VicForests battles green lawfare: costs hit $4.8m in 2020-21

VicForests is facing “unprecedented volume of third-party litigation” from environment groups battling to stop native forest logging.

Harvest holdup: Environmental groups legal action is locking up timber coupes and delaying harvest, forcing up VicForests’ costs.

Victoria’s beleaguered native forest timber industry is being swamped with green lawfare cases, costing VicForests $4.8 million in 2020-21.

The state-owned forest manager’s latest annual report shows it “has been the respondent to an unprecedented volume of third-party litigation”, which locks up coupes, delays harvesting and forces VicForests to pay harvest and haulage contractors compensation as it struggle to meet contracted log volumes.

“These cases, brought by groups opposed to sustainable native timber harvesting are founded on claims that VicForests has or will breach its regulatory obligations flowing from the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014”.

Even when VicForests wins cases it has struggled to recover court-awarded costs against environment groups.

One of those is the anti-logging group My Environment, which took VicForests to the Supreme Court in 2014-15 where it lost the case and an appeal.

The court ordered My Environment to pay VicForests $1.23m to cover its legal costs.

But My Environment has refused to pay the $1.23m, which has now also accrued penalty interest of $769,513.

Anti-logging protesters have driven up VicForests’ costs by engaging in legal battle.

A search of My Environment’s financials shows it has total assets of $3610, received no donations in 2020 and has four volunteers including its chair Sarah Rees.

Ms Rees sits on the Australian Forest Stewardship Council along with Australian National University academic Chris Taylor, who have both been critical of VicForests.

One of Ms Rees social media tweets even stated: “If it’s FSC certified it’s not native”.

That criticism prompted VicForests’ to suspend its attempts to gain FSC accreditation in August last year, complaining it would “not receive a fair assessment”.

FSC referred the complaint to its Disputes Resolution Committee, which after 12 months wrote back to VicForests chief executive Monique Dawson stating, it had:

ASKED Ms Rees to write a public letter to FSC Australia New Zealand members in support of FSC Controlled Wood especially in a native forest setting.

RULED VicForests’ complaint about Mr Taylor was not upheld.

STATED it had “received several complaints about member conduct” and its disputes committee considers the organisation “should have a policy that clearly sets out members’ obligations … when publicly commenting about FSC related issues”, which should be enshrined in its governance manual.

VicForests is responsible for the harvest, commercial sale and regrowing of timber from Victoria’s State forests on behalf of the State Government.