Fears for high value forests
LAND protected under a forestry agreement which expires in April will not easily be up for grabs the forestry industry says — despite fears of conservationists.
Greens Leader Cassy O’Connor said Right to Information documents revealed “secret talks” between the forestry industry and the State
Government over the future of 356,000ha of forests set aside for protection under the Tasmanian Forest Agreement.
The moratorium over logging these forests since 2014 ends on April 8.
There were 500,000ha protected under Labor’s 2013 forest peace deal — which was ripped up by the newly elected Hodgman Government in 2014.
The Liberals reclassified 400,000ha of “future reserve land” as “future potential production forest”, meaning 356,000ha could be logged from next year.
Ms O’Connor said RTI documents suggested the Government and industry were in talks to have access to the forests when the moratorium expired in April.
“The Liberals and their industry partners are colluding to log Tasmania’s independently assessed high conservation value forests,” she said.
But acting chief executive for Forest Industries Association Tasmania Terry Edwards said conversations between industry and the Government had merely involved FIAT asking for a review into the economic, social, environmental and heritage values of the forests that could be opened for logging. Mr Edwards said these reviews needed to be conducted before any logging companies could even begin to access the forests.
“Nothing changes in respect to the land unless it is approved by a majority in both houses of parliament,” he said.
The industry had not asked for any specific area of forest to be made available for logging, despite claims he said.
A Government spokesman said there were no secret talks with the forest industry to open up more land.
“The Government continues to engage with the industry about the FPPF land but, to be very clear, there has been no application made by industry to access the wood bank,” the spokesman said. by conservationists,