The management of the much-loved bushland of the Yarra Ranges was a hot topic of debate in 2024.
From the ban on native timber harvesting beginning to support and opposition to the Great Forest National Park (GFNP) proposal, here’s how local forests featured heavily in the Star Mail:
The Star Mail reported on the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) interim report on the forests of the Central Highlands in January, which argued that about 300,000 hectares of state forest would be suitable to be considered national parks in the wake of the transition away from native timber harvesting.
The report found that a new national park could ‘link the existing Yarra Ranges, Kinglake, Lake Eildon and Baw Baw national parks and the Bunyip, Cathedral Range and Moondarra state parks’ with minimal conflict to alternative uses or values such as hunting or mineral extraction.
“We’ve known for a very long time the forests of the Central Highlands are incredibly important and worthy of national park protection, so it’s good that a government organisation has also found that,” Parks and Nature Campaigner at the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) Jordan Crook said.
“You can protect and actively participate in the environment; the two things are not mutually exclusive. With the end of native timber harvesting, the government needs to develop a proper strategy for public land for the next fifty years,” Communications Manager of the Sporting Shooters Association Australia (SSAA) Victorian branch Barry Howlett said.
Generally, hunting is not allowed in national parks, state parks, coastal parks, wilderness parks and regional parks but there are already a number of exceptions throughout the state, including existing hunting specifications in the Baw Baw and Lake Eildon National Parks.
The Eminent Panel for Community Engagement went about seeking further feedback from the community on what to do with local forest.
“Over 100 people attended community drop-in sessions held in Healesville, Warburton and Yarra Junction, where participants came to talk to the Panel about what they value in the Central Highlands forests, including recreation activities they enjoy,” Eminent Panel chair Karen Cain said.
Representatives of the Yarra Valley Trail Horse Riders were one local group that took the opportunity to have their say, organising a meeting in April with the panel to discuss sustainability and the long-term development of the Central Highlands forests.
Yarra Valley Trail Horse Riders president Lewis Storer said the meeting went well.
“The Panel talked about locking the state forests into one big national park and restricting access for recreation including camping, trail horse riding, bushwalking and mountain bike riding,” he said.
“We’ve got about 100,000 people in Victoria that use horse riding as a means of recreation and we talked to them to help shape the future management of the Central Highlands state forests by sharing our forest experiences that are important to us.”
Later that month, environmental groups including Warburton Environment and Forest Conservation Victoria challenged Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) on its fire-reduction practices, including in the protected Yarra Ranges National Park.
President of the Warburton Environment (WE) group Nic Fox said they find it deplorable that living, hollow-bearing, old-growth trees can’t be protected in national parks.
“We know the Federal and State Environment Ministers released a plan last month, a Leadbeater’s Possum recovery plan, which sets out very clear requirements for the protection of large and hollow-bearing trees and that there should be no destruction of critical Leadbeater’s Possum habitat which is what we’re seeing this month,” she said.
“What we really need is an independent regulator that has the resources, authority and power to regulate what’s happening out here because the fight’s not over, the forest wars continue, it’s morphed into another beast,”
“We need to look at the assessment method of what hazardous trees are, we need to look all over the planned burns and there are other groups that are more knowledgeable about that but I think the methods that have been used are outdated.”
Forest Conservation Victoria conducted a peaceful protest in the Yarra Ranges National Park on Wednesday 24 April, with some local community members involved.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer for the Port Phillip Region Shannon Devenish said work was underway to maintain the strategic fuel break network in and around the Upper Yarra water supply catchment, including within Yarra Ranges National Park and that further assessments will be carried out to determine if alternative protection measures can be used to keep fire out of the trees during a bushfire event.
“Working within the footprint of existing fuel breaks, crews are treating dangerous trees and clearing encroaching vegetation,” they said.
“Trees that are structurally compromised and are a threat to firefighter safety have been marked as hazardous during an initial assessment.”
In May, an Upper Yarra logging contractor was the target of a not-so-peaceful protest while performing fire reduction work in the Wombat State Forest near Daylesford as vandals smashed glass, wrote messages condemning logging activity in the forest and caused other damage.
General Manager of the Australian Forest Contractors Association Tim Lester said their view is that protesting needs to be done in a way that doesn’t damage property and doesn’t put people at risk.
“These are live worksites and they are potentially very dangerous places, invading someone’s workspace is the same as walking onto a construction site in Melbourne or into an office. If you wouldn’t do that and wouldn’t accept that in your own workplace, then this is not acceptable in these workplaces either,” he said.
“We understand that people have different points of view and they have different expectations around how forests need to be managed but the point is that forests need to be managed, just closing the door, locking the gate and ‘It’s now fine’ is not fine,”
“Protest all you like, but don’t damage people’s property, don’t put yourself at risk and don’t put the workers at risk.”
The death of an endangered Greater Glider in the Yarra Ranges National Park at the site of tree removal prompted further calls from environmental groups to better protect native species during fire-reduction works.
