Is Land Clearance a Key Threatening Process?

Submission on "land clearance" as a key threatening process

3 April 1998

Mr Bruce Male
Executive Officer
Endangered Species Scientific Subcommittee
Environment Australia - Biodiveristy Group
GPO Box 636
CANBERRA ACT 2601

Dear Mr Male

Thank you for your letter of 18 December 1987, which we received on 7 January 1998, concerning the ESSS' consideration of land clearance under the ESP Act.

While your letter says that the ESSS is seeking our views on "whether the preparation and implementation of a nationally co-ordinated threat abatement plan is a feasible effective and efficient way to abate the process", I recall from an earlier phone conversation with you that the ESSS does not wish to preclude the expression of any other views we might have that relate to the issue. We would like to take up that opportunity, mainly with a view to seeking clarification of the Subcommittee's own thinking.

(a) Some Conceptual Issues

Section 23(a) of the Act, which sets criteria for determining whether or not a threatening process is a key threatening process, seems to draw a distinction between the past and the possible future consequences of the nominated threatening process. Broadly, 23(a)i seeks to identify processes that have caused or are causing already listed species to be adversely affected. Section 23(a)(ii) seeks to identify processes which, if continued, could cause species that are not currently endangered to become endangered in future.

These seems to us to require the ESSS to make some very careful judgements. For example, while there seems to be little doubt that past land clearance has been directly responsible for some species now being endangered, we are not sure whether it follows that those same species would benefit from the cessation of further land clearance. They probably would benefit if areas now experiencing land clearance coincided with areas of preferred habitat of those species. They perhaps would not benefit if land clearance is now taking place in areas that do not coincide with areas of preferred habitat. In the latter case, only careful revegetation and habitat restoration in areas of preferred habitat would appear to have the potential to bring significant benefit to species already endangered. In the case of these species, additional controls on future land clearance might not be of any particular benefit. Such controls would not, in other words constitute an effective threat abatement plan. We do not know how many endangered species this problem of targeting would affect, but we presume that the ESSS has already made some judgements about it. We appreciate that it is not impossible for a threat abatement plan to encompass habitat restoration, but it would bring a new, far-reaching and possibly very costly dimension to such a plan. As well, habitat restoration is already firmly on the endangered species agenda.

The problem facing the ESSS in relation to 23(a)ii seems more difficult, and the material submitted in support of the nomination does not provide very much assistance. This part of the Act appears to require the members of the ESSS to bring to bear their collective knowledge of native species that are not currently vulnerable or endangered, but in future might become so, as a result of the nominated process. Of the species identified in Appendix 2 of the nomination, most are already listed as endangered or vulnerable. Only three species in this list are identified as potentially vulnerable, which seems to be mainly the circumstance that this section of the Act is trying to get at:

Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat
Koala
Glossy Black Cockatoo

We don't know whether the ESSS judged that these three species are sufficient to satisfy the requirement set out in 23(a)(ii), or whether there are other species that ESSS members are aware of which do not appear on the list. In one respect, the test posed in 23(a)(ii) is not very helpful: if land clearance continued ad infinitum, many species would, without a doubt, become endangered. The real question seems to be, how much land clearance would it take to achieve a particular outcome. Just as 23(a)(i) appears to require the ESSS to make judgements about the impacts of past versus present land clearing, 23(a)(ii) seems to require the ESSS to make judgements about:

• The rate at which land clearance is currently taking place, and is likely in future to take place, (and the rate at which regrowth is occurring),
• the areas where clearing is taking place, and is likely in future to take place,
  and
• the adequacy of existing controls on land clearance.

Without the benefits of such judgements, it is hard to see how the ESSS could reach any conclusions about which species might in future become endangered or vulnerable.

Information on these matters is not easily obtained, but some assistance would be available to the ESSS from the scientists and government officials involved in preparing the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. The Workbook for Emissions from the Biosphere has had the benefit of receiving the best available information about rates of land clearance, although it is less precise about areas where land clearance is taking place.

The adequacy of existing controls on land clearance is also not easy to determine. New South Wales has its Native Vegetation Conservation Act, for example, replacing the controversial SEPP 46, but Queensland has no state legislation, controlling land clearance on private land. At the same time, the picture of land clearance in Queensland that is emerging from the work of the NGGI Working Group seems to be that more of the clearing than was previously thought is in fact re-clearing. More importantly, rates of land clearance across of Australia seem to be in decline.

Another problem that might be thought to be conceptual in nature is that the Act does not invite or require the ESSS to identify any species which might have benefited from the nominated process, or might benefit in future from the process. Where land clearance is concerned, there may well be some species which would fall into such a category. The larger macropods are probably a case in point.

We see it as a weakness of the Act, and have argued previously to that effect, that it seeks to highlight only the negative consequences of various impacts on the Australian environment. To us, the unbalanced nature of the perception of these impacts, which the Act helps to perpetuate, robs the discussion of species endangerment of a proper sense of balance and priorities. The preparation of a threat abatement plan for land clearance would provide an opportunity for the ESSS to point out publicly, if it wanted to, that the environmental consequences of land clearance are many and varied, and are by no means all adverse.

Implicit in the forgoing paragraphs is the suggestion that "land clearance" may not be the homogeneous or uni-dimensional concept that it might at first appear. It may be, for example, that not all past land clearance has contributed to species endangerment. It is equally possible that not all present and future land clearance will have that effect. The success of any threat abatement plan would clearly be influenced by how carefully it was able to distinguish between land clearance that had serious adverse effects, and land clearance that did not.

(b) The definition of "land clearance"

The nomination contains a different definition of land clearance to the one that accompanied a previous nomination. It is not clear whether the ESSS will find the new definition more or less helpful than the previous one. While excluding "silvicutural operations in native forest", it manages to encompass nearly everything else that people of European origin have been doing outdoors for the last 200 years. The ESSS is certainly free to designate all the activities identified in the new nomination as collectively constituting a key threatening process, but it is doubtful whether is would be helpful or instructive for it to do so.

In addition, the forest industries have some concern that the exclusion of "silvicultural operations in native forests" from the definition of land clearance might be only a temporary expedient. It is possible, we think, that if the ESSS decides to declare "land clearance" to be a key threatening process, the same group (or different group) of proponents will shortly thereafter propose that the definition of land clearance be amended to include, say clear felling. Despite the strong silvicultural reasons that favour clear-felling over selective felling in some forest types, it may be that the intention of the proponents is to first achieve the designation of land clearance as a key threatening process, then to modify the definition of land clearance, to enable the designation to encompass "silvicultural operations in native forests". Such a strategy would be consistent with:

1. the intention that has appeared to be implicit in previous nominations.
2. the support given by two of the sponsoring bodies for moves to eliminate native forest logging or impose much stricter regulation on it.

In relation to the second point, we attach for the information of ESSS members a copy of the ACF's Forest Policy, adopted by ACF Council on 22 May 1995, and a copy of a proposal by the Australian Office of the Humane Society International, dated 15 August 1996, that the entire Eucalyptus genus should be listed in Appendix II of CITES.

One approach that the ESSS could take to dealing with the problem we think might arise in relation to definitions would be to adopt its own definition of land clearance, and if it believes that "silvicultural operations in native forests" should be excluded from the definition, state its reasons for that belief. Those reasons might include:

1. the regrowth of vegetation that occurs after harvesting.
2. the preservation of habitat trees that is part of harvesting, whether by selective or clear felling.
3. the demonstrated high levels of biodiversity to be found in most regrowth forest.

On the face of it, the proponents could not object that this approach ran counter to the nomination they have put forward.

Included in the definition of land clearance contained in the nomination is the suggestion that it included "most plantations". This seems to imply that "most plantations" involve the clearance of native vegetation. We do not believe that such an assertion would be factually correct. Some plantations involve a degree of remnant vegetation clearance (including some plantations of endemic native species). Where this occurs, the impact on local flora and fauna is invariably studied before planning permission is given. Most new plantations, however, are established on previously cleared agricultural land and do not involve land clearance. As a consequence, it seems to us that any general threat abatement strategy that was targeted at "most plantations" would be ill judged.

We are not able to provide the ESSS with a precise breakdown of the proportions of plantations established on cleared land as against those which involve a degree of land clearing, but we can say with confidence that it is the increasing difficulty of securing the use of cleared land that is probably the single biggest impediment to achieving a desired increase in the rate of plantation establishment.

(c) "...Feasible, effective and efficient..."??

Under the Endangered Species Protection Act, a number of processes have already been designated as key threatening processes. These include two for which documents described as "draft threat abatement plans" have been published - predation by the red fox and predation by feral cats. The nature of these documents, in NAFI's view, is such that it is still an open question whether the ESSS was correct in deciding in both these cases that the preparation of a threat abatement plan was a "feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the process". Neither document contains an outline of action that is likely to be feasible, effective or efficient, and both documents seem more than a little inclined to the view that the problems are too hard. Both were nevertheless presented under the title " draft threat abatement plan". Taken together, the two documents do not augur well for what a draft threat abatement plan dealing with land clearance might look like.

