Dr WOODRUFF – Minister, the Wilderness Society of Tasmania has taken the Forest Practices Authority to court over their failure to protect the swift parrot, following a decision to not declare the Lonnavale forests a swift parrot important breeding area, due to potential impacts on Forestry Tasmania’s bottom line.
How can the Tasmanian community have any faith in that industry to protect the environment, when decisions are made in the interests of Forestry Tasmania’s bottom line, rather than in the protection of a critically endangered species?
Mr ELLIS – Thank you, Dr Woodruff. Obviously, the Forest Practices Authority is an independent statutory body, an independent regulator, and they are working through a process. You mentioned court proceedings, so I won’t go too much into that. I will pass to the team of State Growth, to add further.
Ms PINTO – Thank you, minister, and through you. I might just make some opening comments in terms of the framework that is in place, then if the Chair and the minister are comfortable, we can also bring up the Chief Forest Practices Officer.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you, through you minister, I do understand the framework that should be in place, but I’m concerned about the fact that the decision was made not to declare that swift parrot important breeding area because of the impacts on Forestry Tasmania’s bottom line, essentially.
Ms PINTO – As I noted, and through you minister, I will just make some opening comments. I won’t go through in detail the governing framework and then if anything further needs to be discussed, we have the opportunity to bring up the Chief Forest Practices Officer.
The objective of the forest practices system is to achieve sustainable management. It has provisions for the identification and maintenance of threatened species habitat which, of course, includes the swift parrot. It’s based on a continuous improvement process where new and relevant information is taken into consideration and management approaches for threatened species are adapted as required. It’s important to balance social, economic and environmental outcomes under the legislation, prior to making changes to threatened species management approaches.
In recent years, the approach to managing swift parrots has been adapted based on new information. This includes an interim instruction, as I am advised and as I noted, the Chief Forest Practices Officer is able to provide more detail, but I will repeat this. This includes an interim instruction from the Chief Forest Practices Officer in 2021 to seek case‑by‑case advice from the FPA for the management of swift parrot potential habitat in the Lonnavale forest area.
That’s the most that I’d note at this stage.
Dr WOODRUFF – Through you minister, if the FPA could provide any more information about that, I’d like to understand how it happened.
Ms PINTO – I will make a note that there is a current matter before the courts and, obviously, they would not be able to go into details of that particular matter. But, in this regard, through you minister, we could request the Chief Forest Practices Officer to talk in a little bit more detail the approach and mechanisms that the FPA goes through with regard to threatened species.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thanks.
Mr ELLIS – Chair, I would like to introduce Ms Anne Chuter, Chief Forest Practices Officer for the Forest Practices Authority.
Ms CHUTER – Thank you, and through you minister, as Ms Pinto alluded to, the forest practices system goes through an adaptive management process and we manage threatened species through the agreed procedures, which is agreed between the FPA and NRE Tasmania.
Through those agreed procedures, there are two pathways to managing threatened species, generally. It’s either through endorsed management agreements that are delivered through online planning tools and that includes things like range boundaries, which is the SPIBA or the Swift Parrot Important Breeding Area that you’re referring to. The other approach can be through case‑by‑case advice.
The instruction issued by the CFP at the time, back in, I think it was 2021, recognised the new information which was the increase in breeding records for the swift parrot in a lot of our forest area. That instruction had the effect of managing the risk to that species because it instructed the construction of forest practices plans in the planning phase to go back to the FPA for specialist advice through that case-by-case management approach, which is allowed for under the agreed procedures. Essentially, that’s an alternative method for managing that threatened species and that risk of the forestry operation and that’s allowed for under the agreed procedures.
In terms of the SPIBA itself, the FPA has not gone through the process of continual improvement to explicitly consider whether the Lonnavale forest block should be a SPIBA or not because the risk was managed through the case‑by‑case approach where specialist advice is sought for forestry operations where there may be an impact on swift parrot habitat within that area.
Dr WOODRUFF – Through you minister, you mentioned before the pathway including NRE Tasmania who are responsible for the swift parrot recovery plan process, I think. So, did you consult with NRE Tasmania and did they provide advice on this case‑by‑case assessment, as opposed to the proper or the normal assessment.
