Forestry Tasmania fails FSC

Fail on key environmental criteria for Forestry Tasmania’s FSC bid – Proposed solutions quite inadequate

Forestry Tasmania has proved completely inadequate in their FSC audit, released today, on key environmental criteria of:

  • rare and threatened species management – especially the Swift Parrot and Masked Owl,
  • old growth forest logging, and
  • identification and management of high conservation values at both the coupe level and across the landscape they control.

The solutions promoted by Forestry Tasmania to these major non-conformances are totally inadequate, and clearly have not satisfied the FSC auditors who have refused to grant certification in current circumstances.

“Forestry Tasmania completely failed to even identify that the Swift Parrot was an endangered species they needed to manage when they released their management plans prepared for their bid to obtain Forest Stewardship Council certification, and belatedly backed off logging Bruny for the time being whilst refusing to get out of logging all the breeding habitat as is required to give this species a chance to survive,” said Peg Putt, CEO of Markets For Change. “No wonder they haven’t been approved.”

“Forests in the Kermandie Divide and on the East coast are also vital for the Swift Parrot, but Forestry Tasmania has been claiming that they can’t meet wood supply volumes and also protect the bird. It is clear that to meet the FSC standard there will need to be further, permanent constraints on production volumes.”

“Continuing to clearfell old growth forest for another six months has been misleadingly presented by FT as an effort to comply, when actually it’s a liquidation strategy for outstanding ancient forests.”

“Getting it wrong on high conservation values at both the coupe level and across the landscape is a stunning failure to know or care beyond trying to greenwash their performance. Serious political will to actually implement thoroughgoing changes is required, and this will substantially alter the character and volume of operations in natural forests,” Ms Putt concluded.

Markets For Change, together with the Bob Brown Foundation and Tasmanian Conservation Trust, identified serious shortcomings in all the areas now subject to non-conformances in confidential reports given to SCS Global, the FSC auditors, when they visited Tasmania in late 2014, when we also took them on a field trip to see the problems first hand.

Media release Peg Putt

 

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