Environment East Gippsland and the cases which ended commercial logging of native forests in Victoria’s state forests.
Environment East Gippsland, Kinglake Friends of Forests, and Gippsland Environment Group were the three litigants in the now-famous Yellow-bellied and Greater Glider cases, which helped halt native forest logging in Victoria, following 50 years of dogged community campaigning.
The legal team consisting of Jonny Korman, Dr Kylie Weston-Scheuber and Kwabena Adjoin Larbi won a series of decisive legal cases in the Victorian Supreme Court in November 2022, the ultimate outcome of which has been the end of most commercial native forest logging in Victoria’s state forests.
As was reported in The Age newspaper in May 2023,
“Treasurer Tim Pallas said the decision was made after receiving legal advice that the government could not legislate to prevent the regular legal disputes that VicForests had lost against conservation groups.”
The Case
The Court first granted an injunction in May 2021 stopping logging and preventing further damage in some of the most valuable, unburned Greater Glider habitat remaining in East Gippsland. The legal team quickly expanded the case by adding forests in the Central Highlands, and new clients Kinglake Friends of Forests. Later, forests in Central Gippsland/Tambo were also added, with new clients Gippsland Environment Group.
The wider scope added a huge workload for the team but it was very important for three reasons. It gave the groups more affordable access to the court – the arguments were similar in the different forests and so there were economies of scale. When the cases were won, the impact was more significant and far-reaching, halting logging from the Hume Highway east to the NSW border. Lastly, it demonstrated that VicForests’ illegal logging wasn’t an isolated incident – it was widespread, being repeated across the state. The court’s clarification of the law set a precedent for the North East forests as well.
By late 2021 the team was representing five groups, in six cases simultaneously – three Glider cases plus Warburton Environment’s endangered Tree Geebung case, mandatory roadside buffers and overlogging in Bushfire Management Zones for Kinglake Friends of Forests, and Gliders in south Gippsland, for Friends of Alberton West Forests.
The legal team’s preparation was meticulous, as was their dissection of VicForests’ breaches of each relevant clause of the Code of Forest Practices – it demonstrated beyond doubt that VicForests’ forest “management” was utterly inadequate.
The legal team offered big-hearted financial arrangements, which meant that small community conservation groups could be represented in court and were able to stand equal to the apparently bottomless pockets of VicForests.
The Destruction Continues
While the legal victories were cause for celebration, the destructive and unscientific activities of VicForests had been pervasive and massive, as Environment East Gippsland’s Jill Redwood details. “After the horrific 2020 Black Summer bushfires, VicForests revved up their chainsaws and heavy machinery and began to fell the precious small areas of unburnt old forests near Bonang – refusing to carry out surveys for gliders,” EEG’s Jill Redwood says.
“The endangered gliders had been recorded in this forest but VicForests and their logging contractors gave us the finger. This is when we decided we had to act.”
Aerial image of the beginning of the logging that was then halted by tree sit blockade and the court case
An Ecology of Tactics
For this part of the battle, locals had a two-pronged plan. Local group Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO) set up a tree sit and blockade to physically halt the destruction, at the same time as EEG gathered documents and evidence of threatened gliders living in the forests, reached out to expert witnesses, and assembled a crack legal team. Once this all came together, the lawyers successfully secured an urgent injunction from the Supreme Court.
“VicForests then moved into the next patch of glider-rich unburnt forest, a short distance away,” Jill Redwood says. “The determined legal team responded by chasing them around the forests with injunctions until the court decided it was wasting their time and set stringent criteria on VicForests that included effective surveys for gliders.”
VicForests refused to use the common survey method that was recommended by experts. VicForests claimed night spotlighting was far too dangerous for their staff and said they would close down logging rather than carry out spotlighting (spotlighting which would have found gliders).
“From that date on [the date that VicForests refused to survey using night spotlighting], while the case was heard, all logging was effectively halted by the court order and by VicForest’s refusal to survey.”
Jill Redwood speaks for many in the forest protection movement when she sums up the victories and the cost of going up against a powerful and wrongheaded government-funded department that seems hell-bent on destroying the very forests they are supposed to protect.
“There have been so many exciting cases – but so much lost before and in between,” she says.
Media release: Community groups win legal battle for protection of gliders!
Read the media release after the decision was upheld on appeal.
PREVIOUS, RELATED CASES VIA ENVIRONMENT EAST GIPPSLAND:
In 2009, EEG decided to roll out the big guns and sue the state government for breaking its own laws. This set a major precedent, allowing environment groups to sue the government over its plans to allow their state-owned logging entity to commit environmental crimes. So far they have been successful with six legal challenges and with the financial support of the public they intend to continue suing those who illegally vandalise our forests.
Government can lie to the voters and media but they can’t so easily lie to the courts.
For details of all the legal cases heard since the landmark 2009 case, click here.
