NSW forest assessment challenged

The North East Forest Alliance has strongly criticised the April 14 announcement that the NSW State Forests environmental impact statement program will be “upgraded”. NEFA described this as a token attempt to patch up the State Forests' 14-year failure to abide by the law and ensure that it adequately and truthfully assesses the environmental and economic consequences of logging.

NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said, “The State Forests' fauna survey and analysis methods are used to misrepresent the impacts of logging on native fauna. For over three years their methods have been subject to repeated and mounting criticism from conservationists, the Australian Museum, National Parks and Wildlife Service, the scientific community and even their own consultants.”

NEFA recently provided the government with a report it commissioned from Dr Des Nicholls, reader in statistics and dean, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, at the Australian National University. “Dr Nicholls' report is highly critical of State Forests' fauna surveys for not using the most appropriate methodologies or accounting for the numerous physical differences between sites. It also dismisses the simplistic statistical analyses as invalid”, Pugh said.

He concluded, “The responsibility for the EIS process must be taken off State Forests. It needs to be administered independently in an open process, incorporating representatives from public interest groups, if it is to be done properly, honestly and credibly.”

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