In particular, they contain little evidence that the Commonwealth has any stomach for the difficult task of informing and leading public opinion, which would almost certainly be a critical element in any threat abatement plan for land clearance. (For further comment on the merits of these two draft threat abatement plans, we refer the Subcommittee to sections of NAFI's submission to the Review of the ESP Act, and separate comments on the draft threat abatement plan for predation by feral cats.)

Although it is usually easier to make laws constraining the behaviour of humans that it is to devise strategies for controlling the behaviour of feral animals, the problem of abating a key threatening process of land clearance looks very difficult. The core of the difficulty, it seems to us, may be the extent to which European settlement has failed to assimilate the indigenous flora and fauna of the continent to the Western lifestyle that the immigrant people brought with them. Indigenous flora and fauna play no part at all in feeding (or clothing) most Australians.

This seems to us to be the core problem which lies behind the nomination, as well as being the main reason why the task it defines is so large as to be almost impracticable. What the nomination seems to require is a review of every aspect of European settlement and the amelioration of all impacts. In the terms that the proponents have cast the nomination, that review would not stop with agricultural and pastoral practices. It would include urban development, road construction, air transport, horticulture and landscaping, recreation activities, engineering and construction activities, water use and so on.

The ESSS is charged with responsibility for deciding in advance whether a decision to list land clearance as a key threatening process would give rise to a plan that was going to be feasible, effective and efficient in abating the process. It seems to us that, on the balance of probabilities, its judgement would have to be "probably not". While the apparent plight of some endangered species has been sufficiently potent ot cause authorities to stop some people doing some things in some places, it is very doubtful whether it is sufficiently potent to stop everybody doing most outdoor things in most places, much less undo what they have already done.

NAFI believes that the members of the ESSS would have some justification if they felt that the Act itself was at least partly responsible for the predicament posed by this nomination. Under the Act, it is perfectly permissible to put forward a nomination which involves a sweeping generalisation that challenges the ESSS in exactly the manner that the land clearance nomination does. This section of the ESP Act is itself couched in sweeping generalisations, and makes no provision for the ESSS to do anything other than determine whether or not the provisions of the Act have been satisfied, or are likely to be able to be satisfied. Its approach seems to be all or nothing.

ESSS members might also like to consider that a decision to list land clearance as a key threatening process would cast a very long shadow. The nature of that shadow would be similar to that cast by SEPP 46 in New South Wales: the long anticipated introduction of the control measure is thought to have been preceded by a sharp increase in the rate of land clearance in New South Wales, undertaken by farmers and graziers anxious to beat the ban. To judge by the magnitude of the task that would be created, and the length of time that the fox and feral cat " threat abatement plans" have spent in gestation, a decision to list land clearance would cast a shadow for several years.

In reaching the conclusion that the test in Section 23(b) probably cannot be satisfied by this nomination, we would ask the ESSS to note that we do so with some regret, From a purely selfish stand point, NAFI would welcome the endangered species spotlight being pointed in the direction that the main problems seem to lie, rather than in the direction of forestry, where the significance of problems, we believe, has been persistently and purposefully exaggerated. As much as that turn of events would be welcomed by us, the impediments to it seem insurmountable, and they can probably be best summarised as:

• the apparently boundless scope of the nomination
• the disappointing quality of existing threat abatement plans
• the deficiencies of the ESP Act, and
• the constitutional constraints that give state governments responsibility for deciding how land and resources should be managed, a responsibility which most state governments are discharging in a way that gives native vegetation conservation due and proper consideration.

Yours sincerely
Warren Lang
Deputy Executive Director

The Forests and the National Estate

The Forests and the National Estate

Executive Summary

The Australian Heritage Commission (AHC) carried out extensive studies of East Gippsland as part of the processes leading to the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement. On the surface, the result of those studies is a formidable body of data about places and areas with potential for national estate listing.

On closer examination, the outcome is of dubious merit and appears to result from the application of purpose-built methodology designed to enable the AHC to throw a bureaucratic mantle of national estate listing over as much as possible of the forests of East Gippsland.

A study of the AHC's submission to the Resource Assessment Commission's Inquiry into Australia's Forest and Timber Resources shows the AHC, despite its lack of expertise or practical experience of forest management, to be a well resourced and painstaking opponent of the forest industries.

In order to prosecute better its own view of how the forests should be managed, the AHC developed an elaborate methodology for "sieving" the forest landscape for areas of national estate significance. Starting with the eight criteria recognised by the Australian Heritage Commission Act, the AHC has extrapolated a list of sixty-eight triggers which it calls "national estate values", the presence of any one of which is apparently enough to identify a place or area as being of national estate significance. Using this extremely fine sieve, the study not surprisingly catches the greater part of the East Gippsland landscape. The result is not only contrived and extravagant, but it contributes to the dilution of national estate significance that the AHC is currently striving to address.

The East Gippsland study appears to treat with disdain the industry that has sustained European settlers in the area since their arrival. The timber industry heritage of the region, and the struggles and attainments of foresters and timber getters, appear to receive little recognition. The achievements of the conservation movement appear to have less difficulty finding recognition.

The AHC's attachment to lack of disturbance as the hallmark of national estate significance in the forests is an integral part of its apparent opposition to the timber industry. In adopting this approach the AHC has failed to come to grips with a growing body of knowledge about the disturbance by fire that was a constant feature of pre-European land management, and of the influence that this pattern of disturbance is increasingly thought to have had in shaping the forest estate. The "disturbance minimisation" goal that the AHC is apparently pursuing will not restore landscapes that are thought to have been there before, and will not preserve what is there now. In embracing the non-disturbance dogma, the AHC seems to be mainly giving expression to the beliefs professed by the conservation movement.

The High Court's recent decision confirming that what the AHC says is national estate indeed is national estate appears to highlight the critical importance of the methodology the AHC uses in undertaking its task. The arbitrary and extravagant nature of this methodology, which appears to invert the AHC's mandate to "identify and conserve" the national estate into one which seeks to "protect" parts of the environment by identifying it as national estate, could signal that the time has come for the AHC to take stock.

The AHC's contribution to the East Gippsland RFA precludes much of the certainty that was thought to be such an important outcome when the RFA process began. The AHC has retained significant capacity to further impede and obstruct the development of the forest industries, and has given notice that it will not hesitate to use the discretion it believes it now holds in relation to significant areas of East Gippsland that have so far not been listed on the register of the national estate. As well, the AHC has given misleading advice to the owners of private property affected by national estate listing.

There are substantial grounds for the conclusion that, in the forests, the purposes of the Australian Heritage Commission Act are not being well served. There is no reason why State or Federal Governments should allow that situation to continue.

A.     FOREWORD

This paper began as an examination of the way the national estate study for the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement had been carried out. It soon became clear that the study had been carried out in accordance with procedures that the Australian Heritage Commission (AHC) had developed over a number of years. The focus of the paper shifted, as a consequence, to the detail and the underlying assumptions of those procedures.

In East Gippsland the RFA "caravan" has swept by, but has yet to arrive at the other destinations on its route. The AHC will presumably apply the same procedures in those regions. A critical examination of those procedures is therefore still timely. In addition, the AHC is currently seeking a modification of its mandate. Any commentary which throws light on whether it needs (or deserves) a fresh mandate should be useful to the discussions taking place in that context as well.

As the scope of the paper has become broader, so the opportunity to examine other aspects of the AHC's approach to identifying the national estate has arisen. The discussion the paper contains on the advice that the AHC provides to private land owners whose properties are affected by proposed national estate listing is one such aspect.

The basic focus of the paper on the East Gippsland RFA has been retained, because it provides the most recent and most comprehensive example of AHC processes at work.

B.     OVERVIEW OF THE EAST GIPPSLAND STUDY

At first glance, the East Gippsland National Estate study appears to be a very exhaustive, thorough examination, assessing very carefully every conceivable heritage value and apparently every hectare of East Gippsland. On closer examination, there are some important cultural values that the study ignores, and there are some serious doubts about the merits of the procedures that have been used.

The conclusions of the National Estate study appear to look forward to the national estate listing of more than half of East Gippsland, including all existing national parks and conservation reserves, and significant areas of state forest.

The methodology adopted by the National Estate study seems to represent a significant shift from the approach previously used by the Commission, which involved making judgements about listing places which various individuals and groups nominated, to a process whereby the Commission decides what should be significant to the community, (whether or not the community has expressed a view) and proceeds to list such places on its own initiative. The East Gippsland study will, to some, leave a large question mark over the benefit to the community, and to the national estate, of adopting this approach, which appears to treat national estate almost as a commodity. It seems to redefine the notion of "national estate" in a way that defies ready comprehension, and dilutes the significance and value of the concept.

C.     THE METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The report of the study explains that an open and transparent process was adopted, and extensive consultations with scientists and community groups held. The bulk of the actual work seems to have consisted of studying the contents of a range of computerised datasets, most of them compiled by Victorian government agencies over many years. The report does not say to what extent these desk-top studies were supplemented by field trips, or what part field trips played in the various assessments of national estate values that were carried out. It says only that:

"With over a million hectares in the study area, it was not possible to field-check all of this area". (P. 17)

It seems to follow from this that some areas - there is no way of knowing how many - have been proposed for national estate listing without ever having been visited or inspected by AHC staff or representatives.

