This story below highlights that companies are placing a high importance, and probably a monetary and reputational value, on maintaining good standing with their sustainability certifications; and because of this, they are a pathway for better environmental protections.  It is this growing trend toward third party certifications that enabled our community group to advocate for better outcomes for a threatened species within a logging coupe in Victoria, Australia.  In fact, much better outcomes than laws and regulators were able to deliver.  

Here is an account of our learnings.

The Gippsland Forest Guardians have been trying to get proper environmental protections at a logging site in Gippsland, Victoria for almost two years.  As one of many forestry coupes in the region, the creeks and gullies within this large piece of crown land are populated with ‘Critically Endangered’ Slender Tree-ferns.  These tree ferns need protection.  Why?...  Because the next step after ‘Critically Endangered’ is ‘Extinct’. You don’t need to be an ecologist to understand what this means, nor to imagine the ways in which 'clear fell' logging of steep slopes  might be detrimental to fragile tree ferns.

Unfortunately, and despite our best advocacy efforts, a great deal of forest in the coupe was logged by Hancock Victorian Plantations (HVP) in 2024, leaving these Slender Tree-ferns exposed to the elements and their gullies damaged.  This was despite multiple direct complaints from us to HVP and detailed submissions made to both local and state government regulators.

In recent great news however, and demonstrating a significant change in approach, HVP has announced they have decided not to log the remaining 25% of trees on the site and will regenerate what they have logged back to native forest.  They are also responding positively to our request that the site be given permanent protection from future logging.  We are naturally delighted with this outcome for the site, but what were the main drivers for HVP’s decision and change of heart?

Our big insight to share is that, surprisingly to us, it has been a third party ‘sustainability’ certification scheme for forestry that has driven better environmental outcomes for these threatened species than our own government.  You would rightly expect third party certification standards to go over and above the law, however the shock and disappointment for us in the story so far has been that our own government has failed to support and regulate to their own standard and best practice expectations.  It has only been our concerted pressure under the framework of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard that has delivered good outcomes, not the advocacy and time spent engaging with the legal and regulatory system.

For context, the FSC is the largest global ‘third party sustainability certification’ scheme for forestry.  Certified companies such as HVP pay for certification and are required to meet FSC standards across multiple areas, including the environment.  Our advocacy approach included complaints to FSC auditors highlighting gaps between what we saw in the FSC requirements and what was happening on the ground.  We also communicated directly with strategic customers and investors about FSC matters as we believe that FSC certification is valued within the supply chain.  HVP is one of the largest FSC certified organisations in Australia and it appears that the value of the FSC brand and logo has led HVP to rethink their approach.  We welcome it.

This article is not a plug for the FSC but rather seeks to highlight the ways in which our laws (and their regulatory enforcement) stack up against the FSC’s requirements.  The contrast is quite stark.

1.  The FSC Standard requires higher protections for threatened species than our own laws.

In Victoria we have the ‘Flora and Fauna Guarantee (FFG) Act 1988, a piece of legislation put in place over 25 years ago to identify and theoretically protect our quickly disappearing rare and threatened species.  Early on in our journey, the team were delighted to discover the existence of this Act and thought the ‘Critically Endangered’ Slender Tree-ferns we had identified within the logging coupe would be properly protected if we brought it to the attention of Victoria’s Conservation Regulator. 

We were shocked and disappointed by the Conservation Regulator’s decision not to take any regulatory action despite what we believed to be overwhelming evidence.  In fact, across government there has been disappointing regulatory enforcement and apparent confusion over regulatory jurisdiction. Two years down the track, the local council and the Conservation Regulator still can’t decide who should really regulate the FFG Act on this crown land, with both pointing fingers at each other and not much visible regulation happening on the ground.