Found early in the morning of Wednesday 15 May, the greater glider was believed to have been living in a large tree that was felled by Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) for bushfire mitigation works.
Wildlife of the Central Highlands (WOTCH) spokesperson Blake Nisbet said this was endangered wildlife culling.
“We specifically told the government that Greater Gliders were nesting in this tree. Instead of stepping in, they chose to knowingly kill endangered wildlife,” he said
WOTCH and the VNPA quickly engaged lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) who wrote to the Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and State Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos detailing allegations that claim the FFMVic operations contravene the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC), which legislates the referral, assessment and approval of any works likely to have significant impacts on listed threatened species. Currently, bushfire mitigation works do not require an EPBC Act referral.
“This destruction of critical habitat of endangered species is clearly breaking federal environment laws designed to protect Greater Gliders and Leadbeater’s Possums, and this is a real test of whether Minister Plibersek will match her words with action and get serious about enforcing the law,” EJA Special Counsel Danya Jacobs said.
A Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water spokesperson confirmed they were making enquiries to determine whether national environment law was being complied with and staff from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) visited the site to determine the cause of death for the Greater Glider.
Warburton Environment (WE) went on to lodge a case in the Federal Court in late May against the Victorian Government following the death of the greater glider, seeking injunctions from the court to halt what they call ‘logging’, and the DEECA insist is the ‘removal of hazardous trees for bushfire risk mitigation’, carried out by FFMVic.
“Community groups shouldn’t have to continually fight their way through the legal system to make the government accountable to its own laws and policies,” We President Ms Fox said.
“Logging clearly isn’t finished in Victoria, it’s just business as usual under a different name, and even Victoria’s most iconic National Parks aren’t safe from the government’s logging industry.”
At the same time, a coalition of the Australian Deer Association, Australian Bowhunters Association, Field and Game Australia, the Gippsland Deer Stalkers, The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (Victoria) and Dog Hunters Victoria announced they are ‘united in retaining public land access, representing a membership of over 70,000 Victorians and the interests of a quarter of a million recreational shooters and hunters in Australia.’
“The groundswell of public support to maintain the status quo is a testament to the value placed on this land by recreational users and we are encouraged by the government’s establishment of the Great Outdoors Taskforce; it demonstrates a recognition of the sustainable use of recreational activities in the bush,” Australian Deer Association’s head of Advocacy Sean Kilkenny said.
Opposition to environmental groups and their push for national park protection of the forests also began to form through the Victorians Against The Great Forest National Park group (VAGFNP) and a convoy of 70 cars from Warburton to Woods Point in September, where they joined over 1000 opposers at a rally.
Founder of the VAGFNP Carly Murphy said the GFNP proposal would have a vast number of negative impacts, be the death of towns who rely on bush users and that it was a ‘land grab’.
“The tourism impact this would have for this area would be devastating as these businesses rely on the 4×4 drivers, free campers, hunters, prospectors, motorbike riders and numerous other groups who would either be restricted in their use of the bush or denied access all together under this proposal,” she said.
“I have not invested myself in a bush activity hobby, my fight against this is for our small regional towns that this proposal would destroy, and the rights of others to be able to use the forests for their own needs whether it be for their mental health, to source affordable food or for their recreation needs,”
“It is not for conservation or for saving the animals, it’s all about appeasing the United Nations as our government signed us up for a voluntary agreement with the UN referred to as the Paris Agreement and requires that 30 per cent of Australian land be closed off to the public by the year 2030.”
Ms Murphy refers to the Paris Agreement, which was a legally binding treaty signed by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015, but the 30 by 30 agreement is actually the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed to at COP15 in 2022.
The 30 by 30 framework outlines a goal of the protection and conservation of 30 per cent of both the world’s land and oceans by 2030, such as through the creation of national parks and conservation sites.
Even as the year ended, the debate raged on.
The report from the Eminent Panel for Community Engagement on the future of the forest of the Central Highlands was expected to be complete by mid-2024 in order for the Victorian Government to review it by the end of the year, but has not been released.
On Thursday 28 November, the Victorian Government also announced a ‘comprehensive review’ into Parks Victoria and the departure of its CEO Matthew Jackson.
Speaking to the media following the announcement, Minister for the Environment Steve Dimopolous said the Victorian Government’s three new national parks committed to in 2021 in the central-west were all that’s in the frame for national parks at this stage.
“There are no new national parks on the agenda, we have two reports we’re going to respond to; one is the Eminent Panel for Community Engagement (EPCE) and the other one is the Great Outdoors Taskforce, which is yet to land,” he said.
DEECA also confirmed some forest works in December were paused for three working days while they worked to resolve a matter relating to the litigation with Warburton Environment Inc.
“DEECA is resuming hazardous tree removal works as part of planned burning and bushfire preparedness to ensure safer access for our firefighters to respond to emergencies and undertake fuel reduction activities,” a DEECA spokesperson said.
The scheduled works in the Central Highlands remained on target for delivery, no new injunction or new litigation had been brought against DEECA and the government department continues to defend litigation relating to certain works in the Central Highlands.
