DELWP’s relaunches investigation into Wombat Forest salvage operation

Contractors trying to salvage fallen timber from the Wombat Forest after the June 2021 storms are once more being tied up in bureaucratic red tape.

Victorian government bureaucrats have sought legal backing in their second attempt to throw a hurdle in front of timber workers trying to salvage up to 500,000 tonnes of windblown fallen timber from the Wombat Forest.

Harvest and haulage contractor Jim Greenwood, who as of this week was still salvaging timber from five coupes in the forest, has received yet another order by Victoria’s Conservation Regulator to produce hundreds of pages of documents or face a penalty of $18,174.

An aerial view of the devastated Wombat Forest. Picture: Zoe Phillips

The regulator first lodged the order with the Greenwoods last month, but then withdrew it within three days, without explanation.

Now the regulator has reissued the same order, but this time signed by a Magistrate.

The order demands Mr Greenwood and his wife, Chris, who run their small company JD Logging with three harvest workers and four to five truck drivers, provide the Conservation Regulator with copies of all licences and agreements, plus everything from truck routes, drivers names and addresses, workers’ time sheets to all business records and contracts linked to salvaging the Wombat Forest coupes.

The regulator order states its authorised officers attended Mr Greenwood’s Wombat salvage coupes on two occasions and made “observations of concern” in regard to soil and water management at the Wombat coupes, plus “whether JD Logging Pty Ltd holds a valid licence, permit, agreement, or other authority to undertake timber harvesting operations”.

“It is our standard practice to gather information while assessing allegations of noncompliance, including in relation to contracting arrangements and associated harvesting and haulage activities,” the regulator’s spokeswoman said.

Picture: Zoe Phillips

Mr Greenwood said he was unable to supply half the documents the regulator was demanding, given he was simply a subcontractor to VicForests, which in turn was contracted to the Dja Dja Wurrung traditional owners of the forest, who wanted the fallen timber salvaged.

“Dja Dja Wurrung have the licence, so I can’t give it to them,” Mr Greenwood said. “Have they asked them (the DDW)?”

One industry insider said it was clear the regulator was using new powers conferred by parliament late last year to go on a “fishing expedition”.

The regulator sits within the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, which has repeatedly tried to block VicForests’s attempts to broker an agreement with the Dja Dja Wurrung traditional owners of the forest to salvage trees.

Experts fear a firestorm with the potential to mirror Black Saturday could erupt from the fallen timber, which has been sitting on the forest floor since the storms of June 2021.