Private Native Forestry

What is Private Native Forestry (PNF)?

 The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change characterise PNF as:
"The management of native vegetation on privately-owned land for the purpose of obtaining, on a sustainable basis, forest products including sawlogs, veneer logs, poles, girders, piles and pulp logs.
In NSW alone, the private native forestry industry employs approximately 1800 people and is valued at between $160 million and $250 million per year. Private native forestry provides over 50% of the State’s hardwood. This hardwood is used extensively in the building and housing industries, and by tradespeople, including furniture manufacturers and arts and craft suppliers.
Private native forests are important for timber production, biodiversity conservation, water quality and yield, enhanced greenhouse gas abatement and their contribution to local economies."

Background

In August 2007, amendment were made to the Native Vegetation Regulation 2005 to provide for a Private Native Forestry Code of Practice. The Code requires PNF landholders and loggers to complete Property Vegetation Plans (PVP) that outline how PNF logging on a particular parcle of private land will comply with the provisions of the Code.
On 1 August 2008, the former Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water, Phil Koperberg gave the PNF Codes Biodiversity Certification, meaning that site by site threatened species assessments are not required and that the Code as a whole does not adversely impact upon threatened species.

Deficiencies in the Code  

• There is no secure protection for Endangered Ecological Communities.  They can be logged under an ‘ecological harvest plan’ approved by the Director General. 
• No requirement of threatened species surveys or habitat assessments of all areas prior to logging.  
• Does not strictly protect mapped oldgrowth and rainforest, or prescribe  a discretionary field test
• Does not prohibit patch-clearfelling, which is just land-clearing by stealth, and does not ensure that areas approved for private native forestry become ineligible for any future land-clearing
• Does not strictly protect all rare and severely depleted ecosystems, and habitat corridors
• Does not implement strict limits on the size of trees that can be logged, especially for ironbark, cypress and river red gum and improve habitat tree retention rules. 
• Drastically improve protection for iconic River Red Gum forests, including protection of wetlands, increased riparian protection and protection for habitat corridors
• Areas that are excluded from logging are not protected in perpetuity from other damaging uses.
• Does not ensure strong protection of creek banks and gullies is not compromised in any way, and that improvements made to increase buffers are not secured. 

Transparency IN PNF Operations

Local communities play an important role in monitoring PNF operations. Community supervision should be encouraged to bolster gaps in Departmental compliance and enforcement mechanisms.
Last year, a local community west of Kempsey uncovered illegal logging occurring in their valley, including logging of trees on riverbanks and pollution of the pristine stream that they all rely on for water supply.  NCEC had obtained the logging approval under FOI (it was logged under the old native vegetation laws), and the local community was able to make a strong case to DECC that the logging was likely to be illegal.
DECC investigated, and in May the contractors were fined $4,800 for ‘pollution of waters in contravention of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997’ and ‘breach of the development consent’ for logging under the Native Vegetation Conservation Act 1997.  Without the FOI, and the provision of the approval, there would never have been any investigation because the community would not have been able to provide sufficient evidence to DECC to warrant it.
409 Property Vegetation Plans submitted to DECC by June 2008. The Environmental Defender's Office on behalf of the North Coast Environment Council made a Freedom of Information application in early 2008 to gain access to 16 PVPs. To date, access has been refused by the Department of spurious grounds and the matter is likely to be reviewed by the Administrative Decisions Tribunal.
In a bid to have a degree of transparency in the administration of the Code, Ian has asked a number of questions of the Minister. One of the key issues is the logging of old growth trees and rainforest and the Minister stated to this effect that;
"For the period 1 August 2007 to 31 March 2008, the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) has reassessed approximately 1,670 hectares of CRAFTI mapped Old Growth Forest or Rainforest. Of this area, 523 hectares have been confirmed as being correctly mapped and logging has been excluded.
An area of four hectares has been added to the area of Rainforest and one hectare of Old Growth Forest has been identified as Rainforest. Under DECC's reassessment, 1,142 hectares mapped as either Old Growth Forest or Rainforest by the CRAFTI methodology have been ground-truthed as neither Rainforest nor Old Growth Forest." 
Sydney Morning Herald Foi Reporter Matthew Moore published an article on 5 July 2008 titled 'Bureaucrats take axe to logging data'. Moore states;
"When you submit a development application to transform your house, you know the plans will be pored over by neighbours anxious to find out what you are up to. It used to be the same in the country when you wanted to log the back paddock, but not any more.
On the North Coast, the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change, under its minister, Verity Firth, has reversed the long-standing practice of releasing details about logging operations on private land."
The object of the PNF Code highlights the public interest in PNF operations by acknowledging the “prevention of environmental harm and the provision of environmental services for the common good”. Withstanding that the operations occur on private land, the community remains an undeniable stakeholder in the protection of habitat and biodiversity on PNF land. 
Moore in his article states;
"The reason the department says the vegetation maps and logging plans must remain secret is that some landowners have called their office complaining that "people will trespass, machinery could be damaged". An unidentified staff member said landowners could be "blockaded".
As there is no history of blockades of any private property, this is pretty flaky reasoning. More importantly, if people damage machinery or commit other offences, they can be prosecuted. The fact that some unidentified person may commit an offence is no reason under the FoI Act to refuse access to information."
Environment groups and community stakeholders are yearning for a deeper understanding of PVPs, developed and submitted under the Code. This understanding is required because the NSW public have a vested interest in the viability of threatened species and endangered ecological communities.