Extract from ABC News
Updated
The Federal Government has lost a bid to delist more than 70,000 hectares of forest from Tasmania's World Heritage Area (WHA).
The
United Nations' World Heritage Committee, meeting in Doha, rejected the
Government's application to reverse protection for 74,000 hectares.The area was part of 170,000 hectares added to the WHA last year under Tasmania's forest peace deal enacted by the former state and federal Labor governments.
Forests remain a battleground
The UNESCO world heritage decision for Tasmania's forests is the latest salvo in a decades-long environmental war.
News of the decision was quickly welcomed by conservation groups, including former Greens leader Bob Brown who described the decision as a "global diplomatic humiliation" for the Abbott Government.
The Coalition had argued the 74,000 hectares were degraded by previous logging and should be unlocked for the timber industry.
But opponents to the move said only 8.6 per cent of the forests had been disturbed, with the rest being pristine old-growth rainforest.
Speaking in Doha, delegates from Portugal said "accepting this delisting would set an unacceptable precedent".
Wilderness Society campaign manager Vica Bayley says the decision shows the world is behind preserving the forest.
"Over here in Doha, environmentalists and Aboriginal Tasmanians are together welcoming this decision because it does protect the integrity of the Tasmanian world heritage area and it would protect that in perpetuity," he said.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott told a timber industry function that he wanted more forest available.
"We don't support, as a Government and as a Coalition, further lockouts of our forests. We just don't support it," he said.
"We have quite enough national parks, we have quite enough locked-up forests already. In fact, in an important respect, we have too much locked-up forest."
But one of Tasmania's leading timber industry groups, Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, wrote to the World Heritage Committee asking it to uphold the current boundaries.
ABC Fact Check examined the Prime Minister's claim that the 74,000 hectares proposed for excision from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine.
It found his claim did not check out, with most of the area undisturbed.
No comments:
Post a Comment