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130
trucks a day into Eden woodchip mill
Members
of Chipstop at Bega held a four day vigil outside the Eden woodchip
mill from Monday to Thursday, 15th - 19th December 2003. They documented
the truck loads carted into the giant chipmill and export wharf.
Of the stream of 130 trucks a day that drove through the gates to
the woodchip pile by the Eden wharf in NSW:
61%
contained the trunks of trees from mature or multi-age native forests;
25% carried thinnings from regrowth native forests (some, but not
many, of these may have come from hardwood plantations);
14%
contained woodchips (mill 'waste');
88%
of the trucks came from south of Eden with a daily average of 32
loads of thinnings (most from NSW), 71 loads containing trunks of
mature trees (many from East Gippsland) and 11 loads of woodchips.
No
waste material was observed: no butts, no heads, no branches.
That
means 71 truck loads of mature trees a day were arriving at Eden
from the South - many of which were likely to be from East Gippsland.
Harriet
and Keith-Chipstop
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Government awards itself a silver medal for its logging
mess
The
damning results of the Environment Protection Authority audit of
logging practices in East Gippsland was released in January. Never
daunted by criticism, the DSE crowed about its 'continuous improvement'!
The results show a worsening of adherence to many environmental
protection codes - not an improvement.
In
past internal DSE audits, loggers and foresters scored poorly on
such things as marking of reserved areas, road construction, log
landing/snig track rehabilitation and waterway buffer protection.
Recommendations for improvements were made, but the latest EPA checks
show both loggers and the DSE itself are increasingly ignoring these
environmental regulations.
History of failure to respect environment
Clearfell operations cause massive environmental damage as it is,
without calling major breaches of minimum standards "improvements".
Many
of the breaches and consequent recommendations in this report have
been repeated again and again in earlier government internal audits.
This shows the DSE is unable to control elements in the industry
that avoid compliance at every opportunity.
Despite
documenting serious breaches in every coupe, the questionable scoring
system used allowed the DSE to claim an overall 85% compliance.
If we broke the speed limit in only 15 km out of every 100 km we
travelled, would the authorities pat us on the back? It's to be
remembered that these code rules are the MINIMUM for environmental
protection, but even these low standards are consistently breached.
Conservation
groups have requested that the next EPA audit, due to begin in April
this year, should also report on any effective actions that DSE
has taken to improve this appalling situation.
Rainforest
The
Department has become so run down that there are few people with
the skills to identify areas of rain forest. The EPA report suggests
foresters be given training to recognise such basic areas of conservation.
This is astonishing. These are the officers who are sent out to
ensure logging crews comply with regulations yet are unable to identify
basic forest types.
We have to wonder how many patches of magnificent rainforest have
been destroyed through Departmental incompetence. Botanists need
to be employed rather than foresters who have had a non-obligatory
half day training and many couldn't identify a rainforest plant
if one tapped them on the shoulder.
Departmental
fraud
A
serious instance of Departmental fraud was uncovered during the
course of the audit at an East Gippsland coupe called C19. The Auditors
found a huge number of environmental breaches that should have been
marked on the Coupe Clearance Certificate. However, all were overlooked
and a certificate was signed off for the coupe as having no breaches.
Once signed and issued, the public pay for environmental rehabilitation
work, not the logging contractor who caused the damage.
Audit
scoring system
The scoring system used in this audit does not reflect the problems
it uncovered. For example, at coupe C19, the following examples
of breaches were found:
Inadequate marking of exclusion areas
Felling of trees into filter strips
Illegal removal of trees from buffer zones
Buffer
widths too small
Non compliant roading
Inadequate
rehabilitation of stream crossings
Non compliant snig tracks
Coupe
litter not removed
Inadequate landing rehabilitation
With a list as long as an arm, any reasonable person would think
that this coupe should score pretty close to zero. Under the new
EPA system, this coupe gets a compliance score of 72% or a B score!
High
scores for paper-shuffling in the office are used to disguise poor
in-forest performance. The correct completion of paperwork contributes
to a quarter of the total score.
Loggers lose an equal amount of points for littering as they do
if they log a habitat tree. Also equal points are lost whether one
metre or a hundred metres of rainforest buffer is logged.
While
this latest audit process had a number of improvements to earlier
methods, the findings indicate that the industry still takes every
opportunity to abuse its privileged position. Instead of making
recommendations that are promptly ignored by all, we need to see
a huge increase in the penalty given to loggers and also a penalty
system for the DSE foresters and operators who often show just as
much disregard.
It is quite possible to have full compliance with environmental
codes and these results show how useless the penalty system is.
Of
coupes checked in East Gippsland (and considering the assessment
limitations), 34% of the coupes failed to reach EPA's standard of
85%. The fact that the DSE Secretary can boast that these results
represent a 'high achievement' once again demonstrates the complete
contempt DSE has for our environment.
