Mooted NSW government moves to tighten koala conservation must be opposed as they will lead to destructive forest management and more koala deaths, a forestry expert has warned. Source: Philip Hopkins for Timberbiz
The secretary of the South East Timber Association, Peter Rutherford, said this scenario was a likely outcome if the NSW Parliament did not pass amendments to the Local Land Services Act. The amendments, which were not passed last November, would decouple the Act from the Koala Habitat Protection SEPP (2019). “The recent SEPP (State Environment Planning Policy) is an inappropriate instrument for the farming landscape,” he said.
The Amendment Bill has been referred to an Upper House committee chaired by Greens Party member, Cate Faehrmann.
Mr Rutherford said private native forest growers or those who harvested or processed wood from private forests, should comment on the bill through an online survey. Submissions must be submitted by this Friday.
“There are numerous examples of state forests used for over 100 years for timber production that have also supported relatively dense koala populations feeding on the cycle of regenerating forests,” he said. These outperformed parks and reserves for koala conservation.
“This shows why private landowners must be allowed to actively manage their forests for timber production. The PNF Code will ensure positive social, environmental and economic values will be maximised.”
Mr Rutherford said the Koala SEPP 2019 was typical of the lock-up and neglect management regime, applied to national parks by parks managers and to private property through local government environmental zones.
“The management by neglect model and exclusion of fire from the broader landscape, have helped underpin the increase in ecologically destructive mega fires in the past 20 years,” he said.
“The Koala SEPP is typical of environmental policy delivered by unqualified activist bureaucrats focussed on a wilderness agenda rather than an active and adaptive management philosophy.”
Mr Rutherford said a future Koala SEPP should focus on urban development and other major land use changes. “Landscape koala and other biodiversity conservation should be focussed on returning traditional/ecological burning to restore healthy native ecosystem functions and educating landowners large and small, into the concepts of active and adaptive ecological management,” he said.
The lack of regular disturbance since 1770 had resulted in scrubbed-up forest understorey and unhealthy tree canopies. “Traditional burning expert, Victor Steffenson, refers to the ecological decline of the Australian bush resulting from management by neglect, as ‘upside down country’.”
Mr Rutherford said the myopic focus on koala conservation, rather than a landscape, multispecies conservation framework, would result in many species and lower populations being pushed into extinction. This was despite 80 per cent of available public land being in the parks and reserves system.
“The attempt by the Environment and Planning ministers, to create millions of hectares of de facto national parks on private land via the Koala SEPP 2019 was unconscionable,” he said.
Mr Rutherford said most local governments did not have sufficient funds to deliver the basic services demanded by their ratepayers and residents. “To expect local government to have the expertise to manage koalas, when noxious weeds such as fire weed and African lovegrass run rampant in council reserves and roadsides highlights management priority, skills and funding issues,” he said.
The Koala SEPPs shifted the cost from state to local government “without funding and skills support”, he said.
The survey can be accessed at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F7F3D77 until this Friday.