The study team assessed the contents of the various datasets available to it against a range of criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values ". This paper looks in some detail at the derivation of those criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values", and the manner in which they were applied.

The main source documents for the approach taken by the AHC to "regional assessments" such as the one carried out in East Gippsland are the Australian Heritage Commission Act itself, and the AHC's submission to the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) Inquiry in 1990-91. In relation to the latter, the East Gippsland report says:

"In its submission to the RAC forest inquiry in October 1990 (AHC 1990), the AHC proposed a method to help resolve national estate forest issues. The proposal focused on the need for systematic surveys of regions to identify areas of national estate significance. The method involved combining the survey results with appropriate advice about protection of the National Estate, using the regional framework as the basis for decision-making." (p. 1)

The Australian Heritage Commission Act, when passed in 1975, defined the National Estate as:

"... those places, being components of the natural environment of Australia or the cultural environment of Australia, that have aesthetic, historic, scientific or social significance or other special value for future generations as well as for the present community." (Section 4. (1))

In 1990 the AHC stated, in its submission to the RAC that since 1985 it had "based its assessment process increasingly on criteria developed to define what qualities constitute national estate significance." (Para 3.2.4.1, Part 1) The submission continued:

"It is expected that the forthcoming amendments to the Act will include the current primary criteria as part of the Act. The criteria identify the overall values a place might possess which make it a part of the national estate. The Commission has identified sub-criteria to interpret the primary criteria in various circumstances..." (Para 3.2.4.1, Part 1)

The criteria referred to became Section 4 (1A) of the Act in amending legislation passed in 1990. The sub-criteria referred to, 14 in all, were not included in the Act, but have apparently continued to be used by the Commission in discharging its duties under the Act, and in the East Gippsland study.

In the Commission's RAC submission, the criteria and sub-criteria were described as being further supplemented by "interpretation" and "inclusion guidelines".

In the East Gippsland report, the "inclusion guidelines" have been renamed "national estate values". At what point the change was made from a label that is process orientated ("inclusion guidelines") to one that carries strong connotations of enduring substance ("national estate values "), is not known.

It is important to note, however, that it is only the eight criteria which are recognised by the Australian Heritage Commission Act. The AHC's methodology in the East Gippsland study goes considerably beyond these criteria. It encompasses not only the 14 "sub-criteria", but also the " national estate values", neither of which are recognised in the legislation. The potency of these "values" is summarised this way in the report:

"Frequently there is more than one value above threshold, but the presence of only one value is sufficient to warrant [national estate] listing ". (p. 16)

The East Gippsland report lists 68 such "national estate values ".

The complete list of "criteria", "sub-criteria" and "national estate values" used in the East Gippsland study is appended to this paper.

Overall, the combined array of "criteria", "sub-criteria" and " national estate values" is very extensive, and could be represented as an upside-down tree:

Criteria
Sub-Criteria
"National Estate Values"

One example of the relationship between these different levels of national estate significance may help in understanding the process used by the AHC to identify the national estate in the forests. Criterion A and the first of its four sub-criteria and related "national estate values" look like this:

"National Estate Values" under Sub-Criterion A1

• species at the limit of their natural range
• widely separated populations of the same species (disjunction)
• species whose distribution is restricted mainly to the study area (endemics)
• vegetation communities which contain a high incidence of primitive species
• flora refuge areas, including refuges from climate change
• relictual vegetation classes/EVCs
• refugia for fauna
• biogeographic range of fauna
• relictual fauna
• geological and geomorpholigical sites

features which may be significant in understanding landform evolution

Each of the three other sub-criteria (A2 - A4) is accompanied by a similar set of "national estate values".

How the "national estate values" (or their predecessors the "inclusion guidelines") were developed is not stated.

The East Gippsland study does not adhere strictly to the methodology described in the RAC submission, in that it does not undertake assessment against each criteria and sub-criteria and "national estate value". Instead, it relies on loose groupings of what it calls "natural" national estate values and "cultural" national estate values to structure its assessments. Under "cultural" national estate values the report identifies four different categories:

"aboriginal places"
"historic places"
"places of social value"
"places of aesthetic value"

With the exception of the last of these value categories, the report does not explicitly relate value category to the criteria contained in the Act, and it does not explain why it regards the four different categories of cultural value listed as being reasonable proxies for those criteria in the Act which deal with cultural values.

The "natural national estate values" assessed by the study are grouped into five categories:

"extensive natural values"
"flora values"
"fauna values"
"other natural values"
"natural history values"

The report treats each of these value categories as subsuming one or more of the sub-criteria, and for each of those sub-criteria assessments were made as to whether or not one or more "national estate values" were present. The overlay of what seems to be a largely adhoc approach over the top of the assessment methodology outlined to the RAC is confusing, but understanding it is important to an appreciation of the East Gippsland study. The matrix created by the overlay of the five categories of "natural national estate values" on the sub-criteria looks like this:

TABLE 1

(Each * represents a separate assessment)

D.     OUTCOMES FROM THE APPLICATION OF THE METHODOLOGY

From Table 1 it can be seen that nine different assessments were made under Sub-Criterion A1, eight different assessments under Sub-criterion A2, three under A3, seven under B1, one under C1 and three under D1. The assessments appear to have mainly taken the form of computer- based dataset examinations, supplemented in some instances by field visits.

To better appreciate how the AHC's methodology worked, it is worth looking more closely at what came out of the assessment of national estate values under Criterion A and its sub-criteria.

Criterion A, it will be recalled says:

"Its importance in the course or pattern of Australia's natural or cultural history".

Sub-Criterion A1 says:

"Importance in the evolution of Australian flora, fauna, landscapes or climate".

To assess the presence in East Gippsland of national estate values that satisfied Sub-criterion A1, the study group carried out the nine different dataset examinations identified in Table 2, and it found those values in places or areas that total to the figures shown:

TABLE 2

Sub-Criterion A2 reads:

"Importance in maintaining existing processes or natural systems at the regional or national scale."

To assess the presence in East Gippsland of national estate values that satisfied Sub-criterion A2, the study group carried out the eight different dataset examinations identified in Table 3, and it found such values in places or areas that total to the figures shown:

TABLE 3

Sub-Criterion A3 reads:

"Importance in exhibiting unusual richness or diversity of flora, fauna, landscapes or cultural features".

To assess the presence of values that satisfied this sub-criteria, the study group conducted three different dataset examinations, with the results shown in Table 4.

TABLE 4

It can safely be presumed that many of the areas represented in Tables 2, 3 and 4 are co-extensive, so that a simple summation of the figures will not give a true indication of the total area in East Gippsland that is considered to merit national estate listing under sub-criteria A1, A2, and A3, of criterion A. Nevertheless, it is interesting that in aggregate, a total of 1,292,609 hectares apparently satisfy the sub-criteria of Criterion A alone. Given that East Gippsland is an area of 1.2 million hectares, this would have to be described as a resounding outcome. On the other hand, it would probably also be fair to describe it as extravagant, or "over the top".

A clear example of the over-zealous application of criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values" can be seen in the assessments carried out under sub-criterion D1:

"Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of the range of landscapes, environments or ecosystems, the attributes of which identify them as being characteristic of their class."

The words "demonstrating the principal characteristics of the range", and "characteristic of their class", seem to imply that areas chosen should stand as representatives of the ecological or other classes they belong to. What the sub-criterion seems to be looking for is the nomination of a good sample of the different classes present.

In East Gippsland, the study team examined a range ecological vegetation classes (EVC's - "floristic communities that grow under comparable environmental conditions and have similar life forms and vegetation structure," Woodgate et al 1994) to satisfy this criteria. They identified 44 EVC's in East Gippsland, ranging from "coastal dune scrub" to "sub-alpine treeless complex". If the study team had identified a range of 10 hectare plots to represent each of these EVC's, that would have involved a total of 440 hectares earmarked for national estate listing. If the team had chosen 100 hectare samples of those 44 EVC's, the total would have been 4400 hectares.

In fact, the report says that a total of 532,102 hectares of public land in East Gippsland satisfied sub-criterion D1. That is equivalent to about 44% of the total area of East Gippsland. Unlike the outcome from the application of the various sub-criteria of criterion A, in this case there is presumably no overlap between different EVC's. The total of 532,102 hectares is a real total. On the basis of the strict application of the AHC methodology, the AHC apparently now considers itself entitled to list all of those hectares on the register of the national estate, because it found that they all satisfied sub-criterion D1. In doing so, it would be ignoring the invitation implicit in the words of the sub-criterion to take samples. Instead, it would be listing the entire EVC. That would appear to be, on the face of it, a corruption of its methodology, and an illustration of how the over-zealous use of apparently straightforward criteria can produce an outcome that is almost meaningless.

Moreover, 382 680 hectares of the total (72%) are already protected in reserves of one kind or another, according to the report. Many EVC's are 100% reserved, including apparently all the sensitive coastal EVC's, and none are represented at a level of less than 60% of their total occurrence on public land, including the areas most valuable for timber production. It is not clear what useful purpose would be served by the superimposition of national estate listing.

