Forestry Corporation has responded to the Bellingen Shire Courier-Sun’s article on the Cherry Tree State Forest environmental breach.
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The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) issued Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW) with an Official Caution following an investigation into its harvesting operation in the Cherry Tree State Forest near Casino in 2015.
“Investigations identified a number of concerns including inadequate drainage along haulage tracks and failure to retain an appropriate number of habitat trees in harvested areas,” EPA director forestry branch, Michael Hood said.
Following the claim by a key environmental group claim this was not enough, NSW Forestry Corporation released the following lengthy statement.
“This harvesting operation was undertaken between January and September 2015 (harvesting finished 15 months ago),” a spokesperson said.
“Forestry Corporation acknowledges that some errors were made in relation to installation of track drainage in Cherry Tree State Forest.
“While this error did not result in any environmental harm, we are disappointed that this occurred and was not picked up in our own compliance auditing.
“We have since carried out additional training to prevent a similar error in future. We have taken on board the feedback from the EPA’s official caution in relation to this operation.
“The tree retention requirements of the IFOA are complex, as many types of trees are required to be retained for both shelter and food for native animals as well as providing seed for regenerating the forest, this is an important task that Forestry Corporation dedicates substantial time and effort to.
“The harvesting operation in Cherry Tree State Forest was in rough country with a very dense understorey and our staff went to immense effort to identify and physically mark trees in the forest to be retained.
“From our internal compliance assessments Forestry Corporation believes that substantially more trees were retained than were required under the regulation.
“The regulation requires eight Hollow bearing trees (H trees) to be retained in each hectare, but also acknowledges that there will not always be eight H trees in every hectare, which is why there is a provision for a combined total of 13 habitat and recruitment trees (R tree) to be retained.
“The compliance auditing undertaken by both EPA and Forestry Corporation demonstrated that combined H & R tree retention was above 13 across the whole harvest area.
“When also taking into account trees retained for koalas and other threatened species, Forestry Corporation has significantly exceeded the regulatory requirements.
“Forestry Corporation understands from its own compliance assessments that we have identified and retained nearly 2000 more trees than the regulation requires across the whole harvested area and for this reason are surprised to receive a warning about tree retention.
“Nonetheless, Forestry Corporation takes its compliance responsibilities seriously and has made significant investment over the past 18 months in the identification and retention of retained trees.
“Forestry Corporation now map the location and type of each tree so that compliance with regulations can be readily monitored and assessed.
“There are strict regulations governing native forest operations and we spend several months completing detailed environmental surveys to identify environmental features that need protection ahead of every operation.
“This process is completely transparent – we publish all our plans on our website, we regularly engage with members of the community if they have concerns with any aspect of our harvest plans and we are audited by the Environment Protection Authority.
“The EPA has audited hundreds of forestry operations to ensure compliance with the IFOA conditions since they came into effect.
“In addition, Forestry Corporation internally audits each operation and is independently audited and certified to the Australian Standard for Sustainable Forest Management. It is unfortunate and disappointing that mistakes are made from time to time but we remain committed to working with the EPA to identify areas where we can improve.”
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