00:03Logging in disguise, that's what legal advocates and conservationists are calling this road
00:09maintenance work in southeast New South Wales.
00:11What they did was take giant trees up to 10 metres either side of the road.
00:17They cleared vegetation along 2.7 kilometres of roads.
00:22They did almost no road management, but they cut down enough trees to fill 21 log trucks
00:29which were sold to local mills.
00:32Normally to log trees like this, Forestry Corporation must comply with strict environmental laws
00:38enforced by the Environment Protection Authority.
00:40But loggers did this under more relaxed laws governing road maintenance,
00:45allowing them to avoid that scrutiny.
00:48I think the New South Wales public would be really concerned if they thought that New South Wales
00:53Forestry Corp were able to carry out logging in state forests that didn't comply with the
00:58conditions that were intended to provide some level of protection for wildlife.
01:02Oh, there it is again.
01:03They've not done any surveys for gliders before cutting down any trees.
01:08There's many den trees throughout here that because they didn't do those surveys,
01:14didn't receive the protection that they legally are supposed to have.
01:17James Euster of the Australian Forestry Products Association says he wants the logs to be put to good use.
01:24We are absolutely comfortable that the maintenance of roads in the forest that yields some trees
01:30that can go into mills is a completely practical use of those trees.
01:35In a statement to the ABC, Forestry Corporation said the work in January included some tree removal
01:42to enable machinery to access the road and safely carry out works.
01:46While there is sometimes an opportunity to recover some timber rather than mulching trees within the forest,
01:51the purpose of road maintenance works is to improve access and safety.
01:57Conservationists say if this legal loophole isn't closed, it would open up over 50,000
02:02kilometres of roadside native forests to logging.
02:04The scale of it is so great. They could probably do as much logging as they would do within about
02:10four or five years of all state forest logging in New South Wales.
02:14The operation has been reported to the EPA who say they are looking into it.
02:21The site will soon be posted to the EPA.
02:22They can use the EPA outside of the EPA.
02:23Let's go to the EPA.
02:23The EPA is easy to receive the EPA.
02:24The EPA should be calculated by a EPA.
Comments