Send DEC's shocking logging plan back to the drawing board!

Send DEC’s logging plan back to the drawing board

The Forest Management scoping document released for consultation outlines a devastating proposal for increased native forest logging which would have disastrous impacts on WA’s unique forests and the threatened animals that rely on them for survival. The proposal should be rejected by the EPA as it is clear that continued or increased forest logging is both unacceptable and unsustainable, including for the following reasons:

• Many of WA’s forest-dwelling species are on the brink of extinction. Tree deaths resulting from climate change and disease are being recorded in huge numbers with huge risks for our native animals. Continued or increased forest logging represents an unacceptable threat to the survival of numerous species which cannot sustain any further loss of habitat.
   
• Destruction of WA’s natural carbon stores (and the significant economic value they represent) by a loss-making native forest logging industry totally unacceptable.
   
• Continued logging of forests impacted by climate change is not sustainable. The plan fails to address the EPA's previous findings that low and medium rainfall forests are not regrowing after logging.
   
• Any industrial-scale logging of WA’s native forests is likely to be totally at odds with the protection of indigenous cultural values as now required under legislation.
   
• Continued operation of any logging activities under current inadequate legislation is totally unacceptable as management policies cannot be enforced. Neither the community nor the EPA can have confidence in this system without significant reform.

If allowed to proceed past the scoping phase, this plan will inevitably lock in unacceptable impacts to WA’s environment and cultural values. The proponents of this plan have left no choice but for the EPA to judge this proposal “Assessed on Proponent Information –Proposal unlikely to be Environmentally Acceptable”

The proponents must go back to the drawing board and develop a new proposal with the following features:

• The plan must apply the precautionary approach by assuming that all logging activity is unsustainable unless proven otherwise with rigorous, independently peer-reviewed science.
• The plan must directly manage all forest thrests (including mining, prescribed burning, tourism etc.) and not rely on subsidiary policies.
• Impacts on threatened species must be assessed using the same methodology that is applied by the Commonwealth Government for other sectors under the EPBC Act.
• Biodiversity values, indigenous cultural values and forest carbon values (including economic) must be thoroughly assessed and protected by any Forest Management Plan prior to its implementation.
• The plan must be supported by reformed governance arrangements that enable effective prosecution and enforcement where breaches occur (including where DEC activities lead to breaches).

Thank you for considering the points made in this submission.