Critically endangered flowers get stay of execution after local environmental group threatens legal action against Victorian government.

Exclusive: independent MPs and Lidia Thorpe tell PM that environment law reforms under negotiation must remove exemptions for native forest logging.

First come the new utes, then come the questions. The carbon industry presents a generation-defining opportunity for Indigenous Australians, but there are concerns the rewards are not being fairly shared.

When the Victorian government announced it would stop logging its own native timber for commercial purposes, environment groups celebrated.

For decades, chainsaws have ripped through the native forests of south-east Australia. Across Australia, Victoria’s forests have been logged more than any other mainland state over the past two decades. Now the state is shutting its native logging industry in a matter of weeks, and the forests that were once given to Victoria’s state-run logging agency, VicForests, are being returned to the public.

Sixty Victorian not-for-profit organisations have written to Premier Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Tim Pallas to urge them to abolish state-owned logging business VicForests. They say the organisation has outlived its purpose and lost public support. "VicForests has systematically breached the public's trust and abjectly failed Victorians on every measure — economically, socially and environmentally"

A Supreme Court justice has ordered VicForests to temporarily halt the harvesting of fallen trees at a site in Victoria's west, after a community group alleged it had not surveyed for threatened species. Wombat Forestcare began court proceedings last week seeking an injunction for the site in Wombat State Forest, alleging VicForests had not checked the area for species of owls, quolls and reptiles. 

Victoria’s state-owned logging business is on the verge of being dismantled and absorbed into other areas of the bureaucracy after the state government reclassified it and announced a review of its operations. VicForests has been under financial pressure after recording a $52.4 million loss in the 2021-22 financial year, blaming legal battles that had stopped it from logging and forced it to pay compensation to clients for missed orders.

Environmental groups are calling on VicForests to abandon logging plans in the state's alpine region after endangered native plants were found near the earmarked sites. Five threatened plant species were seen at several coupes near Mount Stirling by surveyors from the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) and the Victorian Forest Alliance.

VicForests hired a private investigator to spy on environmental campaigners and an academic, an investigation by the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) has found. The investigation was sparked by an ABC report in 2021, in which a private investigator blew the whistle on his alleged spying work for the state government-owned logging agency.