MEDIA RELEASE 3 November 1999

Southern Forests Negotiations Conservation Groups Attend Under Protest

Conservation groups will attend the Southern Forests negotiations which begin today but only under protest after their request to defer negotiations until early February next year was refused by the NSW Government.

SEFA spokespersons Noel Plumb and Peter Hudson said "The NSW Government is insisting that negotiations commence today on the future of the Southern Forests but has withheld key economic and social information, contrary to agreed procedures, on the region's logging industry and plantations. It has also failed to resolve significant disputes over the late delivery or validity of other key data on timber resources and environmental values."

"SEFA has warned the Government that it is risking the credibility of any outcomes by this attempt to ram through negotiations on a faulty platform."

The NSW Government has further reduced the credibility of the "negotiations" by barring non government parties from the actual negotiating room.

"We will not let ourselves be used to give credibility to a charade of negotiations while behind closed doors government agencies, Federal and State, consign the magnificent forests of the South Coast and Tumut to intensive logging and woodchipping. The exceptional South Coast catchments and lakes are under real threat and therefore so are the regions' tourism and fishing industries which are worth more than a hundred times the South Coast logging industry. "

"However, we feel that we must attend to ensure that our community reserve proposals set the basis for the new national parks in the region AND to prevent the logging industry and State Forests from dominating the negotiations with their proposals to intensify logging in the catchments.

"We will be in there fighting vigorously to achieve the key objectives for the region sought by the conservation movement:-

1. Protect all community reserve proposals as new national parks
2. Protect all remaining old growth, wilderness, rainforest and other important biodiversity areas
3. Protect all forests in the coastal zone and their water catchments
4. End clearfelling and other intensive logging of native forests
5. Make the region a woodchip free zone
6. Maximise the transition of the logging industry to a plantation base"

For further comment and copies of the reserve proposals and full SEFA opening statement:

Noel Plumb 0412 975 575 Executive Officer National Parks Association

Peter Hudson 9262 9029 President Bendalong and Districts Environmental Association