Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I rise tonight to provide the House with a very important research paper from researchers at the Australian National University, published in the journal Nature, Quantifying forest degradation, deforestation and land use change in vital swift parrot breeding habitat. This paper quantifies the extent to which swift parrot habitat has been destroyed in recent decades and discusses the drivers of habitat loss.
The findings of the paper are sobering. More than 37 per cent of the swift parrots breeding range was permanently deforested prior to 2000. Since then, a quarter of the swift parrots’ breeding range has been disturbed, degraded or permanently deforested. Production forestry has been the main driver of forest loss, and rates of forest loss doubled after the Hodgman Liberal government introduced the Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Act 2014.
The report makes clear the effects of forest degradation versus deforestation on the extinction risk of the swift parrot. We all understand what impact deforestation has on swift parrot habitat. Clear‑felling and land conversion removes habitat entirely from the ecosystem. Degradation refers to instances where total forest area may remain constant, but the quality of the forest in terms of its:
… structure, function, composition and capacity to provide ecosystem services [ok]
is reduced. Swift parrots need spatially diverse, unbroken stretches of forest with large, structurally complex old growth trees with nesting hollows and other features that provide them with protection. Forestry practices in Tasmania either clear‑fell and log swift parrot habitat entirely or fragmented, leaving isolated islands of:
… retained habitat that are functionally useless to Swift parrots.
People in this place love to remind the Greens that forests regrow. Forests do regrow, but a 25‑year‑old regrowth forest is incredibly different to a 300‑year‑old growth forest. It is in the latter forests that swift parrots find habitat, not in the former 25‑year‑old types of forests. I quote this important research:
Land use and change analysis shows that production forestry is the dominant anthropogenic driver of forest loss, followed by forestry in areas previously or subsequently managed for conservation, and conversion of native forest to plantations.
Forestry is driving the extinction of the swift parrot. Not bushfires, not invasive species, but Forestry Tasmania operations in all their insidious forms. This is in contrast to the mainland, where bushfires and climate change are the main drivers of habitat loss. The threats to the swift parrot and all species on Earth are obviously exacerbated by climate change, but we do not need to help climate change along by removing 75 per cent of the swift parrots’ habitat ourselves by logging.
The paper shows that forest loss in swift parrot breeding areas dramatically increased after the implementation of the Liberal government’s destructive Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Act 2014. Between 2001 and 2013, the authors found the rate of forest loss in swift parrot habitat was decreasing by 139 hectares a year, and after 2014, the rate more than doubled to 329 hectares lost per year. To quote the paper, the 2014 policy change led to a notable and sustained rise in annual anthropogenic forest loss within important swift parrot breeding areas. This paper modelled a counterfactual scenario that showed that if the Liberals’ Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Act 2014 had never been implemented, the rate of forest loss in swift parrot habitat would have declined to zero by the year 2023, two years ago. I want to dwell on that point for a moment.
The Greens, environmental organisations, community members and independent scientists have worked for many years to demonstrate the scientific rationale for the Tasmanian Forest Agreement and the incredible importance of Tasmania’s forests for the conservation of species like the swift parrot. Hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars were spent on paying out forestry contractors and beginning the just transition away from native forest logging in this state. It was all undone overnight by the Hodgman Liberal government when they came to power in 2014. This paper and these researchers have rigorously and unarguably demonstrated the extinction of the swift parrot is overwhelmingly being driven by the Liberals’ abandonment of the Tasmania Forest Agreement.
I want to table this paper, which I have circulated to members beforehand,
Time expired.
The SPEAKER – The member’s time has expired. I will seek advice from Clerk on whether you can table something after the time has expired.
The question is that leave be granted.
Mr Winter – No.
Leave granted.