One response that the AHC could have made to this very reassuring discovery would have been to say that the landscape in East Gippsland, in all its richness and diversity, was so well preserved and reserved, that no national estate listing was needed to protect it. In the circumstances, the national estate listing of more than a small fraction of those 352,102 hectares would be a gratuitous act, and a patronising gesture towards the forest management and nature conservation authorities of Victoria.

The actual outcomes contained in the report raise questions about the intrinsic value of the methodology based on the use of criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values". The outcomes also raise questions about how the national estate should be identified, and why the AHC has chosen to approach the task in this way.

E.     HOW ARE THE CRITERIA AND SUB-CRITERIA MEANT TO BE USED?

One approach to the use of the criteria and sub-criteria would be to use them as tests of significance in deciding whether or not any particular area or place proposed for national estate listing should in fact be listed on the register. The criteria and sub-criteria would then serve the purpose of ensuring that relevant tests of significance were applied, and not irrelevant tests. Until the advent of the regional assessment program of which the East Gippsland study is a part, that seems to be the manner in which the criteria and sub-criteria mostly have in fact been used by the AHC in making judgements about listings.

In the East Gippsland study, the results of using the criteria and sub-criteria in this way until now was a list of 51 places or areas listed or nominated for listing, covering an area of 4431 sq. km (or 36.5% of the region). [Advice provided by Environment Australia since this paper was first published states that the total area in East Gippsland identified by the AHC as having "national estate values" was 9322 sq. km, or 76.9% of the total area of East Gippsland. Environment Australia also advised that the AHC now intends to list only an additional 1440 sq. km (or 11.9%), taking the total area of East Gippsland listed on the register of the national estate to 5871 sq. km (or 48.4%).] The AHC apparently does not yet know how many additional places or areas will be proposed for listing as a result of the East Gippsland study. That will depend in part, it has advised, on how the lines are drawn on the map. Co-ordinates have not yet been determined, or names assigned.

Another way of using the criteria and sub-criteria, (and this seems to be how the East Gippsland study group has used them,) is as a net, through which to pass data bases, catching those that will not pass through. Using the sub-criteria this way could be likened to trawling. Another term to describe it would be "sieving".

The notion of "sieving" the landscape finds explicit recognition in the record of an expert panel meeting to discuss a methodology proposed for the identification of World Heritage areas in the forests. The record forms part of a consultants' brief prepared by Environment Australia to enable a World Heritage assessment to proceed in East Gippsland:

"...The approach assesses significance by developing themes of outstanding universal value and then testing places against these by working through a series of steps. A sieve model is used and places which do not meet particular tests of significance, integrity and authenticity are discarded at various steps."

The size of the catch clearly depends on the fineness of the net or sieve. In the East Gippsland study, the thresholds that were used were sometimes qualitative and sometimes quantitative. As an example of the latter, the report says:

"... any ten minute grid with more than three endemic plants was considered as having a level of concentration which met the threshold for this analysis." (P. 36, vol 1, Method Papers, East Gippsland National Estate Assessment).

This threshold relates to the assessment of endemic flora species carried out under sub-criterion A1. The use of this threshold yielded a "catch" of 189, 240 hectares (as shown in Table 2 above). There is no way of knowing what result the use of a different size of mesh (or threshold) would have yielded, but suppose, for arguments sake, that the threshold had been set at "six endemic plants per ten minute grid". (A ten minute grid is an area of the earth's surface approximately 19km x 15km at the latitude of East Gippsland, or 285 square kilometres in area). Suppose also that the use of that threshold had resulted in a "catch" of only 90,000 hectares of East Gippsland for the national estate. Which would be a better measure of national estate significance? Probably no-one can say with confidence where the threshold should be set, and the East Gippsland report offers no explanation for the selection of the threshold used. The point is that what appears at one level to be an orderly and rigorous process, at another level is highly imprecise, and even arbitrary. More importantly, it is remote from any process of identification of the national estate that can be readily understood and respected by the "man or woman in the street."

To many people, the use of this sieving or trawling approach will look more like an effective and convenient method of creating national estate, rather than identifying national estate.

There is a possibility, and perhaps a likelihood, that this approach will eventually be seen as diluting the significance of national estate listing, and as weakening the purpose which the concept of national estate was intended to serve. The over zealous use of criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values" may have contributed to the problem that the AHC is now trying to solve by proposing the creation of a shorter list of the "most important places". This proposal has been vigorously opposed in public consultations organised by the AHC to discuss this and other "reform" proposals.

There is some evidence that the use of the criteria and sub-criteria in this way is the result of an over zealous determination to cast the boundaries of the national estate in forest areas as widely as possible. This possibility is suggested by the contrast between what the study team has done in East Gippsland, and what the AHC had earlier said needed to be done. For example, in its submission to the RAC in 1990, the AHC expressed this view about old growth forest:

"The Commission does not consider that current clear felling practices and silvicultural prescriptions minimise the impact of logging on old growth forest values. Because of the increasing rarity of old growth forests in Australia resulting from logging operations, the Commission considers that no further logging of the these forest types should occur until they are systematically and comprehensively surveyed and those of high conservation value identified and given adequate legislative protection..." (Para 6. 116, Part 4A)

These words appear to imply that only those old growth forests considered to have "high conservation value" were in need of protection.

In East Gippsland, on the other hand, the study group's examination of "old growth" forest areas under sub-criterion A2 ("importance in maintaining existing processes or natural systems at the regional national scale") reached the conclusion that 175, 461 hectares out of a total of 224,000 hectares (78%)of identified "old growth" satisfied the sub-criterion for listing. The only areas excluded were either too small (less than 10 hectares) or were not considered to have "integrity within the landscape." The study group could have decided that the requirements of the national estate would be met by the listing of a representative "high conservation value" sample of the total. Instead, it seems to have cast its net over as much "old growth" as possible. The report contains no information about why the study group interpreted its mandate in this way, nor any comment about the advantage to the national estate, or the environment, of having done so. "Old growth" in East Gippsland had already been comprehensively protected under the CAR Reserve system. The superimposition of national estate listing is not only superfluous, but probably also revealing as to the AHC's intent.

Other problems in the AHC methodology can be identified:

1. there is a high level of bias in the pattern of sampling intensity towards pre-logging survey areas and away from existing national parks. This has meant that parks set aside by the Victorian Land Conservation Council in recognition of their ecological importance do not weigh heavily in the dataset analysis made by the AHC, especially in the fauna studies. The upshot is that the study methodology favoured the discovery of national estate values in areas not currently reserved or set aside in parks, and made less effort to confirm whether national estate values are actually present in places that are already reserved or set aside.

   (The observation has also been made that, curiously, fewer national estate values were found in existing national parks and reserves than were found outside them. Whether this is an implicit comment on standards of park management, or on the procedures earlier used to select areas for parks and reservation, or on the appropriateness of the AHC's methodology, is hard to say. The phenomenon is said to have been particularly evident in relation to fauna "values").

2. the old growth, wilderness and biodiversity assessments largely duplicated studies already carried out in a rigorous scientific manner using the JANIS criteria for identifying CAR reserves. This was a wasteful and unnecessary duplication, but it nevertheless underlines the extent to which the AHC does not regard itself as bound by any findings or conclusions other than the ones it reaches itself. The fauna studies also duplicate in large measure studies carried out by the state government under the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

F.     HOW COMPREHENSIVELY HAS THE STUDY IDENTIFIED NATIONAL ESTATE VALUES?

The report on the national estate seems to be persistently blind to one of the area's main (if not the main) cultural values. That value is the long history of timber production and forest management which has been mainly responsible for sustaining the human communities that now live there, and have lived there for generations.

The report has no difficulty in identifying that "Aboriginal Places " deserve recognition. When it comes to "Historic Places", the report notes that:

"Some forest areas are particularly rich, reflecting layers of history, or strong regional stories, and so are important cultural landscapes". (P. 24)

The examples that follow of that "history" and those "stories", include gold and silver mining, stone cairns marking the state border, and the pastoral and farming industries, but not forestry, and not timber production. The closest the report comes to acknowledging the importance of timber production and forest management as a heritage value of the region is the reference on p., 25 of the East Gippsland report to the fact that the inhabitants of depression era camps were involved in "sleeper-cutting, wattle-barking, ringbarking and forest thinning". Was it only depression era workers who engaged in such activities? Where those activities of the depression era workers only significant because:

"significant remains of such camps can be found at Snuff Gully and the Colquhuon railway siding"? (p. 25)

Were the activities of generations of foresters and timber getters that have maintained the production values of East Gippsland's forests of lesser importance, and was there no significant evidence of these activities in the form of the forests themselves?

Under the heading of "Places of Social Value" the opportunity is again not taken to recognise the achievements, the struggles, the successes and the failures of timber communities. The report says (p. 26) that:

"Social heritage value was identified in more than 60 places in the study area".

Of those 60 places, about a quarter are apparently "widely-known recreational areas" and "forest touring routes" (not logging roads?). Schools, halls, and general stores receive due recognition, but "social value" does not seem to inhere in any places that might have a close association with the industry that has long supported the region. No pubs, no forestry commission offices, no firewatching towers, no log dumps, no sites of heroic struggles against bushfire.

