Coalition plans to strip Tasmanian wilderness of protection

ALMOST half the area added to Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area by the Gillard government may be stripped of protection.

ALMOST half the area added to Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area by the Gillard government will be stripped of protection if a Coalition pitch to the World Heritage Committee is accepted.

The final area to be excised is still being finalised, but The Australian has learned it will be about 75,000ha of the 170,000ha added to the World Heritage List in June last year.

A request to the Paris-based committee will be made before a deadline of 4am Australian time tomorrow. The move will provoke a storm of outrage from conservationists and the Tasmanian Labor government, and threatens to destabilise the fragile Tasmanian forest peace deal between conservationists and the timber industry.

However, it delivers on a Coalition election promise and is supported by the state Liberal opposition, which polls suggest will form government after the March 15 Tasmanian election.

The Abbott government last night refused to comment on the size of the area it is seeking to be excised, but the Parliamentary Secretary for Forestry, Richard Colbeck, confirmed it was substantial.

He denied the move was purely political, or designed to degrade the forests, which include some of those most fought over between conservationists and loggers for decades in the Styx, Weld and Upper Florentine valleys.

Senator Colbeck said the request was aimed at protecting the integrity of the values of the wider Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. He said the area added at the request of the Gillard government included "large tracts" of logged forests and plantations and did not meet anyone's definition of wilderness.

"My contention is that we are actually maintaining the values of the Wilderness World Heritage estate by taking out the areas that don't qualify."

Senator Colbeck said about 50,000ha of the 170,000ha inscribed on the World Heritage List in June included existing national parks and these would remain within the World Heritage Area.

As well, about 28,000ha of forests previously managed as world heritage would remain within the existing World Heritage Area, and provision made for forests that connect previously inscribed areas.

The final decision will rest with the World Heritage Committee, part of the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

Conservationists and industry figures doubt the move will succeed, given the short period since the committee unanimously decided to inscribe the full 170,000ha.

Conservationists insist that no more than 11,000ha of the 170,000ha is degraded land and that small parcels of logged areas were included because they are surrounded by wild forest and can be rehabilitated.