Blue Derby Wild serves notice of injunction.
Blue Derby Wild have issued a legal notice of injunction for the immediate cessation of logging in Krushka’s forest CC119A, citing that the Forest Practices Plan is not compliant with the current logging Code and Forest Practices Act in Tasmania
Legal advice is that the process that Sustainable Timbers Tasmania have undertaken in commencing logging of Krushka’s forest area CC119A is unlawful. This is based on the negligible public consultation of community stakeholders, and a Forest Practices Plan that is devoid of specifications required to ensure that logging contractors would understand, or undertake, measures to retain seed trees or notice Tasmanian devil and Spotted tail quoll dens while logging and take action to avoid them.
The Forest Practices Plan for Krushka’s forests does not have any mention of measures to survey, or protect, the Threatened Simsons Stag Beetle (Hoplogonus simsoni) which are only found in a small area the tall wet Gondwana forests of north east Tasmania from Krushka’s to the Blue Tier.
Sustainable Timbers Tasmania only supplied us with the final document of the Forest Practices plan a matter of days before they declared this forest an operational logging area. Restricting the public from being able to ascertain the accuracy of boundaries and buffers drawn into the small map supplied. Sustainable Timbers Tasmania did not respond to our many questions regarding the prescriptions on noted threatened species in the area, or tree fern logging until after logging had begun. Demonstrating their disregard for stakeholder consultation and environmental standards.
This Forest Practices Plan, and therefore the logging of Krushka’s forests CC119A, does not comply with the Code as it does not include all the basic features of the area listed under operational approach.
Our threat of injunction to immediately halt logging issued to Sustainable Timbers Tasmania has outlined fundamental procedural issues with the way in which this Forest Practices Plan was developed and implemented. We are calling on Premier Peter Gutwein to declare an immediate moratorium on the logging of our native forests, starting with the two Krushka’s forests CC119A as the FPP’s are not compliant with the Code.
