Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I move –
That the report Vanishing Wildlife, the Impact of Native Forest Logging by Dr Jennifer Sanger be considered and noted.
I thought it was important that Council have an opportunity to read and hear a little bit about this excellent but brief report, Vanishing Wildlife – the Impact of Native Forest Logging, which is primarily the work of Dr Jen Sanger from the Tree Project. She worked with the Wilderness Society in Hobart. Members will see from the copy that was left on their chairs this morning, the methodology behind this report and its findings is very clearly explained and it is a heavily referenced and scientifically robust piece of work. I say that as a preface because I can almost hear now what the government’s response to this report and its findings will be, because when in doubt, rather than deal with the substance on the evidence and the facts, when it is a bit cornered, this government gets a bit personal.
What we know is that in the past 50 years almost three-quarters of the wild animals living on this planet had disappeared. Here in Tasmania we still clear fell, burn and woodchip old forests that are habitat homes to species you will not find anywhere else on the planet.
Before I begin, I seek the leave of the Council to table Vanishing Wildlife, Dr Jen Sanger’s report.
Leave granted.
The report finds that more than 300,000 native animals are killed or displaced by native forest logging each year, and Dr Sanger goes through the methodology of how she reached this determination. Hundreds of thousands of mammals, birds, lizards and frogs are killed or displaced each year. Wildlife is often killed by machinery, and the ones that do survive are faced with massive habitat loss. There is also the burning of logged areas, culling or wildlife that is killed by logging trucks that increasingly are being driven at night. I quote here from the report:
Mature forests, particularly ones that contain hollow bearing trees, are extremely important for wildlife. Eucalypt trees can take hundreds of years to form hollows. Logging removes old hollow bearing trees, which many birds and animals, as we know, rely on for shelter and nesting. Healthy, intact forests are necessary for wildlife. Logging has increasingly fragmented landscapes, leaving only small patches of mature forest behind. In the Southern Forests production area, the average width of a patch of mature forest is only 200 metres. These small patches of forest provide poor habitat for animals and are more prone to fire and wind damage.
Dr Sanger observes from long experience that the laws that protect wildlife in Tasmania from logging are extremely weak.
I will pause here for a moment to remind members that native forest logging is exempt from the provisions of the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Current policies only cover threatened and endangered species and they do a poor job of protecting them. More common species are not often considered when it comes to impacts such as logging.
Dr Sanger points out that mature forests are critical habitat for wildlife. They contain the large, older trees, the old hollows, and decaying logs, and they form rich ecosystems that provide food including, and this is particularly important for swift parrots, nectar. Of course, it is because of the logging of native forests that the fastest parrot on earth, the critically endangered swift parrot is teetering on the brink of extinction. We could save that parrot by making a decision as a state to transition away from native forest logging and stick to plantation products. It is a political choice we are talking about here that drives 300,000 animals to their deaths each year.
A lot of what happens when a forest is logged takes place out of sight and out of mind, but the vast majority of habitat features in old forest areas are lost or burned. The understorey is destroyed by fire, which creates a whole other layer of damage to ecosystems and the native creatures that live in them.
As anyone who drives around and looks at forested areas, or formerly forested areas that are now under tree plantations, knows, old forests are invariably not being repaired or restored. The plantings that happen are monocultures that provide no habitat for wildlife like the masked owl. Dr Sanger also makes it very clear that we need a diversity of forest types to make sure we have sufficient habitat for our remarkable, globally unique native animals. We need wet and dry eucalypt forests, rainforests, and subalpine forests to provide homes for all the native species in this state. If we want to protect biodiversity here, then we need to start looking after the full diversity of forest types properly here in Tasmania.
For anyone who does not think that biodiversity matters or that it is just a word, we are all connected, we are all part of the web of life, and every myriad creature on this complex planet that we live on is part of the whole. Once you start destroying habitats, once we start driving species to extinction, we are, in fact – it is no exaggeration to say – marching closer towards our own demise.
Dr Sanger makes it clear that intact ecosystems are important. Undisturbed forests are the best quality habitat for wildlife. Mature forests provide homes. Many animals use hollows, including microbats, frogs, lizards, possums, owls and parrots. In Tasmania, there are 13 mammal species and 29 bird species that need hollows for breeding and shelter. They simply cannot survive without them. If you consider the fact that every year Tasmania exports around one million tonnes of native forest woodchips or whole logs, that is a lot of old forest that has been clear‑felled, burned, and sent on ships to other places. More than that, it is a lot of habitat that we allow to be destroyed each year, through a political choice. Hollows take a long time to form in trees. They can take a century or more. In fact, you can go into what you think is quite an old forest and find not many hollows at all because they are a tree’s unique response to dropping a limb and the ageing out of the inside of where the break was. Hollows are precious habitat.
After the logging, we also have culling, where shooters go into these coupes. It is often the macropods – wallabies – and possums that are being killed in these culling exercises because the forestry companies do not want these animals to eat the newly planted monoculture seedlings. About 250,000 animals are estimated to be killed or displaced by loss of habitat alone. It is machinery, the logging, the burning, the loss of shelter, and the impact on waterways. The research that Dr Sanger cites in her extensive list of references shows that the number of animals is lower in areas that have been recently logged and these areas contain fewer species. This includes owls and other birds, rodents, beetles, and snails. In some cases, animal numbers have been found to be lower in areas that were logged 25 years ago. There are some species like fairy wrens and wallabies that prefer open areas that might be higher in recently logged places, but for the majority of native species, recently logged coupes are barren and unable to sustain their lives.
