heart — so said Jamaican Minister Lisa Hanna, in signal of global solidarity and a nod to Bob Marley when her nomination of the Blue and John Crow Mountains was inscribed as a mixed site on the World Heritage List in Bonn last week. A mixed site is one recognised as being of outstanding natural and cultural value, the best of the best across both World Heritage disciplines.

Jamaica was indeed proud to have its first-ever World Heritage site recognised. It gave space for the indigenous owners of the land to speak to the committee and confirmed it had cancelled mining leases to ensure the area was protected and managed on behalf of all humanity.

That is both the obligation and expectation when your place is celebrated and recognised by the world.

By contrast, Tasmanian Government Ministers Matthew Groom and Paul Harriss pledged to push ahead with plans to log in their World Heritage Area, snubbing a direct request from the World Heritage Committee to explicitly prohibit logging and mining.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt talked up the “global umpire”, the World Heritage Committee, and its decision to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the “in danger” list.

When it came to Tasmania, however, the umpire’s decision appears too hard to accept, and he condemned the umpire to a wrangle with a Tasmanian government that seems to lack an understanding of the obligations and opportunities World Heritage represents.

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is a mixed site meeting seven of 10 World Heritage criteria, equal with only one other site in the world as meeting the most criteria. It is truly special and recognised for its incredible Aboriginal heritage, wild coast, glaciated mountains, intricate cave systems, unique species and its fabulous forests.

It is these forests our Ministers seek to log.

In doing so, the Ministers are spinning a line to the Tasmanian public that points to a deeper agenda — one of divisive politics, fear and, at times, intimidation.

In naming conservationists the “principle homegrown threat” to logging and mining, Minister Harriss creates a link to the genuine fear of a truly insidious terror problem.

Mr Harriss’s likening of conservation efforts to terrorism displays a shameful exploitation of a genuine global concern and belittles the acts of real horror inflicted to heritage and humans worldwide. The commentary is out of step with reality.

This year in Bonn, the World Heritage Committee celebrated Tasmanian conservationists for their contribution to World Heritage and the German Government named and displayed them as “World Heritage Heroes”.

It also launched Unite4Heritage, an initiative to respond to Islamic jihadist’s destruction of World Heritage sites like Palmyra in Syria.

In Tasmania, Minister Harriss continues to undermine his credibility by mounting an argument that conservationists supported logging in the TWWHA via the Tasmanian Forest Agreement. This is demonstrably wrong, as logging has only been introduced as a legal possibility in the TWWHA via the draft management plan released early this year.

For decades, the only wood allowed to be taken from the TWWHA has been driftwood huon pine from the shores of Macquarie Harbour.

Minister Groom’s proposed management plan, which the global umpire rejected, would allow the logging of live trees, including huon pine, in all zones of the TWWHA except the visitor services zone.

Further, 20,000ha of World Heritage forests in the Great Western Tiers has no conservation status, no management plan, and is promised to logging interests with no constraint on specialty timber or harvest type.

The TFA established a collaborative, consensus-based process to explore relevant issues and develop an agreed management plan for specialty timber supply.

Environment groups have never, would not, and will not support logging, mining or any extractive activity in any conservation reserve, World Heritage or otherwise.

Putting that aside, Minister Harriss is grasping at straws and showing an ignorant lack of appreciation of his own actions. While responsible for destroying the TFA, he argues that conservation signatories remain bound to it and so exposes a foolish lack of understanding as to what the TFA was, and the consequences of tearing it up.

On the back of years of activism, advocacy, education and science, the TFA provided a catalyst to finally deliver an extension to the TWWHA that protected some of the tallest forests in the world.

These forests have an understorey of rainforest tree species that have links to Gondwana and relatives in New Zealand and South America. Together, this forest ecosystem is an attribute that contributes to Outstanding Universal Value and recognition as World Heritage.

Nowhere on earth is destroying a World Heritage value acceptable — not in Syria, not in the Congo, not in Russia, not on the Great Barrier Reef. Nor is it acceptable in Tasmania’s wilderness.

If Tasmania and its people value our wild, wilderness brand, they will support the global umpire in calling on our Governments to prohibit, once and for all, the notion of logging World Heritage.

Nowhere on earth is destroying a World Heritage value acceptable.

Vica Bayley is campaign director of The Wilderness Society.