Stripping Tasmania of ancient forests and endangered species habitat fails to gain FSC for Forestry Tasmania
The Bob Brown Foundation will continue to call for secure protection for endangered species and native forests in the wake of Forestry Tasmania’s comprehensive failure to gain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.
“Forestry Tasmania has failed to gain FSC certification due to their woefully destructive logging practices. These include an ongoing clearfell and burn regime for old growth forests, fundamental failure to assess and monitor rare, threatened and endangered species and inadequate protection of high conservation values. FSC found that Forestry Tasmania regularly fails to even identify rare, threatened and endangered species in logging areas, let alone protect them adequately,” Bob Brown Foundation Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.
“Species like the Swift Parrot, Masked Owl and Wedge-Tailed Eagle, to name only a few, have been pushed to the brink of extinction by decades of government sanctioned clearing of Tasmania’s forests. It’s only now, when Forestry Tasmania are trying to gain market acceptance, that this legacy is being acknowledged,” Jenny Weber said.
“Forestry Tasmania still has Swift Parrot and Masked Owl habitat in their logging schedules, they still have ancient rainforests in the Tarkine on the chopping block and high conservation values across the state are threatened by the intensified logging they are carrying out at taxpayers’ expense,” Jenny Weber said.
“An attempt to change logging practices in ‘old growth’ forests, mooted by Forestry Tasmania, is nothing more than a fig leaf for the appalling practices Tasmania has endured for decades,” Jenny Weber said.
“The future for Tasmania’s native forests is to leave them standing, securely protected for their enormous value as carbon stores and tourism drawcards,” Jenny Weber said.
The Bob Brown Foundation, together with Markets for Change 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.
Originally Published at http://www.bobbrown.org.au/fails_fsc_for_forestry_tasmania