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 …
‘Timber Towns’ an industry PR group, funded by the logging industry, has set up its own group of logging advisors to help those wanting to log private land. They call them “Forest Practitioners” (nice). The State Government gave yet more of our money to this mob to train a few people to oversee logging on …
You’d think every aspect of the Goolengook tale had been thoroughly chewed over. The plants, the animals, the protests, the riot, the legal wrangling, the national park proposal. But there’s one glaring question left hanging: Why did they log it? New information shows it wasn’t logs, it wasn’t jobs. Goolengook was a decoy. Potted History …
The release of the findings of the Victorian Bushfire Inquiry on 14 October should have put an end to the unsophisticated, self-interested and blame-apportioning comments that followed the 2002-3 fires. It is refreshing indeed to have the old furphies of fuel reduction, grazing, tracks and Aboriginal burning knocked on the head as ‘solutions’ to fire. …
After the illegal logging of the Snowy National Park last summer, the public was promised a full investigation and outcome. But the joke now goes: How many DSE officers does it take to do an investigation? Five. One to notice logs were stolen from 300 ha of National park, one to go “damn, we shouldn’t …
In February, when the Snowy National Park was illegally logged during the bush fires, we immediately put in a Freedom Of Information request for all relevant documents, to determine how this could have happened. We asked for: a.. Incident Management Log, b.. Any assessments done of Park values and significant trees, before clearing c.. Maps, …
Industry demands public money to salvage logs. Another logic-lacking media release put out by the logging industry in July called for more and faster access to log all the burnt forest. They claimed they needed government assistance to cart the logs long distances to their mills and maybe even money to help with storage (they …
In 1996 the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) provided figures to the public about its ‘success’ of growing back trees after forests are ravaged by clearfelling. Seven years on and DSE has released a new report to the public. This report covers regeneration attempts during the period 1993/94-1996/97 and has been delayed for years …
An EEG investigation into the auditing of a tiny percent of logging coupes for adherence to environmental logging regulations has shown there to be huge abuse of the system by DSE foresters and overseers (or gross incompetence). This is not shown in the publicly available audit findings. DSE has released the results of another audit …
Last issue’s front page story was of the needless logging of a 70 km swathe through the Snowy National Park during the January fires under the direction of a logging company boss seconded into the Department to help with fire fighting management. He was put in charge of this back burn line. Findings from …
