In yesterdays news media:
A UNESCO delegation recently visited the state to assess the practices and meet with stakeholders, with a final report expected next year.
The Federal Assistant Minister for Agriculture, Senator Anne Ruston, said the logging plan would be scrapped if UNESCO did not support it.
“When they [UNESCO] bring down that report I would be really surprised if the Federal Government did anything other than respect those decisions,” she said.
With the hardline, anti-conservation Tony Abbott administration now gone the politicians are already softening up the electorate and protecting their positions in the likely event that UNESCO will continue to not support logging special timbers in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
Senator Ruston said she had some sympathy for users of specialty species timber.
“They also have an argument which is reasonable, that they have very low impact where they take those timbers from,” she said.
To forget the lessons of the last 30 years of bitter conflict over public native forest management in Tasmania would be foolish in the extreme. Tasmania has not changed and neither has our forest policy and management. Opening up the WHA to logging would be yet another forest industry disaster to add to an already long list of disasters.
Within the context of the past 30 years promises of “low impact” are utterly meaningless.
“It’s a major concern that the [special timbers] resource is now essentially behind closed doors.”
The remaining public native forest special timbers resource is “behind closed doors” precisely because of what has happened over the last 30 years.
The taxpayer-funded logging of public native forest old growth and rainforest for special timbers is over [subject to UNESCOs report].
Now when will Tasmania get a fully commercial and profitable forest industry?
Tasmania abandons World Heritage Area logging plans on UNESCO advice
Hooray!!
It’s time to break out the champagne!!
In a rare show of forest-policy commonsense the Tasmanian Government has apparently accepted the umpire’s decision and abandoned plans to log special timbers (including Tasmanian blackwood) in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA).
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-20/unesco-tasmania-abandons-world-heritage-area-logging-plans/7261350
News reports just in say the UNESCO recommendations will be accepted but that the Government was still committed to supporting the [special timbers] industry.
Here’s the Tasmanian Governments announcement on the UNESCO Report:
http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/releases/monitoring_mission_report_on_the_twwha
Here’s the single recommendation in the UNESCO report regarding logging the TWWHA and some worthwhile comments from the UNESCO Mission:
Recommendation 2
The State Party should confirm an unambiguous commitment that the property is off-limits to commercial logging in its entirety, and fully reflect this commitment in the Management Plan for the whole of the property.
The mission would like to put on record that it considers the interests of the special species timber sector per se fully legitimate and by no means excessive. Despite the regrettable lack of conclusive data, the mission finds it difficult to imagine that resource security could not be achieved in the vast forest estate available for logging outside of the TWWHA. While a mixed World Heritage property, recognized for globally significant cultural and natural heritage, is not the place to experiment in the view of the mission, there is every reason to further discuss and test sustainable forest management elsewhere in Tasmania in less polarized fashion. The political support to the special species timber industry should be channelled to areas available to commercial logging outside of the TWWHA, while fully considering that there are areas outside of the TWWHA, which are likewise of the highest conservation value, including in the Tarkine area. New approaches to manage the desired species can draw on longstanding research conducted in Tasmania and a growing body of knowledge about the ecology of the species (UNESCO, p. 13).
The concept of “outside the TWWHA” should include commercial private growers.
Here is the link to the UNESCO report:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/140379
To see my many blogs on this issue go here:
https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/?s=UNESCO
So now the State Government is faced with developing a Special Timbers Management Plan with next-to-no public special timbers resource.
http://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/forestry/special_species_timber_management_plan
What will be the next political play?
Tasmanian blackwood has been and will continue to be the backbone of the special timbers industry, and the only Tasmanian special timber species with the potential for a profitable commercial future on private land.
Will the Tasmanian Government and Parliament now look to a different future for the special timbers industry or will politics continue to reign supreme in Tasmanian forest policy?
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Posted in Commentary, Markets, Politics
Tagged Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, UNESCO, World Heritage Area logging