Dr Peter Attiwill has a record of agreement with those who are turning our old-growth forests into export woodchips. His letter (25/2) asserting that the (environmentally disastrous) East Gippsland Regional Forests Agreement (RFA) is a "balanced outcome" therefore comes as no surprise. To say that this first RFA in Australia is "the culmination of decades of inquiries etc" is misleading. The RFA process is seriously and fundamentally flawed and pushed through with indecent haste by the like-minded and development-driven Victorian and Federal Governments.
Although Dr Attiwill asserts that the RFA "meets all of the nationally agreed criteria for comprehensive, representative and adequate reserves"(CAR), the RFA is now signed off before the CAR criteria have been finalised. It also predates World Heritage assessment. And what does "nationally agreed criteria" mean, given RFAs are cosy agreements between mutually supportive State and Federal Governments?
In reality, the RFA has entrenched greatly increased rates of woodchipping of one of the world's best remaining areas of temperate rainforest. Threatened species are pushed closer to the edge of extinction by an assessment process lacking scientific credibility. Narrow definitions of key terms like "old-growth forest" has allowed many high conservation value forests to be given over to logging. No new national parks have been created and the whole RFA process is corrupted by state timber supply commitments and poor public consultation.
Incredibly, plantations, which are the single entity most likely to resolve the conflict over native forest logging are barely mentioned in this RFA.
Export woodchipping, which drives the clearfelling of our native forests,
is also a great destroyer of jobs. Only apologists for export woodchipping
will feel the confidence Dr Attiwill attributes to the RFA process.