VicForests

VicForests[1] is a state-owned business responsible for the sustainable harvesting, regrowth, and commercial sale of timber from Victoria's state forests on behalf of the Victorian Government.

It was created as a state body under Section 14 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1992[2] by the Victorian Government, being declared a state business corporation on 28 October 2003.[3]

It operates within designated areas of state forest that are managed by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA).

DEECA has custodial or ownership rights over Public Land in Victoria and is responsible for managing Victoria's entire publicly owned state forest estate. It is also responsible for regulating compliance of VicForests' activities in accordance with the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014 (as amended 2022) (the Code).[4]

VicForests conducts all its harvesting operations under the Australian Forestry Standard on sustainable forest management.[5]

The Australian Forestry Standard is endorsed by the international Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) – the largest such system in the world which covers more than 300 million hectares of forest, has 49 national members, and equates to around two-thirds of the world's total certified forest area.[6]

VicForests has maintained this certification since 2007, and undertakes regular independent audits to monitor its management systems and operations in accordance with the standard.[7]

Despite repeated efforts, VicForests has failed to obtain certification with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Its operations were most recently assessed by independent auditors in 2019, but it was found ineligible to join the scheme owing to concerns over old growth logging, threatened species protection and its engagement with stakeholders.[8]  Although the audit was conducted independently and before the 2019-20 bushfires, VicForests blamed 'public activism and advocacy' by three FSC directors, as well as bushfires for its failure to gain certification.[9]

Whilst proponents of the native timber industry contribute hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs to regional Victoria each year,[10] other analyses see it as costing more money than it makes.  A 2018 study by Forest and Wood Products Australia estimated some 1639 direct jobs in Victorian native forest logging, and 4792 jobs altogether, including production and consumption-induced jobs.[11]

For the financial year through 2021-22 VicForests generated $88.4 million in sales across its timber operations.[12] This is to be contrasted with an operating loss of $54.2m for that same financial year. In its financial report, VicForests' CEO stated that its failure to meet supply targets was ''largely because injunctions granted in legal proceedings made harvesting in many planned coupes unviable or prohibited harvesting altogether." Also blamed for the loss was the cost of litigation, stand down payments to contractors and compensation to customers.[13]

Coupe burns

Following timber harvesting activities, VicForests works with Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) to conduct controlled burning. This partnership also includes the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), Parks Victoria, and Melbourne Water. VicForests also works alongside the Country Fire Authority.[14]

Whilst intended to help reduce the fuel hazard to below pre-harvest levels, these coupe burns are controversial, and have been termed industrial pollution with serious health consequences.[15]

Bushfire danger

Some peer reviewed papers, such as Keenan et al. (2021), have found that bushfires were not made worse by timber harvesting activities. Bushfires themselves are creating the most significant change to forest age and structure. The area affected by timber harvesting is vastly smaller than the area impacted by bushfires.[16]

However, other studies indicate that logging worsens the severity of bushfires in the long term. "Taking timber from forests dramatically changes their structure, making them more vulnerable to bushfires," according to one group of ecologists.[17]

• In 2021, ABC News detailed how VicForests had hired a private investigator in 2011 to spy on the activities of a forest protestor, Sarah Rees.[18] VicForests responded to the news report by saying it had "found no evidence to substantiate claims by Ms Rees."[18]  A subsequent investigation by the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) concluded that the agency did conduct unlawful surveillance of the environmentalist, which 'seriously and flagrantly contravened information Privacy Principle'.[19] Nevertheless, VicForests continued to deny any wrongdoing.

•  Ms Rees' efforts to gain evidence herself from VicForests through Freedom-Of-Information requests from 2020 onwards were repeatedly thwarted, leading to the Victorian Information Commissioner to conclude in 2023 that the agency had contravened the Freedom-of-Information Act. In response, VicForests argued "it did not need to apologise, and did not accept the commissioner's findings that it breached the law."[20]

•  In November 2021, ABC News alleged VicForests had logged steep slopes in water catchment areas, in contravention of the law. VicForests denied the allegation.[21]

•  In November 2022, ABC News showed that VicForests was logging old growth forest, despite a pledge by the state government in 2019 to cease all such logging.[22]

•  In November 2022, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers published a story alleging that areas supposedly protected as Greater Glider habitat were in fact already logged.[23]

•  VicForests purportedly regrows all harvested areas with the same type of forest that was originally there.[24] In 2021 ABC News published a report showing many logged areas were failing to regenerate.[25] This led to extra funding by the Victorian government to assist regeneration of logged coupes.[26]

•  On 9 and 10 June 2021, Victoria experienced a significant storm event which caused extensive damage across Gippsland, Southern Metropolitan Melbourne, the Dandenong Ranges and Central Victoria.[27] A subsequent major storm event on 29 October 2021 caused further damage across the state.[28] As a consequence, VicForests was engaged by the government to log areas under the guise of salvage logging. This included Wombat State Forest, an area that the government had promised to make into a national park,[29]  as well as Dandenong Ranges National Park. Forest ecologist David Lindenmayer remarked on this with surprise: ''I've never heard of this happening in a national park in Australia - it's entirely inappropriate."[30]

In its 2020 Annual Report, VicForests gave a summary of 5 legal proceedings in which it was the defendant. These were brought by the Flora and Fauna Research Collective, Friends of Leadbeaters' Possum, Wildlife of the Central Highlands, Warburton Environment and Kinglake Friends of the Forest.[31]

In May 2020, the Leadbeaters' case ended in a legal loss for VicForests in the Federal Court.

The central breach of the Code found that VicForests did not comply with precautionary principle laws in certain forests where Greater Gliders are living, because those logging operations do not avoid serious or irreversible damage to the species wherever practical.[32]

VicForests appealed the decision to the full Federal Court. Out of the 31 grounds on which it appealed, it won only one: the court found that VicForests' logging operations are still exempt from federal environment law under Regional Forest Agreements, even when they are in breach of state law.[32]

In November 2022, VicForests lost three court cases. One was the Warburton Environment case, concerning the protection of a threatened plant species called Tree Geebung. The other two cases were new and brought by Environment East Gippsland and Kinglake Friends of the Forest (heard together by the court owing to their similarity.) This was about the adequacy of the protection for two endangered possum species, the Greater Glider and Yellow-bellied Glider.[33]

This last case resulted in the cessation of logging operations throughout Victoria in November 2022 until new surveying techniques could be implemented by VicForests.[34]

On 6 November 2019, the Victorian Government announced the transition from native timber harvesting by 2030 to a plantation-based sector as part of its Victorian Forestry Plan (VFP).[35]

The phase out would have seen VicForests' total harvest levels maintained at approximately the current levels until 2024, then reduced by around 25% in 2025, and a further 25% from 2026 to 2030.[36]

However, on 23 May 2023, the Victorian government announced that logging of native forests would instead cease on 1 January 2024. The date was brought forward owing to ''uncertainty that has been caused by ongoing court and litigation process and increasingly severe bushfires."[37]