The state government in Victoria in Australia on Tuesday announced its local logging industry will shut down at the end of the year, six years earlier than planned.
The ruling Labor party announced in 2019 that native logging in Victoria would come to an end in 2030.
However, as part of the annual state budget published on Tuesday, the government allocated A$200 million ($133 mln) to a just transition package for timber workers, taking total government spending on support for the 15,000 workers in the state timber industry to A$875 mln.
“Our support package will provide a more secure future for every impacted worker and their families. This transition will see the largest expansion to our public forests in our state’s history – further protecting our precious biodiversity and endangered species,” Ingrid Stitt, the state environment minister, said in a comment.
Since the 2019 announcement, Victoria has been hit by a number of severe bushfires, most notably the devastating Black Summer bushfires.
Those raged from Nov. 2019 to Feb. 2020 and burned more than 1.5 million hectares of public and private land, of which nearly 1.4 mln were forests and parks, plantations and native timber assets, critical animal habitats, and water catchments, according to the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience.
Since then, there has been lawsuits and other forms of public action against the timber industry, making it difficult for many to continue operations.
“It’s not good enough for us to just cross our fingers and hope for the best. We need a plan to support workers, their families, and support local jobs,” state premier Dan Andrews said Tuesday.
The government decision to move up the phaseout was welcomed by green groups across the state.
“Native forest logging has done terrible damage to Victoria’s ecosystems and wildlife over many decades, so this announcement by the Andrews government is welcome and needed,” said Jess Abrahams, a national nature campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation and a former member of the Victorian government’s Forest Industry Taskforce.
“Logging has infamously sent the state’s faunal emblem, the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, to the brink of extinction, and has devastated the habitats of greater gliders and native fish.”
Abrahams said state governments in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania should follow suit, as those states are also subject to aggressive logging – some of it illegal – that destroy habitats and increase carbon emissions.
“The [federal] Albanese government, as part of its reforms to national environment laws, must end the exemption that has allowed native forest logging to destroy threatened species habitat,” she said.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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