Nature Conservation Council of NSW raises concerns about forest protection

07/08/2013

A coalition of environmental groups in New South Wales, Australia, has said that State Governments have failed to protect and manage forests and wildlife to the same standards that would have been required if they had stayed under federal control.

The opinions from the coalition – which includes the Nature Conservation Council of NSW – come following the release of a recent legal review entitled 'One Stop Chop: How Regional Forest Agreements Streamline Environmental Destruction', which examined the management of state forests by State Governments.

The coalition of environmental groups believe that regional forest agreements (RFA) should be abandoned and that protection powers to oversee the areas should be given back to the Federal Government of Australia.

Pepe Clarke, Nature Conservation Council of NSW chief executive, told Southern Weekly that the State Governments had failed in their duty to offer adequate protection to the forests and wildlife.

“We need stronger national environment laws and we need to fix the forest mess by scrapping the RFAs and creating a new model of protection and management,” he told the publication.

Some of the failings listed in the report include a lack of state protection for endangered species living in the forests, as well as the ability to alter forest management procedures to take into account new information or conditions.

Other failings noted included a distinct lack of public participation in environmental protection as well as poor RDA operation reviews.

“RFAs were supposedly about protecting the environment while supporting forestry workers, but this review shows that they’ve been used to prop up unprofitable logging companies at the expense of our precious forests and the wildlife they nurture,” Jess Beckerling from WA Forest Alliance, told the Nature conservation Council of NSW.