"VicForests' new arrangements for advising coupe schedules and maps to stakeholder is clearly aimed at preventing stakeholders from independently assessing coupe plans ahead of harvesting" Nick Legge, of the Rubicon Forest Protection Group, said today. 

VicForests has recently announced that from now logging schedules and coupe plans and maps will be announced only at the start of the current month, in many cases, only after coupes have “started”.  This new approach differs from that in place previously where stakeholders, including the  Rubicon Forest Protection Group, were generally provided with draft coupe plans and maps ahead of a THSZ being declared and ahead of tree felling operations commencing.

The new arrangement greatly limits the possibility of well-informed feedback to VicForests, on proposed harvesting operations, whether based on the results of citizen science coupe surveys or expert local knowledge, ahead of the commencement of tree felling. 

It is thus contrary to the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2014 , S.5 of which requires VicForests to have regard to the principles of ecologically sustainable development which includes “the need to facilitate community involvement in decisions and actions on issues that affect the community”.

"Actions designed to deliberately hamper community input into coupe plan development are therefore illegal" Dr Legge said.

A secondary problem is that the approach will mostly be contrary to MSPs Clause 2.2.1.1 which requires plans, maps and schedules to be made available for public scrutiny before the commencement of “timber harvesting operations”.  “Timber harvesting operations” are defined to include any “works [.] ancillary” to the main business of felling, carting timber and regenerating sites.  Marking trees in coupes, and posting THSZ signs on trees are ancillary works of this kind, and so plans maps and schedules must be released ahead of such actions. However it is not sufficient that they are released immediately prior to these actions, since that would give insufficient time for the required scrutiny to occur, given that scrutiny necessarily entails very close examination and the ability to ‘ground truth’ the matters encompassed.

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group has written to DELWP's Forest Reports requesting that they formally determine that VicForests new method is therefore illegal on both counts.