John Barilaro
A ministerial visit to the region has seen 15,000 tonnes of timber from the Murray Valley National Park allocated to the commercial timber harvesting industry, a move advocates are calling a ‘‘step in the right direction’’. Source: The Shepparton News
NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business John Barilaro made the announcement at The Nationals’ dinner in Deniliquin to a 60 strong-crowd, which included key industry stakeholders.
The Nationals Red Gum Branch president and Deniliquin’s Gulpa Sawmill owner Ben Danckert described the allocation as a “bonus”.
“Details regarding the distribution are still to come, and it’s not what the branch asked for but we consider it a bonus,” he said.
“There is still a lot of work in terms of us getting to the desired outcome, which is ultimately the National Party’s policy to have the Murray Valley National Park converted to Murray Valley State Forest and commence operations as they existed prior to 2010.”
The push to have full-scale harvesting return to National Parks saw Mr Barilaro — alongside Member for Murray Adrian Piccoli and Minister for Lands and Forestry Paul Toole — tour the ecological thinning trial sites at Mathoura, joined by founding members of the Nationals Red Gum Branch.
“We showed them Compartment 27 in Moira State Forest and we revealed the contrast in National Park thinning trials and the harvesting history that had been done by sawmills in the past, most recently in 2006,” Mr Danckert said.
“They were amazed to see the contrast and obviously favoured our ecological thinning over the National Parks’.”
The mechanical thinning sees removed red gum trees relocated to a designated stockpile within the Murray Valley National Park, which was originally proposed to be accessible by the community for firewood.
However, Mr Danckert said the project — which started in 2010 — has resulted in an inaccessible pile of timber with “not a stick” of firewood being utilised by the community, even at the back end of winter.
“The ministers were overwhelmed by the size of the stockpile and couldn’t understand why it was piled up how it was,” he said. “They wondered how it could be distributed and described it as an OH&S nightmare and an extreme fire hazard.
“We showed them the high value saw logs which could be used for commercial purposes but instead are going to waste.”
Mr Danckert said he has invited Premier Gladys Berejiklian and NSW Minister for the Environment Gabrielle Upton to learn more about the National Parks conversion.
“Overall, we had really good conversations about moving forward and how to achieve our goal of opening up the park into a state forest again,” he said. “The ministers were very keen to help us out and we all need to work together to find the best way to ultimately achieve commercial operations in the forest.”