It is estimated that the burning of coupes kills or displaces about 32,500 animals each year, and the culling of about 19,500 animals each year. Put this on top of the information that the Greens extract pretty much every year in budget Estimates about the wholesale slaughter of animals under the property protection or the crop protection permits. There have been lists of tens of thousands of animals that are shot each year that contain echidna and platypus. Now, I cannot understand why any landowner would think a platypus was worth killing.
Ms Forrest – I have not seen any platypus eating crops.
Ms O’CONNOR – Well, I am happy to give you the list from last year, Ms Forrest, but there have been platypus on the property protection permit kill list. There are also black swans, Cape Barren geese, bandicoots, the list goes on.
On top of this massive impact of native forest logging in a world that is moving on from this, we also have a lazy policy response to the need for farmers to be able to grow productive crops. It is not just farmers who are using these crop protection permits. I spend a bit of time down on the Tasman Peninsula and it is property owners who are not necessarily farming much who are out shooting on a Friday and Saturday night down on the peninsula.
Log trucks are estimated to kill 3600 animals each year and some of them will be critically endangered like the Tasmanian devil who are semi‑frequent roadkill victims. Again, all of this is cumulative, and it is on top of the fact that we have huge numbers of roadkill each year. Part of the reason we have so much roadkill on our roads is because we have been a haven to some extent, for wildlife. There have been enough habitat pockets for our wildlife to flourish and it is interesting talking to tourists or reading letters to the editor when they see the number of dead animals on our roads and to be able to explain to them part of that is because we are lucky. We have not like so many other jurisdictions had such a wholesale and successful war on nature, but we are working on it here. It is invariably wildlife on this island that is paying the cost for a government that has failed to protect our environment other than the bare minimum.
Of course, logging can impact on wildlife downstream for many kilometres, creating disturbances and turbidity. Dirt is washed into waterways, reduced water quality, and, of course, these little streams and rivers are habitat for native fish.
In the north-west of Tasmania, they are the only home on earth for Astacopsis Gouldi (ok), the giant freshwater crayfish that lives in the rivers that run into the Bass Strait. Yet the logging of takayna continues.
I did not want to end my contribution without talking about the next massive cumulative impact on our wildlife – which are wildfires induced by increasing global heating. Climate change is intensifying and this will have a very significant impact on us as Tasmanians and on our communities. It will also have a huge impact on our wildlife. A huge number of koalas died during the Black Summer bushfires and that single-kill event was severe enough to place the once common koala on the endangered species list.
That is what we are facing here. That is how close the risk is to species that we assume will be with us forever. We all grew up thinking the koalas would always be part of Australia and now they are in danger.
We do have to consider all species in preparing for climate change. Of course, the focus to some extent on the part of the government is on critically endangered and endangered or vulnerable species, but it is the whole mix of wildlife that deserves our attention and a policy response because they, obviously, have no voice themselves. We make the laws in here. We hold the government to account for its policies and this slaughter is happening out of sight and out of mind. Most people have no idea that somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 Tasmanian animals each year are dying as a direct result of native forest logging. I believe most Tasmanians, and it would not matter their politics, if you told them and laid out the evidence, they would be appalled and would want the government to take some action to stop it and save our wildlife.
Some of the work that Dr Sanger did that has really raised the government’s ire and it is work, of course, that is backed by Professor Brendan Mackey from the Australian National University; Professor Andrew Macintosh, also from ANU; found that logged and young forests are much more combustible and susceptible to fire. Recently logged forests in Tasmania are showing that the forests that regrow after logging contain young, highly flammable eucalypt trees that easily combust in a fire, whereas mature forests in comparison usually have a wet rainforest understory that is a lot less likely to burn. It just makes sense, so when you hear the government get up shortly and take strips off a respected scientist for their work, remember this work is directly challenging government policy with evidence. It is not just evidence that has come about as a result of this excellent scientist’s work; it is the evidence compiled by highly regarded and in some cases internationally regarded Australian scientists, who have demonstrated – in fact not just in one paper – that when we log mature forests, we increase the fire risk to communities, to landscape and, obviously, to wildlife. If we ended native forest logging – like a human rights act for Tasmania, that day will come – Victoria is on that path, or they have technically done it, but there is still some logging apparently happening; WA has already done it and we will do it here too. We will end native forest logging in Tasmania, because not unlike the greyhound racing industry, for example, it is an industry which is losing its social licence. People can see there are alternatives; there are alternatives in a global market that are much more appealing to buyers. Buyers, unless they are unscrupulous or come from countries that do not care where they get the product from, want to know chain of custody; they want to know the sustainability of the timber that they are buying and plantation timber receives a premium price.
In conclusion, Dr Sanger says: (tbc 3.51)
Biodiversity loss is a critical issue. Many of the factors that lead to species decline, such as climate change, are often hard to control, but one thing that we can do is to protect the forest habitat of our fellow creatures. This will give our wildlife the best fighting chance for the future.
Finally, Dr Jen Sanger – and I say this as preface to what we are about to hear – is a great Tasmanian. She works really hard in the forests; takes lots of groups in there; young people. In fact, she was the host for when we took the most immediate recent US ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, into the forest. Dr Jen Sanger was our host. Ambassador Kennedy listened very closely to what Dr Sanger had to say. There was a recognition there of her experience, her knowledge and her authority about the Tasmanian forest landscape.
Jen goes into those forests; she pays very close attention, applying her scientific eye. She gives nature a voice through reports such as this. That voice is backed by hard, robust science. You know when the government starts attacking scientists, they are on the wrong track. They are losing, because ultimately, science does not care what we think. Facts are facts. Science does not care about our opinions. It does not care about politics. The truth of science cannot be denied. The fact is that native forest logging is destroying our ecosystems and it is sending hundreds of thousands of creatures that you will not find anywhere else on Earth to their deaths.
We can do better. Tasmania can do better and our wildlife deserves better.
