A Promise Broken, a Victory Lost: the scandal of Wombat Forest logging

In the 1990s I was active in opposing the logging of the Wombat Forest.

In 1999, the Bracks government was elected, and in 2002 promised to end that logging, this being one of the conditions of receiving Greens preferences at that year's election.

John Thwaites (the Deputy Premier) announced the phasing out of the logging, with woodchipping ending immediately and final removal of sawlogs completed in 2006.

In 2019, during the VEAC process, the Minister stated, in writing, that no sawlogs would be taken out of the Wombat.

In 2019, the Victorian government announced that native forest logging would end in the State by 2030.

Last year, the premier, Dan Andrews, accepted, in part, the VEAC recommendations, and promised a national park for the Wombat.

However, there has now commenced, out of the blue, industrial scale logging in the very area proposed for the national park.

There are to be 175 logging coupes, so the undertaking is enormous. One of the coupes will carve through the very point where John Thwaites made his announcement to the community.

The coupes extend into areas that were never allowed to be logged even in the dark days of the Kennett era – in particular riparian zones and Special Protection Zones for threatened wildlife.

The first coupe logged had greater gliders present – no buffer zone was left around their habitat. Instead of leaving the required 100 metre buffer zone, machinery was working next to a tree with a wedge tailed eagle nest. Entire creeks have been compromised by bulldozing through them, compacting soil and disrupting drainage.

Despite the spin, this is not a ’salvage’ operation in any sense. VicForests is going in to get the large trees they were never allowed to take under the Kennett regime.

Numerous studies now show that:
1. logging of native forest increases fire risk, as the resultant regrowth is drier, sparser, and more fire-prone;
2. logging of native forest reduces water yield from that forest for the next 150 years, as regrowing trees take up water;
3. logging of native forest, particularly Victorian eucalypt forest, is one of the most carbon polluting activities humans undertake, as it releases some 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The values that justified the dedication of this area as a national park are now being destroyed by VicForests.

VicForests remains an ongoing source of scandal. The Courts have repeatedly held that it has breached the law in its logging operations. It is now being investigated for spying on citizens. From the destruction of our forest heritage it has not even been able to generate a profit, let alone the kind of yield one would expect from so valuable a resource – assuming you valued it only for money.

Native forest logging employs very few people, and the favoured treatment this industry receives from government adversely impacts on the plantation sector by unfair competition that depresses prices. Plantations are already well able to supply all our needs from timber.

Has the Andrews government lost control of its logging agency, or is this agency doing its bidding?

Dirty deals

Mining brown coal in the Latrobe Valley

In 1840 Count Paul de Strzelecki travelled through the ranges that now bear his name in South Gippsland. So dense was the forest cover that his party was reduced to felling trees and walking along the fallen trunks - far above the ground on a tangle of vegetation. They reached Westernport Bay a month late, with almost no equipment left, and starving.

Most of that forest was cleared in the 19th and 20th centuries, but there are a few magical patches left - especially in the Tarra-Bulga National Park, where I spent some holidays as a child.

20 million years ago, the forests covering what is now the Latrobe Valley were very similar to the forests through which Strzelecki struggled. As trees died and plant material compacted, they slowly formed brown coal. The layers of brown coal there are up to 400 metres thick. In places it is possible to see entire tree trunks in the upper layers where digging machines are cutting away at the deep seam.

The brown coal layer forms an insulation blanket, and research is under way to see whether the much higher temperatures below that blanket can be used to provide geothermal energy: if so, it will be important to keep the brown coal in place, so we don't let the heat dissipate.

But this week Victorian company Environmental Clean Technologies (don't you just love that name?) has signed the first deal to export Victorian brown coal. The company will send up to 20 million tonnes of processed brown coal to Vietnam every year. (ECT has also been involved in the oxymoronic "clean coal" business.)

Last year the Victorian Government stopped a similar export deal. But they have been studiously silent about this one.

Gillard government Trade Minister Simon Crean - who could veto the export - said that the export of brown coal was good for the economy.

He probably won't be around when we are dealing with the jobs lost from the Great Barrier Reef tourism industry - or the countless other benign industries which will be ruined by climate change.

Starting a new industry of shipping our dirty brown coal into third world countries to burn for fuel is crazy policy.

The signs of the climate crisis are in our face, and yet we are acting as though it is only a question of the money we can make now.

We've just seen a change of national leadership because of a failure to act on the climate crisis. This is a test of our new leadership.

It's almost a test of sanity.

External Links

• Brumby's Dirty Secret: Coal for Export - The Age
• Brown Coal "Facts" - Victorian Department of Primary Industries
• La Trobe Valley Brown Coal - Victorian Department of Primary Industries
• The problem with brown coal - Environment Victoria
• Tapping the La Trobe Valley's Geothermal Potential - the National Interest
• Green Groups Angry at Coal Export Plan
• PM Gillard's first challenge
• Anger over coal export deal
• Coal Exports good for the economy: Crean