The FFG Act seems very clear to us and the breaches obvious in this case.  It is a breach of the legislation if a ‘listed species’, such as the Slender Tree-fern is ‘Taken’.  The word ‘Taken’ means more than ‘cut down and removed’, it is defined in the legislation as ‘kill, injure, disturb or collect’.  For context, Slender Tree-ferns are extremely fragile; they are very tall, growing up to 25m in height but only have a thin trunk diameter of around 20cm.  They require moist conditions to survive, as well as protective trees and other vegetation around them for support against wind exposure. 

Based on our complaint, the Conservation Regulator did go to look at the operations on the HVP site and, we presume, saw the trees that had already fallen into the gullies where many of these Slender Tree-ferns grow.  They would have also seen the obvious changes in wind and humidity exposure which are unsurvivable for this species in the medium-to-long term.  They could not have missed seeing the steep hillsides, now clear felled, leaving some Slender Tree-ferns less than 10m from the cut line.  In spite of this ‘on ground data’ and substantial supporting information provided by us, the Conservation Regulator found that there were no breaches of the FFG Act – no ‘Take’, no ‘Injure?, no Disturb?  Really? We were told that HVP as a company is subject to the legislation and has no exemptions, and yet everything HVP had done seemed to be acceptable to the Regulator.  What’s going on?  What are the actual protections that the Regulator considers acceptable and that do not result in ‘Take’?

In addition to all of this, the Conservation Regulator advised us that it is ‘not mandatory’ for HVP to comply with the ‘Action Statement’ for the Slender Tree-fern.  Action Statements describe the way that listed threatened species should be protected and are required, by law, to be prepared by state government scientists.  This is all directed by the FFG Act.  The Action Statement for Slender Tree-ferns has specified a 200m, buffer based, ‘Special Management Zone’ around Slender Tree-ferns.  If this had been applied, then we would not be writing this article as the site would not have been logged.

Contrast these laws, and their enforcement, with the requirements of the FSC.  In addition to being required to follow the law (as a minimum condition), FSC Certificate Holders are required to consider  ‘Best Available’ information’ across all FSC areas, including threatened species and communities.  This means that the Victorian State government's own Action Statement described above, along with any other contemporary scientific findings, expert opinion, citizen science and local knowledge are required to be considered.  For example, a recently published and quite damning Compliance Assessment into the performance of HVPs auditors states that David Camerons highly regarded work “A Field Guide to Rainforest Identification in Victoria is ‘accepted as the authoritative document’.  This use of Best Available Information, in this way, is appropriate and necessary.

Our complaints to FSC auditors detailed the problems we saw with the lack of proper protections for Slender Tree-ferns.  We backed up our complaints with what we considered Best Available Information and have been encouraged to see non-compliances issued against HVP, with a number of others (at least 8) also identified as part of the Compliance Assessment mentioned above.  All require remedy.  We are hopeful that these remedies will be systemic, quick and have good governance processes applied to confirm their implementation.

2.  The FSC requires FSC Certified land to be regenerated to its pre-harvest condition (or better), whereas the Victorian Government allows companies to replant crown land that was native species with invasive species such as pine trees.

After logging has taken place, FSC certified land is required to be regenerated to its preharvest state of diversity, structure and composition, or more natural conditions.  In other words, if it was previously native species such as Mountain Ash, then after logging, the site should be replanted with native species and not, for example, planted with exotic and invasive Pine trees. Likewise, if it was native forest, then it should be returned to native forest.  What a good principle!  Return the landscape to at least as good and natural as you found it and hopefully even better. 

The Global FSC team in Germany recently issued a draft interpretation of this regeneration requirement as it applies to Australia.  We are very reassured that the draft interpretation reflects a plain language reading of the FSC standard and that their interpretation aligns with our own understanding.  It is important to note that the requirement to regenerate land in this way is not something Australia developed.  The requirement is part of the FSCs international baseline standard for the more than 80 countries the FSC operates in.  Each country can only enhance baseline requirements such as these, not reduce them. 

The ‘draft interpretation’ was produced as an outworking of our own organisation's complaints to FSC auditors about HVPs policy and intention to replant the coupe in question with Pinus radiata.  The areas logged were native eucalyptus species, Mountain Ash and Blue gum.

