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John Cummings
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Sthn NSW & ACT
Mission Australia
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Enjoy this life
Subject: FW: The Forests
Win!! - landmark Federal Court decision.
From: Brown, Bob
(Senator) [
Sent: Tuesday, 19 December 2006
5:37 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Re: The Forests Win!! -
landmark Federal Court decision.
The Forests Win!!
Today's landmark Federal Court decision
on the Brown v Forestry Tasmania case (Wielangta) is a huge victory for Australia's
forests and wildlife. Here is a summary of Justice Marshall's judgement from Bob Brown.
Justice Shane Marshall’s
judgement in the Federal Court means that logging at Wielangta – and
wherever else in Australia
it has wrecked the habitat of rare and endangered species – has been and
will be outside the law.
The national Environmental Protection
and Biodiversity Conservation Act means what its title says. And the Tasmanian
Regional Forest Agreement between Prime Minister Howard and the state government requires
protection of the rare wildlife no less than the EPBC Act.
The judgement flays Forestry Tasmania
and those of its expert witnesses, who claimed logging, burning and chemical
applications at Wielangta did not harm Tasmania’s
Wedge- tailed eagle, the Swift parrot or the Wielangta stag beetle.
The Judge pointed out that the EPBC Act
requires more than avoiding harm – it requires that logging plans help
the rare species populations to recover.
Here are paragraphs 281 and 282 of
Judge Marshall’s 301 paragraph ruling:
281 I do not consider that the State has protected the eagle by
applying relevant management prescriptions. Management prescriptions have helped
to slow the eagle’s extinction but have not protected it in the sense of
either maintaining existing numbers or restoring the species to pre-threatened
levels.
Will the State protect the three species by applying
relevant management prescriptions?
282 It is unlikely the State can, by management prescriptions,
protect the eagle. As to the beetle and the parrot, the State must urge
Forestry Tasmania
to take a far more protective stance in respect of these species by relevant
management prescriptions before it can be said it will protect them. On the
evidence before the Court, given Forestry Tasmania’s satisfaction with current
arrangements, I consider that protection by management prescriptions in the
future is unlikely.
This is a milestone for Australia’s
rapidly eroding environment. This nation has one of the longest lists of
creatures forced to, or towards, extinction in the world. The EPBC Act, meant
to reverse this loss, has been flouted at Wielangta and, doubtless, in
clearfell logging and burning and poisoning operations for the export woodchip
industry elsewhere in Australia.
Most Australians will celebrate the
great commonsense as well as legal strength of the judgement which is available
in full at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2006/1729.html
“This
is a watershed for Australia’s
forests and wildlife. No doubt, though, the woodchippers and their Labor and
Liberal backers will be furious. We must expect an angry reaction like that
which followed the High Court decision which saved the Franklin River
on 1 July 1983,” Senator Brown
said.
Senator
Bob Brown
GPO Box 404
Hobart TAS 7001
Ph: 03
62341633 (Hobart)
Ph: 02
6277 3170 (Canberra)
Fax 03
6234 1577
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