To: 

Hon Anthony Albanese MP, Prime Minister of Australia
Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for Environment and Water
Hon Eric Abetz MP, Minister for Business, Industry and Resources

Chief Executive Officer Steve Whiteley 
Sustainable Timber Tasmania
Level 1/99 Bathurst St, Hobart TAS 7000

Open Letter to decision makers and Sustainable Timber Tasmania, Calling for the Cancellation of Future Logging Plans on Quamby Bluff, Tasmania. 

We are writing to express our concerns regarding the recent logging and burning of high conservation value forest at Quamby Bluff on the boundary of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in Tasmania.

We are calling on Sustainable Timber Tasmania to cancel future logging plans on Quamby Bluff in Tasmania. We are also appealing to the Albanese Government, and national and state ministers responsible for stewardship of the environment and the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to ensure that this area is protected. 

In 2022, Sustainable Timber Tasmania clearfelled native forests within the logging coupe HU304Y despite long-held community opposition to clearfelling on Quamby Bluff and in the wider Kooparoona Niara region. On April 2nd 2023, thousands of tonnes of wasted wood and trashed forests were needlessly burned by Sustainable Timber Tasmania, dumping the pollution and CO2 emissions into the public airspace.

The high intensity burn also scorched forests outside the planned burned area––forests that are an important buffer for the adjacent Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. We understand that Sustainable Timber Tasmania intends to log a further 115 hectares of forests on Quamby Bluff in two coupes––it intends to return and log the remainder of native forests inside logging coupe HU304Y and its current Wood Production Plan lists plans to log an additional area of adjacent forests called HU304A¹. 

The Albanese government must act to protect threatened species and ensure a fair say for people and the planet.

Quamby Bluff is home to many federally listed threatened species, including the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, spotted quoll and Tasmanian devil. Yet the Commonwealth government’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities to protect such species is severely limited by the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement. Far from enabling sustainable development, Regional Forest Agreements have had a deleterious impact on Australia’s forests and operated under a cloud of illegality and inadequate enforcement². We need federal nature laws that work, and apply to all industries equally—including forestry.

The planned clearfelling also demonstrates the lack of integrity and accountability in the federal legal regime and the need to enshrine meaningful public participation in environmental decision-making, which was highlighted by Professor Graeme Samuel in his independent review of the EPBC Act. The public has a right to transparency and accountability in decisions made about nature, and the failure to listen to and incorporate community perspectives in this case undermines the Albanese government's aims of restoring trust and confidence in environmental decision-making. 

There is already a cloud over the Tasmanian forestry industry because of possibly illegally-logged wood—on top of real clouds of smoke over these magnificent forests. Customers, markets and investors need to know they are buying into reliable supply chains rather than being exposed to illegal logging, Tasmania's highest-emissions industry and species extinction. The industry urgently needs support to transition out of native forest logging so that these serious issues can be dealt with. Future logging on Quamby Bluff will degrade the values of the forest adjacent to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area––which has exceptional cultural and environment values. The Kooparoona Niara region is particularly significant for the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and is the subject of a ground-breaking Aboriginal community proposal that could see it returned to its rightful owners and be owned, run and managed by the Palawa community. We appeal for your support to make this community proposal a reality and to end logging and burning of the valuable forests on Quamby Bluff.

^{1 Three Year Wood Production Plan 2023/24 to 2025/26} 

^{2 Creating Jobs, Protecting Forests?}

Yours sincerely,