Victoria’s state logging company has failed to protect threatened species of gliders, and its methods to check for them before logging are inadequate, the state’s supreme court has found.
Justice Melinda Richards ordered VicForests on Friday to carry out full surveys of areas for greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders before logging, and to include buffers around habitats.
Two conservation groups – Environment East Gippsland and Kinglake Friends of the Forest – brought cases against the state logger that were heard together. The court ordered VicForests should pay the court costs of the groups.
Greater gliders – one of the world’s biggest gliding mammals – had their national threat level increased to endangered earlier this year. Yellow-bellied gliders are listed as vulnerable.
In the judgment, Richards said VicForests had not been applying a precautionary principle to conserving the gliders when planning and conducting logging.
She told the court VicForests logging in East Gippsland and Central Highlands presented “a threat of serious and irreversible harm to both the greater glider and the yellow-bellied glider as a species”.
The actions the logger did take to protect gliders that had been detected in logging coupes “are inadequate and in many cases unlikely to be effective”.
Richards said: “The ecological evidence was that those gliders living in coupes that are harvested in accordance with VicForests’ current practices will probably die as a result of the harvesting operations.”
VicForests’ current approach to detecting gliders was “considerably less” than the state’s timber harvesting code of practice required, the judge said.
VicForests carried out spotlight surveys, but these left most of the coupe unsurveyed and gave incomplete information, the judge said.
“Without knowing where the gliders are within a coupe, it is not possible for VicForests to take management actions to address risks to them.
“Moreover the management actions VicForests currently does take to protect greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders in East Gippsland and Central Highlands are not effective to address risks to them.”
She adjourned the case until 11 November to allow VicForests to agree to the details of changes to practices with the court.
But she said VicForests “must survey the whole of any coupe for harvest that may contain glider habitat” and this must be done “using a survey method that is likely to detect any gliders” and that could determine their home ranges.
During the case, which has been running for two-and-a-half years, Richards said VicForests had denied a precautionary principle applied and had claimed its measures were adequate.
Jill Redwood, a coordinator at Environment East Gippsland, said the judgment was vindication of concerns the groups had been raising for years, calling it “brilliant”.
“Threatened wildlife are not being properly surveyed for or protected. This should set a precedent for lots of threatened animals – not just gliders.”
The Victorian government wants to phase out native forest logging by 2030, but Redwood said the group wanted that brought forward to the end of 2023.
Sue McKinnon, president of Kinglake Friends of the Forest, said the judgment was an “emphatic win” for the community and the forests.
“The community has every right to be angry that the state government is subsidising the loss-making operations of VicForests to carry out logging that is driving species to extinction. The end of this horrendous practice is long overdue.”
In a statement, VicForests said: “VicForests is disappointed by the court’s decision. We are reviewing the decision and considering our options.”