The persistent myopia of the report in regard to the region's forest industry and communities is nowhere better illustrated than in the following discussion of how the study group scoured the landscape for places that satisfied Criterion D: ("Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of Australia's natural or cultural places or environments"):

"Places important for demonstrating key characteristics of human activities in the environment (including way of life, custom, process, land-use, function, design or technique) were also identified. Much work has already been done across East Gippsland on mining sites, which represent an important human activity closely related to the forests, and forest resources." (P. 69)

Somewhere in that short paragraph there seems to be a large black hole, into which timber production and forest management has inexplicably fallen. Mining in the forests is an acceptable "custom, process, land-use or function," but forestry and timber production, it appears, are not.

In short, the struggles and the achievements of the forest industry and its constituent communities, past and present, seem to be invisible in the East Gippsland national estate study.

G.     WHY DOES THE REPORT SEE NO NATIONAL ESTATE VALUE IN TIMBER PRODUCTION AND FOREST MANAGEMENT?

It is not clear how it has been possible for the study group to take such a selective approach to the identification of cultural national estate values in East Gippsland.. The criteria and sub-criteria used by the AHC provide plenty of scope for the timber-producing heritage of East Gippsland to receive proper recognition. For example:

Criterion A2 "Importance in maintaining existing processes or natural systems at the regional or national scale" might have been used by the study group to identify places where healthy regrowth forests attested to the sustainability of present and previous forest management. Timber extraction from forests has been a human activity for at least two thousand years, quite probably long enough for it to be regarded as an "existing process" and possibly even a "natural system".

Criterion A4 ("importance for association with events, developments or cultural phases which have had a significant role in the human occupation and evolution of the nation, state, region, or the community"). Were there no "events" or "phases" in the history of the forests and the timber communities that depended on them which deserved recognition under this heading? Perhaps sites where new forest management practices were trialled or adopted? Sites which demonstrated that old forest management practices needed to be changed or abandoned? Sites which provided timber for projects of special significance?

Timber communities whose handiwork in the forests the report ignores will be interested to note that the study team recognises the achievements of the conservation movement: "The recent history of the conservation movement is represented in the Errinundra Saddle Boardwalk and Blockade Site in East Gippsland " (p. 22, Vol 2 Methods Papers East Gippsland report)

Criterion B2 provides another opportunity ("Importance in demonstrating a distinctive way of life, custom, process, land-use, function or design no longer practised, in danger of being lost, or of exceptional interest"). Even if timber production and forest management are not in danger of being lost, (and there are some within the timber industry who fear that they are) there is no question that timber production from native forests is a "custom, process and land use" of "exceptional interest ".

Sub-criteria C. 2, D. 2, F. 1, G. 1, and H. 1, similarly all afford opportunities for recognition of East Gippsland's long and rich heritage of timber production and forest management, but the study group appears to have had no interest in availing itself of those opportunities.

The healthy regrowth forests around Nowa Nowa were the site of extensive clearfelling in the early years of World War II. The timber was used to produce charcoal from which gas for car and trucks in Melbourne was generated, enabling valuable petroleum products to be diverted to the war effort.

Clear-felling was introduced as a silvicultural practice in the mid - 60's around Cabbage Tree Creek because it was found to produce better regeneration of silvertop ash than was possible under the previous practice of selective logging.

Many would consider these aspects of forest history in East Gippsland as being significant, but the national estate study does not appear to recognise them under any of the criteria or sub-criteria to which they are relevant.

The cultural history of the forest communities and the history of forest management in East Gippsland is not well recorded. The Heritage Commission study has avoided making any contribution to overcoming that deficiency. (An appendix to the AHC's 1995 - 96 Annual Report shows that, of the total of 11,682 places on the register at the time, the total number of "historic environment" places relating to forestry and the timber industry in the whole of Australia was... one.)

H.     WHY HAS THE AHC TAKEN THE APPROACH IT TOOK?

Given that there seems to have been no regulatory or procedural impediment to the AHC study group taking a more holistic approach to the identification of national estate values, the question arises whether its apparent unwillingness to take this approach might be due to attitudinal factors, or to the AHC having taken a partisan view of its responsibilities in carrying out the regional assessment.

Some clues are to be found in the AHC's submission to the RAC Inquiry. The following statements concern some of the matters that the AHC thought the RAC should address:

"...the Heritage Commission considers there would be benefit in the Commonwealth carrying out research directed towards ascertaining the accuracy of current methodologies and estimates" [of timber resource levels determined by State Forestry Commissions]. (Para 8(d), Part 2)

"...the Heritage Commission considers there is a need to establish the degree to which sustained yield estimates of timber are sustainable through time and the extent to which traditional sustained yield management for timber may or may not allow sustainability of non-timber resources". (Para 8(e), Part 2)

"...The Commission considers there is a need to examine the scientific rigour in the development of the codes of practice, to study the effectiveness of the practices in protecting conservation values, to implement regular monitoring of compliance and to examine the possibility of national standards for the codes". (Para 8(g), Part 2)

The AHC also apparently had views at that time about the uses to which timber harvested from native forests should be put. Another matter it thought the RAC should consider was:

"The present orientation of the timber industry to products of relatively low overall social benefit: the Commission considers an investigation into the final use of forest products would inform the current debate about the degree to which the industry is presently adding value, or able to add value. The Commission believes that a wide range of alternative options need to be considered to help determine those which will provide the greatest overall and long-term national and social benefit from use of Australia's forests". (Para 8(h), Part 2)

There is some evidence that the AHC thought that timber production from native forests might not be ecologically sustainable, and that moves to base the industry on plantations might be inevitable:

"The question becomes one of which factor has primacy or perhaps more realistically about within which primary factor the other factors are to be accommodated. For example, if the primary concern is about levels of industry activity, and the "sustained yield" or resource level required into the future, then concerns about other forest attributes are accommodated around that resource requirement. However, if sustainable forest ecosystems are of primacy, then industry needs will be accommodated after appropriate studies and investigations of the forests, or the industry may move entirely into plantations". (Para 5.6.4, Part 2)

There is ample evidence in the AHC's submission to the RAC that the AHC regarded native forest logging as incompatible with and detrimental to national estate values:

"In reality, it is much more likely that logged forests will not be registered, because of the adverse effects of logging operations on national estate values". (Para 4.2.3, Part 2)

-"...most logging, and certainly all clearfelling, reduces most national estate values;

- with intrinsic ecological factors being approximately equal, unlogged forests are regarded as having much higher national estate value, and would be considered for registration in preference to logged forests". (Para 4.2.4, Part 2)

In Part 4A of its submission to the RAC, the AHC undertook a detailed critique of apparently every aspect of forest management for timber production. Under a series of headings such as "Forestry operations and soil values", "Forestry operations and water values", "Forestry operations and flora values" and "Forestry operations and arboreal and ground-dwelling fauna values", the submission purported to find many deficiencies or weaknesses in forest management regimes. If fact, it found very few virtues.

It emerges with reasonable clarity from the AHC's submission to the RAC that in the forests, lack of "disturbance" is the key to national estate values. It is ironic that in the cities, national estate values are found to inhere in elaborately transformed artefacts such as homes, commercial buildings, bridges etc., while in the countryside, the only worthwhile national estate values, according to the AHC, are those which are manifest in an almost complete lack of disturbance:

"When comparing places of similar type with similar attributes, highest national estate value is afforded those places which are the least disturbed, i.e. having the best condition and the highest integrity." (Para 1.4, Part 4A)

Timber communities and forest managers may well find a strange irony in fine timber buildings in relatively treeless inner city landscapes receiving national estate recognition, but well-managed timber production forests, reflecting decades of patient husbandry and human involvement, and which gave rise to the timber buildings (and could do so again) receiving little recognition, and being treated with something approaching disdain.

The picture that emerges from the AHC's five volume submission to the RAC is of a well-resourced, patient and purposeful critic and opponent of the forest industries.

The East Gippsland report gives no sign that the AHC has changed its views since the RAC report was released. The methods paper for regional assessments contains this comment:

"Debate over the ecological sustainability of current timber harvesting practices has been a major political issue since the 1990's. The Forest and Timber Inquiry undertaken by the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) in the early 1990's concluded that existing levels of wood production did not constitute a threat to the forest estate, although it made some qualifying statements. (RAC 1992)

In contrast, conservation groups and some government heritage agencies considered that many of the environmental impact statements being prepared for the forests were not only inadequate in assessing the impact of integrated logging on the nature conservation values of the forests, they virtually ignored their cultural values." (p. 2 Vol 2, Methods Papers)

In other words, "some government heritage agencies", which almost certainly included the AHC, were not happy with the outcome of the RAC inquiry. On that basis, the AHC appears to have decided that it would endow itself with the tools to prosecute a long and generously-resourced campaign against the timber industry in the native forests. The comprehensive and fine-mesh net of criteria, sub-criteria, "national estate values", thresholds, sampling techniques, and grid sizes appears to have been developed specifically to enable the AHC to cast the bureaucratic mantle of national estate listing over as much as possible of the forest estate. It has doubtless done so in the belief that it was protecting the environment, and that the forest estate needed protection against the timber industry. What it may have lost sight of is that this is not the job that, ostensibly, the Australian Heritage Commission Act created the Commission to carry out. The Act requires the Commission to advise the Minister, inter alia, on:

"action to identify, conserve, improve and present the national estate ". (5.7 (a) (I))

The Act does not invite or require the AHC to protect the environment by declaring vast tracts of it to be national estate, but this is the reinterpretation of the Act that the AHC appears to have equipped itself to implement, and has applied in a wholesale fashion in East Gippsland. It has inverted the mandate it was given to "identify" and "conserve", into one that purports to "conserve" by "identifying".