In our view, the FSC certification and auditing system should have picked up on this HVP non-conformance and incorrect interpretation years ago, however the fact that the FSC Global Team has now issued this draft interpretation supporting the regeneration of native species with native species shows a commitment to the core Principles of the FSC and is extremely positive from an environmental standpoint.  It is an outcome that our own laws have not been able to achieve.  We are confident that the final FSC decision on the matter, to be decided soon, will correctly reaffirm the draft interpretation.  

Our own laws are not this good.  HVP is seemingly permitted by the Victorian State government to replace native species with exotic invasive species such as Radiata pine.  This is having an almost irreversible and landscape scale impact.  As a case in point, the transition of South Gippsland’s Strzelecki Ranges from native species to Pinus radiata has happened by stealth, in slow motion, such that very little of the critically endangered Mountain Ash community, our iconic and majestic tree species remains.

3.  The FSC does not permit the ‘conversion’ of native forest into a plantation; and yet this is still allowed in Victoria on private land (with a permit), and perhaps also on licensed crown land.

What is ‘native forest’? If you read the FSC Standard, you will find the definition for native forest to be detailed and comprehensive, including descriptions of specific edge cases to be sure readers understand the FSC’s intention.  It is generous and deliberately so.  Why?  Well, given the scarcity of native forests globally, the FSC standard properly aims to foster a sustainable industry that avoids further ecological degradation while also offering economically and socially viable timber product solutions.  The FSC seems serious on this matter.  The FSC policy on conversion details how the act of cutting down ‘native forest’ and replacing it with a plantation of any kind, regardless of species, is generally unacceptable.

The laws in Victoria paint a different picture. Most people seem to think that we stopped ‘native forest’ logging at the end of 2024.  However the repealing of the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004 only applied to forest reserves that were managed by the disgraced and now defunct VicForest.  Of course, this change of the law was good news for the native forest in those particular reserves, however it is still the case that private land holders can apply for a permit from their local council to log native forest on their land.  There are hundreds of thousands of hectares of privately held native forest in Victoria.

Of even more relevance to this story are the hundreds of thousands of hectares of crown land that are managed under licence to HVP.  This land is ‘deemed private land’ for the purpose of the Timber Production Code of Practice.   HVP say quite definitely that they do not log native forest however from a legal perspective, is it the case that native forest could be logged on this licensed crown land and it be lawful?  From an FSC perspective, our team have complaints currently being considered that include a claim that the coupe in question was at least, in part, ‘native forest’ as it is defined by the FSC.  We await the outcome of that complaint.

What does this all mean?

The time investment for our team, and others like us, to undertake advocacy work using the framework of the FSC is enormous.  The FSC process is complicated, and the burden of proof is, we think, unfairly placed on stakeholders, like us, to identify and present evidence if we see problems.  This is not easy when access to logging sites is restricted and when information is closely guarded.  Companies also adopt a highly adversarial approach, such as contesting access to information through the justice system.  HVP recently took Council to VCAT over the release of the Timber Harvest Plan for the logging coupe described above; a document that the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner thought should be released to us in full. We were ultimately successful in having the documents released.

It is time consuming, hard work but clearly worth doing.  However an effective third-party accreditation system should not rely on concerned public citizens having to make such determined efforts to improve the behaviour of certified organisations and our own laws should support public access to environment related information on crown land.  There is still work to do.

In summary, even with the FSC access and process hurdles mentioned above, our experience with the FSC has shown, so far, that it is more worthwhile investing the time engaging with this scheme to ensure protection for forest and threatened species, than it is to engage with our own laws and regulators.  Our own laws seem to be a mirage that have been unable to deliver; we really would like to be able to say otherwise.

Notes:

• Links have been provided to source documents. In some cases, screen shots from previously linked larger documents are provided as short cuts to key information.
• Linked images are of the logging coupe in question, Fella’s Coupe, Turtons Creek, Victoria, Australia
• This piece was written by humans with no AI input.