FROM THE MERCURY:

UN fear for our ancient forests

27th June 2007

SUE NEALES - Chief reporter

AUSTRALIA has been accused by the United Nations of abrogating its responsibilities to Tasmania's World Heritage-listed forests.
A key meeting yesterday in New Zealand of the UN World Heritage Committee decided to dispatch an urgent delegation to inspect forests in Tasmania's south-east and north.

The meeting in Christchurch expressed concern about clear-fell logging and fire-bomb regeneration burning next to World Heritage forests in the Styx, Weld and Upper Florentine valleys in the south-east and along the Great Western Tiers near Deloraine.

The committee, which will inspect the forests in the next six months, rarely expresses such management concerns about World Heritage Areas in wealthy, developed nations.

More often, World Heritage treasures seen to be in such jeopardy that UN action needs to be ordered are in poor or undeveloped nations.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown called the mounting of the World Heritage mission to rescue Tasmania's old-growth forests as globally embarrassing to Australia.

He said the Federal Government was being warned its mismanagement of protected forests was in breach of World Heritage standards.

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull was last night aware of the move but declined to comment.

The last time Australia was called to order over insufficient protection of a World Heritage Area was when the same committee ordered an inspection of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory amid fears about damage from uranium mine tailings leaking into waterways.

"This is a breakthrough for Tasmania's old-growth forests," Senator Brown said.

"It puts the people damaging them or not managing them properly on global notice.

"The Federal Government must now use its powers over the Tasmanian Government to halt all logging right up to World Heritage boundaries immediately, at least until the World Heritage mission has inspected existing damage."

The committee has the power to remove World Heritage status from places so poorly managed that they have lost their natural and cultural integrity, or to recommend the extension of World Heritage Areas to better protect them.

The UN meeting was particularly appalled that insufficient buffer zones were in place to protect the South-West Wilderness Area from out-of-control forestry burns.

The meeting also discussed why logging roads were being bulldozed through to the perimeter of World Heritage Area boundaries and why ancient native forests adjacent to such sensitive protected zones were being quickly clear-felled.

Senator Brown believed deliberate logging adjacent to the World Heritage Area was intended to destroy its value.