The South East Queensland Forests Agreement: Lessons for Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

In Australia, regional forest agreements formed the cornerstone of strategies for resolving disputes over the logging of native forests in the last decade of the twentieth century. These disputes, driven by an increasingly vocal and influential conservation movement, coincided with changes in the nature of relationships between Commonwealth and State Governments, with the Commonwealth adopting an increasing role in environmental management (Lane 1999). Following very public disputes about the renewal of export woodchip licenses from native forests (which culminated in log truck blockades of the Commonwealth Parliament, Canberra), the Commonwealth Government adopted regional forest agreements as the mechanism for achieving sustainable management of Australia?s native hardwood forests. This was underpinned by the National Forest Policy Statement (Commonwealth of Australia 1992), which outlined principles for ecologically sustainable management of the nation?s production forests. The Commonwealth and several State Governments reached agreement to develop regional forest agreements (RFAs) for the long-term management and use of forests in ten regions (Fig. 1) (Commonwealth of Australia 2004). Key goals of the agreement were to: reconcile competing commercial, ecological and societal demands on forests in a way that was consistent with the principles and goals of ecologically sustainable forest management (Davey et al. 1997, 2002; Lane 1999); and to establish a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system, based on the nationallyagreed JANIS criteria (JANIS 1997).

Regional habitat selection of large gliding possums at forest stand and landscape scales in southern Queensland, Australia

“…In the south-east of the study region, outcomes from the South-East Forests Agreement, to which the Queensland Government and key conservation and timber production stakeholders are signatories, included immediate transfer of 53% of state owned timber production forests to protected area status, and the implementation of a new, intensive once-off logging regime involving removal of commercially viable trees >40 cm DBH in the majority of the remainder, predominantly C. citriodora dominant state-owned forests (McAlpine et al, 2005). A similar scenario is currently being debated for the rest of the study region.…”

Roads, fire and aggressive competitors: Determinants of bird distribution in subtropical production forests

“…In order to protect the firesensitive softwood resources, fuel-reduction burning occurs in adjacent hardwood areas, and an extensive unpaved road network is maintained. Following from the Queensland Government's introduction of the South-East Forests Agreement, which more than doubled the area of native forest under National Park tenure in the South-East Queensland Bioregion (McAlpine et al, 2005), the Western Hardwoods Agreement is currently being negotiated to reduce native forest logging in the west of the state. In part, this agreement proposes to transfer over 1 million ha of public hardwood forest reserves in subtropical inland Queensland, including the Brigalow Belt, to conservation reserves.…”

Effects of forest management on structural features important for biodiversity in mixed-age hardwood forests in Australia's subtropics

“…The development of an appropriate and effective conceptual model of forest development needs to incorporate current knowledge of structural complexity, acknowledging the existence of many relevant structural features in addition to live, harvestable trees, and the role of disturbance in creating or influencing densities of key structural features . Our understanding of the way structural features respond to various disturbance events and how we can best maintain or restore them is not as well developed for the less productive, mixed species forests (Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management Expert Panel, 1999;McAlpine et al, 2005), such as the hardwood forests of the Brigalow Belt Bioregion in Australia's subtropics.…”