The use of national estate listing as an instrument to promote the AHC's views about the need for environment "protection" was described recently in these terms by the AHC Chairperson. After explaining that the AHC's main task is to identify and conserve the national estate, the AHC Chairperson said:

"... what people have said consistently since I've been there which is two years is that it's easier to get protection for places on the list. Once you have established that it has heritage values it's easier to get protection, the line is either in Paramatta or Paris. So you can go to the local government and get a planning regulation. Occasionally in some states you can get a permanent conservation order or you can really work your heart out and go to Paris and you can get World Heritage."

The implication in these words seems to be that both national estate and World Heritage listing have become somehow detached from a straightforward consideration of national estate and world heritage significance, and made subordinate to the AHC's opinions or judgements about whether or not an area or place needs "protection". A former AHC chairperson told an informal meeting of commissioners, AHC staff and industry representatives last year that the "only point to listing is where it provides increased protection." The methodology developed by the AHC for regional assessment, comprehensively applied in East Gippsland, certainly gives full expression to this interpretation of national estate listing as a tool for environmental protection.

The view of the AHC that its primary responsibility in the forest estate is environmental protection is further reinforced in the memorandum of understanding signed with the Commonwealth concerning the East Gippsland RFA. In an attachment to this document the AHC explains the grounds on which it will and it won't list places identified as having national estate values. It says:

"The Commission will monitor the outcomes of each RFA and, if in any region they fail to provide the regional level of protection anticipated, the Commission reserves the right to take action, including to list all identified areas."

A few pages later, it says again:

"- should the RFA fail to provide certainty for the agreed conservation outcomes, the Commission will review the appropriateness of these commitments in relation to the identification and conservation of the National Estate, and reserves the right to take appropriate action, including to list areas identified as having national estate values but not already listed."

On this basis, listing has practically ceased to be a relatively straightforward adjunct to the identification of the national estate, and has become a tool, to be wielded at the discretion of the AHC, for environmental protection.

It is worth noting that the AHC reserves the right, in the memorandum of understanding, to undertake further listings in respect of:

- "nominations by third parties for the inclusion of places in forested areas in East Gippsland"

-"any places identified in the future as a result of new information "

-"...on an exceptional basis, already identified unprotected places of very high significance"

-"...a number of places which have been assessed as being of national estate significance but which are inadequately documented for listing purposes if the additional data becomes available to improve listing documentation "

I.     NOTWITHSTANDING THE AHC'S EXTRAVAGANT AND MISAPPLIED METHODOLOGY, ARE ITS "VALUES" ABOUT RIGHT?

The Australian Heritage Commission's belief that a premium should attach to lack of "disturbance" in identifying national estate areas is perhaps not surprising, even if it does give rise to a very selective definition of "national estate". What is surprising, and has not been explained by the AHC, is its apparent belief that there are substantial parts of the Australian landscape which have not been disturbed.

In the last two decades a substantial body of evidence and opinion has developed behind the idea that the Australian landscape was and is an artefact of the dominant socio/cultural influence it has been exposed to. Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the Australian landscape, including the forests, are now believed to have been mainly shaped by the hunter/gather existence of aboriginal peoples, with its heavy reliance on frequent burning to stimulate new growth, maintain desired floristic values, flush out game, and possibly to maintain ease of movement.

A substantial body of scholarship produced by Rhys Jones, Josephine Flood, Eric Rolls, Stephen Pyne, Tim Flannery and others has examined the impact of this "fire ecology" on the Australian landscape. Some of this work has also looked at the impact of the sudden (in evolutionary terms) end of fire ecology resulting from the arrival of European settlers and the displacement of Aboriginal peoples. It appears that the consequences probably included the invasion of grasslands by trees, an increase in the density of forest cover, and some conversion of eucalypt forest to rainforest.

There is scarcely even an echo of this history of disturbance and change in the approach of the AHC to identifying the national estate in the forests. The "lack of disturbance" it seeks instead to highlight appears to be mainly a lack of disturbance by European man. The forest it believes should be designated as national estate, and protected henceforth as far as possible from human disturbance of any kind, is the forest that it thinks bears the fewest signs of disturbance by European settlers. In reality, most supposedly undisturbed forest, at a point in time little more than 200 years after European settlement, is an artefact of the transition from one dominant culture and disturbance pattern to another. It reflects the withdrawal of fire ecology, and the beginnings of a new and different pattern of disturbance.

The idea that vast areas of forest are undisturbed, or that by minimising disturbance the AHC is making it possible to keep something that has been there a very long time, appears to be a romantic but probably unsupportable notion. In one respect, it is also a very Euro-centric notion. It implies that European man is the disturber, while the people of the previously dominant culture, the aborigines, were no more than a passive (or harmonious) presence.

In his book "The Future Eaters" Dr Tim Flannery takes exception to the Federal government's use of the IUCN definition of wilderness area, viz:

"Large areas of unmodified or slightly modified land, or land and water, retaining their natural character and influence, without permanent or significant habitation, which are protected and managed so as to preserve their natural condition".

Dr Flannery says:

"I find this definition quite extraordinary in an Australian context. The newly proclaimed Mabo legislation may have wiped the concept of terra nullius from Australia's law books, but it is still alive and well in the minds of those who promote such a concept of wilderness. I hope that this book has demonstrated that wilderness as defined by the IUCN simply does not exist in Australia. For the entire continent has been actively and extensively managed for 60 000 years by its Aboriginal occupants. To leave it untouched will be to create something new, and less diverse, than that which went before". (p. 379)

Dr Flannery continues:

"Some of the best examples of the effects of lack of management on biodiversity come from Northern Australia. Dr David Bowman of the Northern Territory Conservation Commission has described large parts of the Arnhem Land plateau as "the new wilderness". For millennia the plateau was managed and burned by its Aboriginal inhabitants. Now, they no longer visit many parts of it, and a new, natural" fire regime is developing. It consists of occasional vast wild-fires which kill fire-sensitive species such as Callitris pines, and which threaten the small vine thicket patches that survive in the moister areas. If this lack of management is allowed to continue, there is no doubt but that the "new wilderness" of the Arnhem Land plateau will be poorer in species, and less stable, than the system which was shaped by humans over the millennia". (p. 379)

If there is no genuine wilderness, it may well be equally misguided to seek to formalise "lack of disturbance" as a criteria for identifying the national estate in the forests. The landscape will not be "frozen" by national estate listing. It will not remain as it is now, and it will not revert to what it was before (ie before the arrival of Europeans). Instead, it will evolve in a manner dictated by the dominant influences of the new regime.

Those dominant influences include, it might be argued:

• infrequent, calamitous wildfire
• proliferation of feral pests
• lack of any kind of human intervention

The results may well include:

• senescence and decay of forests
• displacement of eucalypt forest by rainforest
• a decline in biodiversity.

What is hailed as "protection", in the form of the setting aside of reserves is in reality a new set of evolutionary influences. The AHC has, in effect, set itself up as an arbiter of the direction that the evolution of the forest estate will take. What the consequences of the new direction of change will be for the flora and fauna of the forests, nobody knows. Whether this course of action is compatible with a precautionary approach to the management of the landscape, nobody has asked.

As far as is known, the AHC has never proposed the restoration of aboriginal burning practices, or the clearance of forests from what were grasslands and woodlands until the arrival of Europeans, despite the fact that both these initiatives would, in many areas, contribute more to restoring and perpetuating a pre-European landscape than the current preference for minimising "disturbance". The AHC Act does not ask the AHC to determine the future direction of the evolution of the forests. The Act requires the AHC to "identify, conserve, improve and present the national estate". When the rich and complex history of biological change in the forest estate is considered, it is not obvious why the AHC should decide to discharge its mandate simply by inhibiting as far as possible disturbance associated with the harvesting and regrowth of trees in areas where European settlers have not (or not much) harvested and regrown them. Perhaps a detailed justification is needed for such an apparently simplistic and arbitrary approach to "conservation" and "improvement".

Dr Flannery also asks a number of cogent questions about the proper management of reserve areas, taking as his point of departure the changes in vegetation that have taken and are taking place. He looks at the example of Captain Cook's landing place at Kurnell on Botany Bay. The observations of Joseph Banks suggest that the area was very open woodland with a grassy understory. Flannery writes:

..."This is a habitat type that seems to have dominated the Sydney and Botany Bay areas in the early contact period, yet it has all but vanished from the region today. As I have shown above, it was clearly burned regularly, and fuel loads would rarely have been allowed to exceed a couple of tonnes per hectare. Fires of this type are cool and rarely widespread.

