Ecological Blog

The Victorian State Government has just revealed a deal with Hancock Victorian Plantations to pay $5.5 million to protect 20,000 ha of native forest in the Strzelecki Ranges.
The ink is hardly dry on the agreement announced by Environment Minister Gavin Jennings and Hancock CEO Linda Sewell and we have only seen the press release.  There hasn't been time to analyse the detail of the agreement and as the community was excluded from the negotiations it's likely there will some difficulties with new players not understanding the background. The community will need to look at it closely to see if it is likely to achieve the level of biodiversity protection required.

The announcement will permit 1500ha to be logged from the Cores and Links which is around 600ha more than would have been logged in the Reserve under the HoA.  It appears that College Creek, a site of National Conservation Significance, will not be protected under the deal.
One disturbing point is that Ms Sewell refers to the arrangement as an 'in principle agreement' with a final agreement expected to be signed around July.

The company's track record in honouring non-binding agreements is hardly inspiring. It signed an 8 point agreement, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding, it signed a...

Tags: hancock victorian plantations, rainforest, strzelecki forest

The Friends of Bass Valley Bush Inc submission  to the State Government's green paper on Land and Biodversity calls for a change in the way our catchments are managed. The current fragmented approach is a result of a complete inconsistency in skill levels within Catchment Management Authorities.

Some understand what they are doing but others don't seem to have a clue. In the case of West Gippsland, they are always trying to reinvent the wheel - the only problem is that every model they come up with is square -  and made of concrete (so not only won't it roll, no-one can even lift the damn thing). Regional bodies need to be retained as committees of an organisation with State-wide responsibilities and vision to prepare management plans. All those plans should meet the same standards overseen by the body which may well be a re-vamped Victorian Catchment Management Council.

Funding is also an issue. The CMA's should not control Federal  purse strings for landscape-scale programs, especially those which cross boundaries between CMA's. A big difficulty for some time has been that the rhetoric around protection of native vegetation being the number one priority has not been reflected in funding. If just a tenth of the money allocated...

Tags: caring for our country, catchment management, land and biodiversity

A petition is now active at
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/strzelecki/
to ask the Victorian State Government to honour its election promise to create a rainforest reserve in the Strzelecki
Ranges and protect sensitive areas from logging. The problem is that a previous Victorian Government hit on the bright idea of raising revenue by selling off state-owned forests to private enterprise.
When it was pointed out to them that they couldn't sell Crown Land they quickly arranged perpetual leases for the logging companies.
Some of the land should never have been sold (leased) because of its ecological values and it took years of active lobbying to get the Government and Hancock Victorian Plantations  to acknowledge that.
A deal was organised with the help of Minister Thwaites to buy-back the most important bits of the rainforest - identified by independent consultants - for $7 million.
Everything looked sweet, then the Minister and the Premier resigned. The company seized the opportunity to lobby the new Minister and try to screw a better deal.
All we are asking is for the State Government to honour the agreement it made, which was part of its policy platform at the last election, to pay $7 million for an 8000 hectare...

Tags: hancock, rainforest, strzeleckis

The latest photos of  Hancock Victorian Plantations logging practicesin the Strzeleckis can be seen at http://www.hancock.forests.org.au/docs/08may.htm plus some of the latest press coverage.

Tags: hancocks, rainforest, strzeleckis

The deadline of May 2 imposed by Hancocks to finalise the deal for the Victorian State Government to buy-back the Cores & Links in the Strzeleckis has passed - but apparently the Government and the company are still talking.

It's hard to get any information out of them as the community has been excluded from the continuing negotiations. All we know from Minister Jennings' staff is that they "are in discussions to meet the Government's election commitments."

The deal won't be acceptable unless it broadly accords with the Heads of Agreement which was signed by all parties prior to the lengthy negotiations which led to the arrangement approved by the previous Environment Minister, John Thwaites, to hand over $7 million to the company to protect the key areas.  The plan was announced as Government policy to establish a reserve which would be managed by Trust for Nature. That is still a non-negotiable position.

Persistent rumours from DS&E have been floating around for months that the Minister is preparing to hand the Cores and Links area over to Vic Forest (after it has been logged by Hancocks to meet the shortfall it claims it has in its contractual obligations to the Maryvale Pulp Mill). The 'shortfall' is one of those...

Tags: hancocks, logging, strzeleckis