GMA tries to halt Wombat Forest protests

Victoria’s Game Management Authority has stepped in to try to stop environmental activists disrupting work to salvage 500,000-tonnes of fallen timber.

Victoria’s Game Management Authority has stepped in to try and stop environmental activists disrupting work to salvage a 500,000-tonne ticking fire bomb of fallen timber that’s been left lying in the Wombat Forest since last June’s devastating storms.

Harvest and haulage contractor Jim Greenwood said activists had been repeatedly “walking into the coupe and stopping us working” since he began salvage work three weeks ago.

But the protests stopped after the GMA officers sent officers up to the coupes, booking one activist.

Fellow contractor Brett Robin said the GMA had even sent officers into coupes being salvaged by his family on Sunday, in what he described as a “roundup” to move activists off site.

The coupe invasions follow the Victorian National Parks Association launch of a campaign last month, which claims VicForests was turning the Wombat Forest into a “pulp factory”.

VNPA executive director Matt Ruchel said the activists were not linked to his lobby group.

But he called for an immediate halt to the work, arguing the Victorian Government was allowing “the return of commercial logging under the guise of salvage logging” in a state forest that was earmarked to be declared a national park.

Mr Ruchel said the VNPA had no confidence in VicForests oversight of the salvage operation and wanted DELWP’s conservation regulator to assess the impacts of the salvage work.

But industry sources have told The Weekly Times it was the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning Office of the Conservation Regulator that for months repeatedly refused to sign off on the Dja Dja Wurrung traditional owners bid to bring in VicForests to clear the tens of thousands of messmate, narrow-leaf peppermint, manna and other gums from forest floor.

DELWP was forced to back down last month, after Premier Daniel Andrews intervened, clearing the way for desperately needed supplies of timber to be delivered to Victorian saw mills and a royalty revenue stream delivered to the Dja Dja Wurrung.

Dja Dja Wurrung chief executive Rodney Carter said he was sick of the Eurocentric view of locking up and leaving forests, when in fact “my ancestors managed country”.

He said the agreement with VicForests and its contractors would help restore the landscape to the open woodland with large canopy trees, while curbing fuel loads.

“VicForests is doing what we want them to do, as part of a process which is dealing with windthrown timber and helping us heal country,” Mr Carter said.

Foresters and fire experts have warned the fallen timber is a ticking fire bomb, which needs to be cleared, as it poses a major fire risk to Daylesford, Barkstead, Bullarto, Lyonville, Blackwood and other settlements.

Drone and satellite imagery of the region shows many large swathes of forest have been flattened on hills and ridge lines, covering a total of about 2000ha.

Forest surveys show fallen trees have pushed the fuel loads to between 200 and 400 tonnes per hectare, which experts warn would generate enormous heat during a catastrophic fire.

University of Melbourne forest fire expert Kevin Tolhurst has previously stated the vast amount of fuel on the ground would create fires similar to those that hit Victoria on Black Saturday and parts of southern NSW in 2019-20, which “can produce cyclonic force winds”.