At present, a vastly denser vegetation type covers the site and grass is a very minor part of the natural ecosystem. Indeed, the forest is presently so dense that it is not possible to see someone once they have entered a few metres into it from the shore. This dense forest consists primarily of fire-promoting species which periodically burn in a vast conflagration. These fires are exceptionally hot, for fuel loads regularly exceed 10-15 tonnes per hectare. The hot fires that this fuel feeds are also often widespread. They can easily drive fire-sensitive species, such as rainforest plants, to extinction in these small reserves.

Partly as a consequence of this changed fire regime, most of the mammals present in the area 60 000, or even 200 years ago, are now gone. Historic records indicate that grey kangaroos, eastern quolls, short-nosed bandicoots, white-footed rabbit-rats, bettongs and many other mammals were present in the Botany Bay region 200 years ago. All of these are locally, while others are entirely, extinct. In their place are a few introduced species which inhabit the more disturbed habitats. The dense bush supports a very limited native mammal fauna". (p. 380)

Dr Flannery suggests that uniformity of vegetation structure is a disaster for biodiversity:

..."Many animal species need old growth areas for shelter and patches of young growth for food. A mosaic of vegetation age structures is critical to the maintenance of biodiversity in Australia". (p. 381)

The question can fairly be asked: which set of existing management practices best yields that desired landscape mosaic - the minimisation of disturbance that is apparently the goal of the AHC's national estate listings, or the harvesting and burning of small forest coupes on long rotations (80 - 90 years) with habitat tree retention, as practiced by state forest service agencies?

Another implication of the AHC's decision to attach a high premium to "lack of disturbance", is that it would probably preclude recognition being given to other elements of what the "man or woman in the street" would happily recognise as part of the national estate. It is unlikely, for example, that the greatly altered but fertile and well-managed pastures of the Southern Highlands of NSW could ever be recognised as an important part of Australia's wool-producing heritage. It is equally unlikely that the cleared but fertile and salinity-free plains of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia could ever find recognition as a long-standing and productive contributor to Australia's valuable heritage as a food producing and exporting country. (If they did find such recognition, it would have to be on the basis of different criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values" from the ones used by the AHC in the forests.)

Both areas are highly disturbed, but the dominant European culture has made them unquestionably a valuable part of the national estate. Sadly, and curiously, this is not the "national estate" that the AHC appears to be interested in, and dedicated to.

Instead of embracing a growing body of knowledge about disturbance and the evolutionary influences that shaped the forest estate over tens of thousands of years, the AHC has embraced a body of dogma. Broadly speaking, that body of dogma is the one professed by the conservation movement.

J.     THE EFFECT OF NATIONAL ESTATE LISTING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY

OWNERS

Letters sent by the AHC to the owners of private forest properties have included assurances that following the national estate listing of their property, the owner will:

• retain all the owner's present rights

• not be required to change the way in which the owner manages or disposes of the property

• not be subjected to any direct legal constraints on the actions of the owner.

There appears to be no foundation for absolute assurances of this kind, and their inclusion in the letters probably amounts to misleading conduct under S.52 of the Trade Practices Act. That the assurances cannot be absolute is underlined by the commentary in the material distributed on the Commonwealth's responsibilities under S.30 of the AHC Act:

"This constraint on the Commonwealth may sometimes affect the decisions of ... business organisations where a Commonwealth decision is required for foreign investment or export approval for example."

The Administrative Review Council examined this issue in 1988 in the context of advice to the Attorney General about whether decisions by the AHC should be made reviewable by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). In a letter dated 9 November 1988, the ARC said, in part:

"What then of decisions of the Commission relating to the entry of places in the Register? In the Council's view, such decisions have the potential to affect in a particular way the interests of the owner of the property or of persons having property interests in relation to the place. While it is true, as Mr Molesworth points out, that the entry of a place in the Register does not place legal constraints upon private individuals but merely constrains Commonwealth authorities from taking any action that might adversely affect the place, it would seem that inclusion in the Register is likely in some cases at least to affect property values and may in practice if not in law affect dealings with the land concerned or operations on the land. The Council does not take a narrow view of an effect on interests. Consistently with the expansive views taken by the AAT of standing under section 27 of the AAT Act and of requirements for joinder under section 30 (Control Investments Pty Ltd and Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (no. 1) (1980) 3 ALD 74, 79-80), the Council considers that interests may be affected by a decision notwithstanding that the decision does not or may not fetter the lawful rights of a person or reduce them or take them away."

There is no provision for compensation to be paid where the listing of private property creates constraints that operate to significantly devalue the property listed.

The recommendation made by the ARC in 1988 that certain decisions of the AHC should be reviewable by the AAT was not taken up by the government. This appears to leave the private property owner without any opportunity to seek judicial review of AHC decisions, or any opportunity to seek compensation for loss.

This appears to be an area where the AHC's zeal for promoting its version of environmental "protection" has run ahead of commonly understood notions of equity and due process.

K.     CONCLUSION

The AHC has proceeded from a set of unexceptionable and easily understood criteria for the national estate to develop a contrived and extravagant methodology for the forests that seems designed to maximise the discovery (or creation) of national estate.

The criteria, sub-criteria and "national estate values" appear to have been developed as weapons in a long, painstaking and well-resourced campaign by the AHC to "protect" the forests against the timber industry by casting, (or threatening to cast) the bureaucratic mantle of national estate listing over large areas, much of it already reserved, and some of it still in production.

Leaving aside its claims to discern "national estate" on all sides in East Gippsland, the AHC has contributed little to the conservation of biodiversity, old growth and wilderness that had not already been adequately served by the application of JANIS criteria to define the CAR Reserves. Arguably, all that the AHC has contributed to the RFA process are some heavily qualified and unenforceable undertakings as to its own future conduct. The withdrawal of the AHC from the RFA process would not significantly detract from the scientific respectability of the process, and would enhance the certainty of RFA outcomes by removing a wayward and unpredictable element.

It is not clear whether governments have been willing or unwilling accomplices in the wayward conduct of the AHC, but it does seem clear that they should not allow it to continue. The AHC has neither the expertise nor any first hand experience to entitle it to exercise significant influence over the way the forest estate is managed. It is not alone amongst Commonwealth government agencies in that regard.

The Victorian government may have felt that it had little choice but to co-operate in the conduct of the AHC's assessments. It was seeking an end to uncertainty for the forests of East Gippsland, and was also under threat from the Commonwealth government of the day of a reduction in export woodchip license allocations if progress was not made towards an RFA. If the Victorian government calculated that the bounteous forest resources of East Gippsland could absorb the AHC's "sieving" for "national estate values" without major loss of resource to its timber industry, then it appears to have judged correctly. It is not certain that the outcomes would be so fortunate in other areas of Victoria, or in other states.

In the light of:

• the contrived and extravagant nature of the AHC's methodology

• the arbitrary and over-wheening way in which the methodology has been applied

• the failure of the AHC to come to terms with the importance of continual disturbance in determining the structure of the forests

• the AHC's inability to recognise the heritage of timber industry communities sustained by the forests

• the misleading nature of advice given to private forest owners

• the unresolved issues concerning the listing process, and the apparent separation between entitlement to list on the one hand, and listing, on the other, contained in the memorandum of understanding

it would be appropriate for the Minister to ask the AHC to withdraw from the RFA process, to refrain from further national estate listings in the forests, and to conduct a thorough examination of the goals it has set itself, the methods it has used to pursue those goals, and the consequences for that national estate that have followed.

Leadbetters Possum Communication with Senator Bob Brown

19 September 1996

Senator Bob Brown
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear Senator Brown,

I was struck by the sincerity of the distress you showed at the announcement by the government in mid-July that it had lifted the ceiling on hardwood export woodchips. You called the decision a "terrifying decision for those people who know and love Australia's forests". You also deplored what you called:

"the destruction of habitats of rare and endangered species like leadbeater's possum in Victoria, like the white goshawks and the grand Tasmanian wedgetails, the sub-species which are down to about a hundred nesting pairs in Tasmania."

Because of the gravity of the consequences you were pointing to, it seemed to me I should inform myself more closely about these problems, which hadn't previously been characterised quite so starkly by anyone in a position of influence and responsibility such as you now hold.

You might be interested to know what I found out.

Leadbeaters Possum

In 1960 the scientific community had listed leadbeaters possum as "probably extinct", since no sightings had been recorded since 1910. A year later one was found near Marysville, and since that time, according to my information, the species has been discovered in relatively large numbers throughout the ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria. Despite this relative abundance, concern is still held for the possum's future, which is probably why it remains on the endangered species list maintained by the Australian Nature Conservation Agency under the Endangered Species Protection Act, 1992.

The reason for this concern, according to the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment's quarterly magazine, "Outdoors":

"... is that the optimum habitat for Leadbeater's is a young regenerating or uneven-aged forest that contains both wattles and an ample supply of old hollow logs which are used for nesting. Regrowth from the 1939 wildfires which devastated much of Victoria, together with the fire-killed remnants of mature forest, has provided abundant feeding and nesting habitat during the past 30 years. However, these remnants are gradually decaying and falling over, and suitable nesting hollows will not occur in regrowth forest for another 150 years. Population models have predicted a massive decline of the possum over the next 30 years, with no increase in population until about 2075 when the 1939 regrowth ash forest will begin to develop tree hollows suitable for nesting."