Their improvements
The EPA's intended improvements for this year's auditing of logging
across the state include:
Review
of the way coupes are assessed
An increase in number of coupes for audit, and an inclusion of roads
(2 km per region)
Selection of coupes will include fire salvage coupes (that should
be interesting!)
A
report on how/if the last recommendations were taken on board
And
possibly others as they speak with stakeholder groups (loggers and
conservationists).
Our
suggestions
Neither the DSE nor the industry should be given advance warning
of the logged coupes to be checked.
Working
coupes should be inspected and pre-logging audits are needed to
compare 'before' with 'after' (rainforests could easily be destroyed
with no evidence remaining).
Check coupes before the hot burns as intense regeneration fires
destroy a lot of evidence. At least 10 code rules were unable to
be checked after burns.
The EPA should check all aspects of the Code's guidelines for rainforest.
The
most breached rules should receive special attention in the next
audit.
A review should be undertaken comparing CSIRO recommendations for
forest protection and the DSE Code rules.
Checks should be done on older regrowth to check if species composition
returns to pre-logging diversity (as stated it should by DSE).
The adequacy of the Code itself needs to be checked by the EPA
The
scoring system needs improving
Audit
of work by government forest officers is needed and sanctions recommended
87%
is too low for an 'acceptable level of compliance'. It needs to
be higher.
Checking
only 7% of the total number of coupes logged in any year is too
low a sample.
Checking a small percent of each component of the Code (100 mts
of buffer within a coupe with 2km of buffers) is not giving a good
indication of true compliance. Samples of samples reduces the accuracy
of the audit.
Compliance
with rules to ensure water quality is looked after cannot be properly
assessed in a drought or by eye. Long term monitoring needs to be
done (all part of revision of the adequacy of the Code)
Shape
up DSE
Breaches discovered need to be repaired. If that's not possible,
twice the area of replacement forests should be added to the reserve
system.
Botanists
should identify rainforests, cartographers should mark coupes and
engineers build roads. Foresters have proved to have extremely limited
skills in these areas.
The penalty system needs to be more severe
The
EPA needs to be given further authority and resources to enforce
the code requirements rather than merely report on them.
Improve the process that determines rainforest buffers and other
environmental protection measures.
Enforcement
These shocking Audit results from East Gippsland, combined with
other recent events such as the Snowy National Park logging fiasco
last summer, all undermine what little confidence the public has
in the Department's ability to control the logging industry in East
Gippsland.
Without
any effective enforcement mechanism in place, the industry is having
a real laugh.
Dean Haywood
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RENT A POLITICIAN
who runs this country?
Figures
released by the Electoral Commission show the usual donations from
the usual logging crowd to their usual political floosies. The CFMEU
has apparently not yet submitted most of its returns, so it's too
early to say whether this union retains its position as pre-eminent
woodchipping benefactor of the Labor Party. However, there is a
mob called Forestry 2000 that has its address near Trades Hall.
They donated over $5,000 to the ALP.
Once again Harris
Daishowa/ South East Fibre Exporters is getting a free ride. It
hasn't donated anything for years - well, not under it's own name
at least. It is suspected that many companies avoid being listed
as donors by getting money to political parties via other means
and under other names.
ALP National
Amcor Limited MELB $25,000.00 Boral Ltd SYD $8,000.00 =$33,000
Lib National
Amcor Limited $45,000.00 Boral Ltd $8,000.00 =$53,000
Nats National
Amcor $10,000.00
Boral gave the
ALP and Libs in NSW $5,000 each.
The ALP in Tasmania
was gifted $50,890 by Gunns but the Libs mustn't have been
good enough boys and girls and were only gifted $1,560.
ALP Vic
Amcor $10,000.00
Boral $3,100.00
Forestry 2000 $5,250
CFMEU Pulp & Paper Branch, $8,230.64 =$28,580.64
Lib Vic
Boral $3,100.00
Neville Smith $29,000.00 =$32,100.00
Neville Smith
Mill from Heyfield gave the Nats $12,000 in Victoria but despite
them being best buddies with Bracks, nothing was listed as a direct
donation.
Harriet
Swift/ Jill
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With
all five Federal seats in Tassie being safely held by Labor, Mark
Latham doesn't feel the need to worry too much. On a recent visit
to Tasmania, he said he might consider stopping old growth logging
in another six years and that loggers jobs were sacred. Why is it
that no other industry has guaranteed job security - be it manufacturing,
primary industries, IT personnel working for Telstra, the airlines
etc? But if you want a career chainsawing 500 year old myrtle trees
and tossing them in the the frickin' chipper, well then, your job
is sacrosanct! 