I don’t disagree with any of what you have said really. Especially the parts regarding VicForests. They have been way past the point of redemption for a long time.

I haven’t lived in Vic for a number of years now but I am fairly familiar with the industry there, and the customers.

What you say about native timber harvesting in Vic not being economically viable is true, but it is mostly only true because of the corruption you alluded to further on, combined with the ongoing costs of continuous litigation as a consequence of VicForests wrongdoing. I do not fully grasp the archaic agreements that locked them into such poor sales contracts with so many of their customers, but I do know that if you asked me to set up a sustainable and responsible forest management company, and hire competent and professional staff and contractors based on the volume, estate distribution and sales prices they were locked into…I couldn’t do it.

I want to be clear that I am not trying to defend VicForests here in any way. It is worth my stating again: Vicforests should absolutely be disbanded. I’ve never worked for them directly, but I have numerous former associates that do, as well as having shared a large portion of their contractor workforce in a past life. The key point here is that they have lost their social license to operate.

They’ve been caught out time and again doing the wrong thing, and as a consequence of their poor behaviour they have effectively ended an industry that has propped up large parts of regional Victoria for well over 100 years. It’s a total disgrace.

I can’t for one second pretend to know how many of VicForest’s very serious breaches of the code, and outright criminal activity over the last decade are a result of malice, and how many are purely accidental or the result of professional incompetence. All I know is that I would have lost my job had I been party to even one of the same, and more than likely would have faced criminal charges.

I followed the media coverage and VicForest’s responses to their breaches of slope guidelines in the Thomson water catchment very closely. I won’t say too much here save to say there isn’t much continuous land up in that country that doesn’t have sections over 30 degrees slope. In this case, their noose was tied the moment these areas were included by the Victorian government in their allocation order. With an ever-dwindling allocation to pick from, it was absolutely inevitable that at least some of these areas had to find their way into VicForest’s Timber Release Plan. Sales agreements are binding for 5 years+ in both directions, and both parties are obligated both to supply and receive under serious financial penalty, which Vicforests have been paying on an ongoing basis whilst they fought the legal battles that they landed themselves in - yet another source of their financial non-viability. Again, I am not defending their breaches - BUT in this instance and this instance alone, I will acknowledge they were backed into a corner. From a place of professional curiosity, I’m not sure how exactly they were supposed to handle this absolute hospital pass but it seems they chose the worst route possible.

Now, do I believe anyone should be clearfell logging in the largest and most important water catchment in Victoria? Absolutely not.

Does this land need to be managed in some fashion, beyond locked gates and good vibes? Absolutely it does.

I cannot overstate my connection to these forests. There truly is something magical about the Regnans forests. Something even more magical about the Victorian highlands, and the cool temperate rainforests of Gippsland. They are alive in a way that is no longer the case for many forests in Australia and around the world. My core directive as a land management professional and as a human being is to ensure that those forests continue to thrive for my children, and my grandchildren and their grandchildren…and for me to enjoy when I have finally retired.

This is the part that has me truly worried.

I love the controlled environment of the leave-no-trace Victorian National Parks network, and I love the freedom that Victorians have to enjoy the State Forest network in a far more unfettered fashion than the rest of us. They are very different things, and it is generally very different country but it’s not a situation enjoyed by many other states of Australia.

I have seen first-hand more times than I am comfortable with just how little money Parks Victoria have access to for fuel reduction burning, or for anything really. They are a chronically under-funded and under-skilled organisation, and it seems they are about to gain a truly staggering amount of additional land that will fall under their management, not least of which as part of the proposed “Great Forest National Park”.

I sincerely believe an entire generation will have the misfortune to look back on this decision as one of the biggest mistakes of their lifetime.

Even if Parks Victoria’s funding were tripled overnight, they would still lack the means to adequately manage an estate of this size against fire. Further still, they do not have access to the contractors and equipment required to respond adequately when (not if) these forests are ablaze.

All of the good fighting that has been done to preserve rare and threatened species in these environments is for less than naught if all of them perish in a crown fire storming from Kinglake to Licola under a strong Westerly, with a second front decimating Gippsland all the way to the coast. All of those animals will be dead. All of that fighting will be for nothing.

When I fought fires in Victoria, I could have a bulldozer under my command within 20 minutes. I could have 5 bulldozers on site within 2 hours. Once you are dealing with a crown fire, bulldozers punching in firebreaks at a suitable setback is one of the only tools in the toolbox that still works.

Do you know who they all belonged to? State forest roading and harvesting contractors.

Do you know who had the balls to drive them in the type of wild, broken country that was burning? Forest roading and harvesting contractors.

Now that their fate is sealed, and the experience of multiple generations will walk off that land for the last time at the end of this year…I don’t know who would be left to answer my distress call when the fires start again, and they will.

Land management is such a contentious space. All issues are loaded with emotion, and often argued on emotion by people who are not involved beyond loving the bush. It’s also a space where it is not difficult to cherry-pick, or look for conclusions in data to support your predisposed position.

The conversation on Victoria’s State Forests is all but finished for now. Personally I’m glad Vicforests will be removed from the equation, but I do not hold out much faith that when I am ready to retire into those hills there will be very much left to enjoy without an adequate plan to actively manage these lands as our forefathers did and the First Nations people before them.

You cannot just lock the gate and stare at it. This will end in tears.