The results of detailed and painstaking research carried out by scientists at the ANU and elsewhere seem to indicate that what the possum is mainly vulnerable to is uncontrolled wildfire, exactly like those of 1939. Effective fire management, it seems, may be the key to ensuring its survival.

The Victorian government, which of course manages Victoria's public forests, says it is committed to conserving leadbeaters possum throughout its range, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt the strength of this commitment, since the possum is one of Victoria's faunal emblems. The Action Statement it has adopted provides for the protection of "optimum habitat" (mature ash forest or regrowth ash forest with more than 12 live hollow-bearing trees per three hectares). It also recommends the trialling of alternatives to clearfelling in selected areas of ash forest within the Central Highlands, and special protection for hollow trees. The government acknowledges that the problem is not an easy one, because it stretches across centuries, but it says that computer modelling by ANU scientists has predicted that the steps being taken will ensure the survival of leadbeaters possum through the Central Highlands for at least another 250 years.

A number of points seem to me to stand out in this information, and perhaps you will be struck by them too.

1. just as the aftermath of the 1939 bushfires seems to have played an important part in providing optimum habitat to enable the possum's increase, so it is likely that the fires themselves were a major, (possibly the major) reason for the possum's decline;

2. active forest management for timber production seems to have greatest potential to ensure the continued availability of food and shelter for the possum, (as well as the greatest opportunity to maintain a degree of fire control and prevention). This is because with the maturing of the forest, the canopy closes, and the growth and flowering of wattles is suppressed. Leadbeaters appear to need some regrowth, and sustainably managed forestry supplies it.

3. there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the forest managers, who are employees of the state government, or the timber industry have been at all recalcitrant about finding and adopting measures to protect the possum. The relationship between the possum and timber production may not be entirely comfortable, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of hostility or neglect on the part of forest managers either.

4. given that the Victorian government manages the forests, as well as being responsible for environmental protection, it doesn't seem likely, prima facie, that it would allow any decision by the federal government about permissible woodchip export levels to upset the provisions it has put in place to protect the possum;

5. the steep decline in possum numbers that is apparently expected over the next 30 years does not appear to be a function of forest management practices per se, but mainly of forest growth and maturation. It is not, to borrow a term from the greenhouse debate, an "anthropogenic phenomenon".

With all the scientific understanding that has been accumulated, and the concerned and enlightened protection measures that are being put in place, I expect that you will be relieved to know that the situation is not as bleak as you perhaps inadvertently painted it. As an aside, I would be interested to know whether you have made any public statements about the need for effective fire control and prevention measures in the forests.

White Goshawk

According to the Australian Nature Conservation Agency the Grey Goshawk, also sometimes known as the White Goshawk (Accipiter novaehollandiae ) is not a vulnerable or endangered species, so you do not need to be distressed or concerned about its status. The red goshawk, (Erythrotriorchis radiatus) or the other hand, (which you didn't refer to) is listed as vulnerable under the Endangered Species Protection Act. This means that, under the Act, "within the next 25 years the species is likely to become endangered unless the circumstances and factors threatening its abundance, survival or evolutionary development cease to operate."

You will probably be pleased to know, notwithstanding the fact that you did not express concern about this species, that a "recovery outline" has been prepared by ANCA.

The recovery outline lists the reasons for the decline of this species:

"Widespread clearance for agriculture in north-east New South Wales and south-east Queensland (confirmed); in Queensland changes to fire regime (speculative) egg collecting (speculative), shooting by pigeon and poultry owners (speculative). Clearance of habitat has undoubtedly caused a decline in the south-east of the species range, other factors may be having local effects that reduce abundance."

Forest managers and the timber industry don't look like the villains in this piece either. The recovery outline doesn't list in the reasons for decline anything like "timber harvesting (speculative)." I imagine this is the reason you didn't actually refer to this species in your remarks to the media about the woodchip decision.

Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle

There's not much doubt about the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax fleayi). The Commonwealth's list says it is endangered (critical). The reasons for its decline given in ANCA's "Action Plan for Australian Birds" says:

"Clearance for agriculture (confirmed) clearfelling for timber extraction (confirmed), poisoning and shooting (confirmed). Though there are no historical records of the population much suitable habitat, particularly in eastern and northern Tasmania has been cleared and the birds are still subject to disturbance when nesting and to illegal killing."

(I wonder how, if there are no historical records, you have become aware that the population is "down to" about a hundred nesting pairs as you put it, and not "up to" that number).

The recovery outline for the species says that management actions already initiated are:

1. "in state-managed forests buffer zones must now be left around known nests and those discovered during logging operations;

2. a public education program has been attempted but with limited success."

The recovery outline says that management actions still needed are:

1. "maintain close liaison between conservation authorities and forest managers to improve protection of nest sites on public land;

2. develop a vigorous public education program in areas where illegal poisoning and shooting [are] most prevalent, and to encourage conservation of nesting habitat on private land."

What strikes me about this information on the Tasmanian Wedgetail, and may well seem important to you too, is this:

1. to the extent that inappropriate forest management was responsible for any decline, diligent efforts seem to have been made to remedy the problem;

2. there seems to be a serious problem with public attitudes, as reflected in the incidence of poisoning and shooting, (presumably for livestock protection);

3. as with leadbeaters possum, the active involvement of the state forestry agency, along with state parks and wildlife officials, in implementing the recovery plan seems to make it unlikely that any decision by the Commonwealth government about permissible levels of woodchip exports would be allowed to undermine or impede the implementation of the recovery plan.

[The Action Plan does not say so, but I suppose it is possible that purposeful poisoning and shooting of the bird by farmers and landowners who suffer economic loss from its predations has accounted for a significantly higher rate of fatalities amongst adult birds than the pressures created by either timber harvesting or vegetation clearance. If you have made any public statements about this aspect of the problem, I would be grateful if you could draw my attention to them.]

I am sure you will find it reassuring, as I did, to know that diligent efforts are being made to protect these species, and that foremost amongst the people making those efforts are the responsible forest managers.

Whilst it is clear that vegetation clearance has had a major impact on the diminution of preferred habitat of many species, the harvesting and regrowth of relatively small areas of forest on a sustainable basis does not seem to have been a problem in attempts to ameliorate the plight of endangered species. In the case of leadbeaters possum, there are even grounds for believing that sustainable forest management works to the specie's advantage, by preserving nesting sites, ensuring a continuing food supply, and reducing the risk of wildfire.

I am sure that the concerns you expressed were inspired by genuine concern for the environment, but they do not seem to do justice to the real nature or the complexity of the problems, or to the efforts of the people responsible for solving them. It is possible that, at an appropriate time, you may want to acknowledge publicly that diligent efforts are being made, with some success, to preserve endangered species and that forest managers, who were not and are not responsible for the vegetation clearance for agriculture that has been and is still taking place, have been in the forefront of those undertaking this work for the small proportion of endangered species which are forest-dependent.

I have taken the liberty of copying this letter to members of the media audience to whom your remarks were initially addressed, because I appreciate that they too are concerned about the plight of endangered species, as am I.

Yours sincerely,

Warren Lang

Deputy Executive Director

Mahogany Sugar Glider Letter to supporters from the Australian Conservation Foundation

Australian Conservation Foundation Letter

National Ass Forest Indust Ltd
Attn Warren Lang
PO Box 89E
QUEEN VICTORIA TCE
ACT 2600

Dear Supporter,

He doesn't understand the concept of extinction
...but just give him a little more time

The mahogany glider is one of many endangered animals and plants that will only survive if their habitat is protected.

Time is running out for them

ACF and other groups work together to protect ecological communities and individual species. While we have had some success in halting the destruction of the mahogany glider's lowland rainforest habitat, we would achieve much more if we could combat the threats to endangered species through national coordination.

ACF has identified the clearing of native vegetation as a major threat to many endangered species.

Earlier this year we approached the Federal government's Endangered Species Scientific Subcommittee (ESSS). We asked them to list native vegetation clearance as a "key threatening process" under the Commonwealth Endangered Species Protection Act.

Once there's a listing under the Act, the Federal government will be obliged to instigate a nationally coordinated program to combat the threat.

The ESSS agreed with us that native vegetation clearance threatens many communities and species, but they decided that a nationally coordinated program would be too difficult for the Federal and state governments.

The listing was put into the too hard basket.

ACF believes it's the job of the Federal government to solve this problem at a national level. We won't let governments ignore this issue. We'll now take a modified nomination back to the ESSS. And we'll step up the pressure by lobbying governments to develop nation-wide solutions to extinction problems.

A win with this campaign will, at a stroke, give many endangered species a much better chance. Your donation will help us push this one through with all the strength we can muster.

To support our campaign, please tear off the coupon and send it with your donation...and on behalf of our endangered species, thank you for your valuable help.

Yours sincerely
Jim Downey
Executive Director

PS. Only a nationally coordinated program will ensure that species like the mahogany glider will have a secure future. We're all set to take a run at it...are you?

National Estate Values Assessed

Appendix C: National Estate Values Assessed