INTENSE protests against the logging of regrowth hardwood on private property on the North Coast are creating a frightening precedent which puts routine primary production practices under threat, farming and timber industry leaders have warned.
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They say agricultural industries need to become more active in demanding tougher law enforcement and prosecution of protesters who break laws.
The calls come in the wake of the death last week of an experienced forestry worker after tree parts fell on him at an operation near Lismore.
Fellow loggers say the death was a direct result of protest action.
He was required to be much closer to felling activity than what would be normal practice to warn his co-workers of potential protester presence in the vicinity, the loggers said.
Logging contractors on Friday wrapped up the four-week operation which saw 34 loads, or 600 to 700 cubic metres of regrowth blackbutt destined for the domestic timber flooring market, cut on a private property at Whian Whian.
The operation, close to world heritage-listed rainforest, came under heavy protester attention from the start, with activists from as far as Tasmania setting up camp at the edge of the property saying trees being felled were habitats for endangered species.
The Forestry Corporation of NSW was engaged to harvest the timber and subcontracted Casino operation Armfield’s Logging to assist.
Protest group spokeswoman Sue James denied campaigners had ever entered the property.
Police made two arrests for trespassing earlier in the operation. Not guilty pleas have been entered, with the case due to be heard in January.
The Forestry Corporation said the operation was run in accordance with an Environment Protection Authority-approved property vegetation plan (PVP) and forestry operations plan and in line with the private native forestry (PNF) code of practice for northern NSW.
The site was inspected by the EPA before operations began and on a number of occasions during operations, a spokesman from the corporation said.
“Prescriptions were put in place for known threatened species and we identified and retained preferred koala trees. Over half of the area was protected for habitat,” he said.
However, activists claim there were breaches of the code.
They also say landowners are misled in their belief that existing legislation, and the EPA, was protecting flora and fauna.
That has raised the ire of both farmers and the timber industry who say the PNF Code of Practice, introduced in 2007, is over-prescriptive and had, in many cases throughout NSW, made harvesting timber in conjunction with running livestock impossible.
NSW Farmers Conservation Re-source Management Committee spokeswoman Bronwyn Petrie said the code stipulated excessive tree retentions per hectare as well as exclusions for habitat trees, recruitment trees for each of those habitat trees, seed trees and root trees, rocky outcrops, riparian zones and threatened species.
“It also contains insulting limitations on routine agricultural management practices where there is a private native forest (PVP),” she said.
“The current legislation shows little recognition of generational management practices and the good environmental outcomes achieved by this.”
Ms Petrie said the owner of the Whian Whian land had jumped through all those “green tape” hoops and it was an unacceptable situation that extreme protest action had still been permitted to affect the viability of the operation.
“As landholders, we are not happy with the code but we are not over-riding it,” she said.
“Landowners and their workers should not be placed in a situation where protesters can interrupt perfectly legal primary production operations and endanger lives.”
