The native timber industry in Victoria has been dealt another blow, with VicForests ordering a stand-down after a ruling last Friday in the Supreme Court, prompting a savage attack on the Andrew Government’s culpability by the Liberals Gary Blackwood.
VicForests ordered the stand-down after Justice Melinda Richards ruled in a case involving Environment East Gippsland that the state-owned enterprise’s pre-harvest surveys were inadequate and it was not doing enough to protect two possum species – greater and yellow-bellied gliders, TimberBiz reported.
VicForests chief executive, Monique Dawson, said the order was permanent, and it was comprehensive. 
“We’ve got some limited operations in some areas where there aren’t any (gliders) so we’ll keep doing what we can do. But certainly, the impact of the order is profound,” she told TimberBiz.
The ruling forces VicForests to resurvey hundreds of coupes, which it confirmed would take months to complete and would leave harvest and haulage contractors without work and deepen a sawlog shortage that has already led to one mill to close.

IMAGE: Orbost harvest and haulage contractor, Rob Brunt (middle) and his crew in front of a visual representation which shows the impacts of the closure of the native timber industry by 2030. (PS)