1st August, 2007

Private forestry code undermined by “seamstress clause”

The Hunter Community Environment Centre is disappointed that the Code of Conduct for logging on private land released this week includes a so-called “seamstress clause,” which allows the Code to be tailored to cut out protected areas for individual landholders if they believe the impact on their logging operations is too great.

All four logging codes released this week, covering the northeast, southeast, Riverina and western hardwood forests contain a provision allowing landholders to request modifications to the Code if more than 10% of the area they wish to log would be excluded from logging by the new rules.

The Codes state that:

If, when preparing a Forest Operation Plan under the Code, the projected impact on the net harvestable area is greater than 10%, a landholder can request an accredited expert to examine the Forest Operation Plan and determine if it is appropriate to modify the environmental prescriptions of the Code in a specified manner.

A private native forestry Property Vegetation Plan (PVP) may modify in a specified manner the environmental prescriptions of the Code if an accredited officer is satisfied that:

(1) the variation of the environmental prescriptions is minor

(2) the proposed clearing will improve or maintain environmental outcomes

(3) strict adherence to the Code is in the particular case unreasonable and unnecessary.

Georgina Woods, spokesperson for the Hunter Community Environment Centre said, “As minimal as the protection offered by this Code is, landholders can still have prescriptions tailored to suit themselves.”

“After years of delay, the private logging code goes some way to protecting rainforest, oldgrowth and streams from industrial logging on private land, but the constraints are much weaker than regulations that have been in force in public forests for more than a decade.

“Now the State Government has handed loggers an escape clause: if their property is thick with rainforest, they can ask to have the Code tailored to allow them to log against the rules.

“We are calling on the Government to delete this unnecessary ‘seamstress clause’ and enforce equal protection for forests on private and public land.”