Just as research has shown the health benefits of being in nature, the Victorian government has allowed its parks to fall into disrepair. A Cranbourne family arrives at a Rubicon campsite to find a thicket of blackberry weeds adjoining a power station. A park ranger’s job is reduced to cleaning toilets. A Preston couple can’t find a parking spot at Warburton, where traffic to Mount Donna Buang is choked, and a bike trail plan divides the community. 

Victorian authorities are investigating allegations critically endangered trees were illegally cleared in the state's Central Highlands. One specimen photographed buried under a pile of bulldozed flora is believed to be hundreds of years old.

By the end of this year, native forest logging will cease in Victoria. Now begins a long and difficult process to recover vast areas of forest after more than 50 years of clearfelling and other destructive logging practices. The supply of sawlogs in Victoria was close to being exhausted, and the state’s logging industry had long been financially unviable. Restoring the forest offers the opportunity to put something better in its place.

By the end of the year, Victoria’s trouble-plagued native forest industry will end – six years ahead of schedule. The state’s mountain ash forests and endangered wildlife will at last be safe from chainsaws. And there will be no shortage of wood – there’s more than enough plantation timber to fill the gap.

Native forest logging in Victoria will end in December, six years earlier than previously planned, after the state government decided severe bushfires and legal campaigns had made it economically and environmentally unviable. The announcement by the Andrews Labor government in Tuesday’s state budget follows a landmark supreme court judgment last November that the state-owned logging agency, VicForests, had broken the law by failing to protect endangered species.

The Andrews Labor Government has legal grounds to suspend its controversial wood pulp contract, according to new legal advice from top silk Perry Herzfeld SC and barrister Daye Gang. The barristers, who specialise in public law, have advised The Wilderness Society that the Andrews Government could suspend its wood pulp supply contract before 2030 without paying contractual penalties.

Victoria could end native forest logging before its 2030 deadline without paying contractual penalties, according to fresh legal advice commissioned by environmental groups. The Andrews government is contractually obliged to supply pulpwood, a by-product of harvesting for sawlogs, to Maryvale pulp and paper mill.

A government agency that allegedly spied on a woman to "dig up dirt" has been slammed by Victoria's information commissioner, who said the agency should apologise for its response to her request for information about the alleged spying.

Victorian taxpayers will fork out more than $38 million after state-owned logging agency VicForests was forced to compensate customers and contractors it could not supply with timber and billed the Andrews government for the cost. VicForests chief executive Monique Dawson told a Supreme Court hearing on Friday it had paid out more than $12 million to contractors and $25 million to customers, and sent the invoice to the government.

For Pete Henry, who has worked at the Maryvale paper mill in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley for 42 years, there was no specific time when the decline in white paper began. “It’s been happening for years,” he says. He believes the M5 machine “wasn’t making enough money for the company”.