Fauna and Flora Research Collective

Saving East Gippsland’s old growth forests

September 16, 2024

East Gippsland’s old-growth forests have been a focus of the fight to protect Victoria’s forests for generations.

They are particularly special to Andrew Lincoln of the Fauna and Flora Research Collective, who worked to save them for many years.

“They are incredibly diverse forest ecosystems including magnificent rainforests, expressions of ecological processes on time scales well beyond our human life cycles.”

“They’re home to significant numbers of threatened animals and plants.”

More than most, Andrew has witnessed the devastating impacts of logging, most of which at the hands of the state’s now defunct logging agency, VicForests.

“Most of these ecosystems, even within the most extensive forest tracts of far East Gippsland, have been extensively cleared and degraded through exploitative industries such as industrial scale logging.”

This is the story of how a small community group and EJA lawyers helped bring an end to native forest logging – and why there’s still work to be done to protect Australia’s forests.

The case to stop VicForests logging precious old-growth forests

Andrew is part of Fauna and Flora Research Collective (FFRC), a volunteer-run group doing vital work surveying and reporting on threatened wildlife and plants in Victoria’s forests, particularly in areas where logging is permitted.

It’s patient, painstaking work – and it formed a major part of their case against the Victorian government including VicForests.

The case began almost seven years ago.

In late 2017, logging bulldozers, tree fellers and log loaders started arriving at newly designated logging areas in Kuark Forest in far East Gippsland.

These areas contained extensive old-growth forest – so FFRC took a deep dive into Victoria’s laws and forest records to see whether these areas should have been protected under the law.

Their findings? Old-growth forest protection levels in East Gippsland were below even the minimum level required by Victorian law.

In October 2017, EJA lawyers commenced urgent legal proceedings against the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) (formerly known as the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) and VicForests in the Victorian Supreme Court, on behalf of FFRC.

A month later, EJA and FFRC secured an interlocutory injunction – meaning no logging could take place in the old-growth forest area they found in Kuark until the case was determined in court.

They didn’t know it at the time, but the case would continue until 2024. In the years between, the case was reopened by the Victorian government twice following legislative changes and the 2019-2020 summer bushfires.

At long last, the case settled this year.

It wasn’t the outcome they hoped for.

But this is only one part of a much bigger story about the closure of VicForests and the beginning of the Victorian government’s commitment to end native forest logging.

A historic step towards protecting Victorian forests and wildlife

The Fauna and Flora Research Collective’s case was one of many which, over the course of the last decade, exposed unlawful logging practices by the Victorian Government’s logging agency, and massive holes in the implementation of Victoria’s environment laws.

Together, cases brought by FFRC and other brave community groups [1][2] helped drive the Victorian government’s decision to end native forest logging – a victory hard fought for by people like Andrew.

“It’s been a great relief to know that many important old growth forest areas that were slated for logging and subject of the case are still standing today. Some of the areas are now included in formal reserves.

This is a testament to our legal team and all the people who have supported us and our case over the years.”

FFRC’s case was significant in its own right, too.

It was the first case to test the legal obligations on the Victorian environment department to place areas with “high conservation values” – like old-growth forests – in protection zones.

FFRC argued that, under Victoria’s laws, a minimum area of old-growth forest must be protected from logging, and that DEECA failed to ensure this minimum protection in two forest types across East Gippsland. They argued that as a consequence, any logging in old growth forests in East Gippsland in these two forest types was unlawful and could not go ahead.

The core issue of this case was that despite the existence of laws that should have protected old growth forests, they were not implemented. They were ignored on two fronts: by the environment department, and by VicForests.

An injunction and undertaking secured early in the case meant that over the life of the case, 34 areas of old growth forest were protected from logging.

For the dedicated researchers, activists and community groups like FFRC who have devoted years to protecting Victorian forests, the end of VicForests came as welcome news.

Towards national protection for native forests

Concern remains about the destruction of native forests – in Victoria, and across the continent.

Andrew and the rest of FFRC are still keeping a close eye on logging in Victoria.

“Despite the abolition of VicForests and a government commitment to end native forest logging, forest clearing and destruction continues in other forms, including in Victoria under the guise of fire management.”

That native forests are still under threat and FFRC waited nearly seven years for the outcome of their case highlights the urgent need for stronger laws against deforestation and land clearing.

While Victoria has seen some promising steps towards lasting protection for native forests, it’s a different story in other states.

In lutruwita/Tasmania, there are no plans to end native forest logging. lutruwita has some of the tallest flowering trees in the world, some of which are hundreds of years old. But the state’s logging agency, Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT), can still cut them down.

At the top end of the continent, the Northern Territory is home to the largest intact woodland savanna on Earth.

But land clearing is skyrocketing across the NT, and the territory’s laws are failing. EJA is working alongside community groups in the NT to challenge unlawful land clearing – but these savannas are at serious risk.

At the federal level, a once in a generation process is underway to reform our national nature laws: the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. So far, that Act has completely failed to address Australia’s shocking deforestation crisis, from the Southern forests of Tasmania to the far North of the Territory.

This reform process is a major opportunity to finally turn Australia’s deforestation crisis around.

Good laws make cases like FFRC’s possible. Effective environmental litigation relies on laws that clearly set out how our environment should be protected, with hard boundaries and clear consequences for logging companies and developers.

And where those laws fail: we’ll be there, working with people like Andrew, to protect our breathtaking native forests.

“Until genuine biodiversity conservation research and advocacy is centralised in laws that govern our forests, our fight to protect Victoria’s forests will continue so they can grow old once again.”

A message from FFRC

FFRC would like to thank all the individuals and other conservation groups who have supported us in this case and more generally in our work over the years.

We are glad and proud through this case and our wider work to have contributed to the campaign to protect Victoria’s forests and look forward to continue doing so. We are deeply grateful for all the work undertaken by the many individuals and groups that have worked for forest conservation in the past and who continue to do so today and into the future.

We would also like to acknowledge that the circumstances of our case are occurring in the context of the social and environmental injustices associated with colonisation and we would like to convey our respect to the first peoples of the area known as Victoria, including Gunnai Kurnai, Bidawell and Ngarigo Monero people on whose land most of the forests concerned in this case exists.