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A weekend inspection of Royal Camp State Forest revealed a large numbers of breaches of Forests NSW’s Threatened Species Licence requirements – most notably logging of Koala high use areas, felling of ‘V-notch’ feed tree for Yellow-bellied Glider, failures to retain required feed trees for a range of threatened species, and failure to retain required numbers of recruitment habitat trees.  Initially we have written to the responsible Ministers, the EPA and Forests NSW asking them to stop current logging of Koala High Use areas. Open letter to the Ministers for the Environment and Forestry

MEDIA RELEASE 6/8/2012

The North East Forest Alliance has written to the Ministers for Environment and Primary Industries asking them to take urgent action to stop illegal logging being undertaken by Forests NSW of Koala high use areas in Royal Camp State Forest, 16 kilometers south-west of Casino.

Spokesperson for NEFA, Dailan Pugh, said that a weekend inspection of logging areas in Royal Camp State Forest revealed logging underway in one Koala high use area, about to enter another and proposed for two more.

“Forests NSW are prohibited from logging in Koala high use areas by their Threatened Species Licence.

“Royal Camp is known to have a large Koala population, and Forests NSW are legally required to thoroughly search for Koala scats (faecal pellets) in advance of logging in order to identify and protect Koala high use areas.

“We could see no evidence that Forests NSW had searched for scats.  Given how easily we found them in the few areas we searched, we expect they have already logged some high use areas and that we have only identified a few of the areas they are about to log.

“Unless stopped Forests NSW will continue logging this core Koala habitat today. The Ministers must act urgently.

“NEFA has identified numerous other breaches of licence requirements in Royal Camp State Forest and have asked the Ministers for their assurance that the Environment Protection Authority will prosecute Forests NSW for their failure to meet their legal obligations to protect Koalas and other threatened species” Mr. Pugh said.

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MEDIA RELEASE 30 July 2012

The Environment Protection Authority’s decision to drop its case against Forests NSW for illegally logging an Endangered Ecological Community in Doubleduke State Forest has led the North East Forest Alliance to identify them as failed regulators who are unwilling to uphold NSW’s environmental laws.

NEFA spokesperson, Dailan Pugh, said that under its previous guise of the Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (DECCW) the EPA have been supposedly investigating a variety of complaints of illegal logging in Doubleduke State Forest west of Evans Head since June 2010.

“In May 2010 the Clarence Environment Centre first complained that logging had extended into an Endangered Ecological Community at Doubleduke State Forest, though DECCW’s assessor was unable to find it.

“In June 2010 2 separate assessments by 4 botanists confirmed that logging had indeed taken place in the Endangered Ecological Community (EEC) Sub-tropical Coastal Floodplain Forest.  At one locality 20 trees were found to have been logged within it and numerous other trees and shrubs bulldozed over.

“DECCW then belatedly started to assess it.  NEFA’s concerns that they weren’t identifying additional areas led them to undertake a further assessment in October 2010 that identified 3 additional incursions into the EEC where an additional 46 trees had been logged and 1,387 other trees and shrubs had been bulldozed out of the ground, trampled by machinery, or had trees dropped on them.

“NEFA calculated that Forest NSW were potentially liable for fines of over $16 million under the National Parks and Wildlife Act where it is an offence to pick or harm endangered ecological communities.

 “It wasn’t until a year later in October 2011 that DECCW’s successor the Office of Environment and Heritage had collected what it considered sufficient expert evidence to commence legal proceedings against Forests NSW for logging 120 trees in 7.5 ha of the EEC Sub-tropical Coastal Floodplain Forest.

“OEH refused NEFA’s repeated requests to also pursue numerous other reported breaches on the grounds that they were already proceeding on one breach.

“NEFA was shocked to find out last week that the court case that was meant to start on the 23 July hadn’t taken place.  The now Environment Protection Authority told us they had decided to drop the case.  We will be seeking detailed answers when we meet with them at Lismore on Tuesday.  If they won’t protect Endangered Ecological Communities who will?

“The EPA are failed regulators.  This is the latest in a long list of environmental offences committed by Forests NSW that the EPA have failed to achieve any regulatory outcome on.

“Now that the EPA have no excuse for not proceeding on the other breaches NEFA documented in Doubleduke State Forest we challenge them to take legal action on them, particularly the logging and roading within a wetland that was meant to be protected by a 10 meter buffer, the logging and roading within a population of the endangered fern Lindsaea incisa that was meant to be protected by a 50m buffer and the failure to identify and protect Yellow-bellied Glider sap-feed trees.

“If the NSW Government is unwilling to enforce its own environmental laws then we ask that third-party appeal rights be restored so that we can” Mr. Pugh said.