Ms CHUTER ‑ Both processes, the endorsed management approaches delivered through the Threatened Species Adviser, as well as case-by-case management advice, are both proper pathways under the agreed procedures, which are procedures agreed between the FPA and NRE Tasmania and that provision is made front of the Forest Practices Code and in making that CFPO instruction, NRE Tasmania would have been consulted with in terms of an appropriate pathway for managing that species and that risk in that area, and through the case-by-case advice, that is the current process for that area of the stage.
Where required, NRE Tasmania would be consulted through a specialist process in terms of the management actions required for particular coupes and the consultation will happen as required.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you. We asked the Minister for the Environment what involvement NRET had had in the decision not to declare Lonnavale a Swift Parrot-important breeding area and the secretary said NRET had had no involvement in that. I do not understand. When you say there’s a pathway that requires FPA and NRET, and NRET have said they did not provide advice, or were not consulted. I don’t understand how you could have made an assessment, a case-by-case assessment – what’s this specialist process you are talking about and can you table the conversation that you had with NRET about this area and this decision?
Ms CHUTER ‑ It’s a complicated system, so I am trying my best to explain it.
Dr WOODRUFF – Sure.
Ms CHUTER ‑ So, the SPIBA (swift parrot important breeding area) itself has not explicitly been considered. So, NRE’s response is that they have not explicitly provided advice on that that would be true, so the construction of the SPIBA, which goes through a continual improvement process, itself has not been explicitly considered.
However, I think it was 2021, when CFPI instruction was issued, the issuing of that instruction was on the basis of new records for the swift parrot occurring in the Lonnavale forest area, and the CFPO issued instruction to essentially say, and this is layman’s terms, I am not using the exact wording that was in the instruction, on receipt of this new information, this area appears to be being used for breeding events and habitat for swift parrot and, therefore, we are taking an approach to this area of the state, which is to require you to now seek case-by-case advice; because it was only recognised as the potential breeding range, the CFPO instruction had the effect of saying you need to come back to the FPA for case-by-case advice because it’s likely you’re going to have to do more habitat retention in this area of the state because of the recognition that it could support breeding habitat for the species.
Under the agreed procedures, that is an illegitimate pathway to managing threatened species in accordance with the standards under the forest practise system.
Dr WOODRUFF – In that situation, does that mean NRET does not have to provide any advice in this case-by-case situation? Is that a kind of mechanism where they do not provide any input about that? I still don’t understand, if you could just enlighten me on that bit.
Ms CHUTER ‑ The agreed procedures, they are available to read on NRE Tasmania’s website, and I think possibly the FPA’s as well, but they are publicly available and the case-by-case advice is a mechanism where it’s recognised that there is not an endorsed management approach for a particular species or a particular situation. Therefore, to be able to appropriately manage the conservation outcomes for that species within the forestry setting, the agreed procedures allows for the FPA, in consultation with NRE Tasmania where required, to deliver site-specific management recommendations, if you like.
Dr WOODRUFF – So, minister, can I summarise then, if I understand Ms Chuter’s comments ‑
CHAIR – Dr Woodruff, it’s your last question.
Dr WOODRUFF – Yes, can I summarise then that the pathway for a case-by-case assessment, which it sounds like was followed here without declaring this area a swift parrot important breeding area doesn’t necessarily require consultation with the NRE. They’ve said they weren’t consulted with or did not provide advice. I guess just to close the loop, can you then confirm that that the FPA did not seek advice from NRE to declare the forest an important breeding area?
Ms CHUTER – The process to declare –
Dr WOODRUFF – Hasn’t happened yet?
Ms CHUTER – It hasn’t happened.
Dr WOODRUFF – Is it going to happen?
MS CHUTER – It’s a process – so we have a continuing improvement adaptive management process which requires a number of steps. The Chief Forest Practices Officer instruction going through the case-by-case approach has the effect of managing that area of the forest quite carefully in terms of the impacts on the swift parrot. The habitat is required to be identified and management actions as required would be implemented.
Therefore, with all the threatened species that the FPA is required to do adaptive management for while it’s in the in the program of works – at this stage we haven’t gone through that process because other matters of taking precedent, because the case-by-case management pathway in a lot of our forest area is managing the risk to the species.
CHAIR – Mr Vermey. Dr Woodruff, you can come back to this question as well.
