The North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) has welcomed the news that the new federal environment law will remove the exemption allowing native forest logging in Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs).
Labor and the Greens announced they had agreed to this on November 27.
“The [RFAs] are based on out-of-date information, collated 27 years ago, and are not a valid basis to exempt logging from national environmental laws,” NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.
He said a reassessment in 2018 was supposed to happen, but governments instead decided to extend the RFAs.
Pugh said federal governments had ignored appeals to increase protections for nationally threatened species, including when they were listed “endangered”, telling us that, under the RFA, they are a state responsibility.
“Most protections for threatened species were further weakened, or removed, when the logging rules were rewritten in 2018 and the federal government refused to do anything about it.”
He said when the new environmental standards are applied, the NSW government will have to stop logging core habitat of nationally endangered species, including the koala, greater glider, spotted-tailed quoll and swift parrot.
He said there are more than 27 nationally threatened species in state forests in northeast NSW that are in “urgent need of increased protection”.