Penalties for logging in a bushfire-hit forest may not be the last after a court accepted there was a pattern of offending in a state-owned corporation that says it is learning from its mistakes.
Forestry Corporation of NSW was fined $360,000 on Wednesday, almost $6800 for each one of the 53 eucalypt trees it should not have cut down four years ago.
The state-owned logging corporation pleaded guilty to breaching conditions after failing to mark two environmentally significant areas on an operational map for harvesting.
Logging operations in one of those areas in the Yambulla State Forest, near the Victorian border in southern NSW, took place between April and July 2020.
That was just after the state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) negotiated new conditions to help forest recovery following the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.
“These special conditions were introduced to protect parts of the forest that weren’t as damaged by fire, giving wildlife and biodiversity an opportunity to recover,” the authority’s executive director of operations Jason Gordon said in a statement on Wednesday.
Forestry chief executive Anshul Chaudhary said environmental responsibility is taken seriously and significant investments have been made to improve compliance.
"This was due to human error applying a one-off condition, and we deeply regret the mistake and the environmental damage it has caused," he said in a statement.
An alternative area was protected and the harvested area is regenerating, he said.
The NSW Land and Environment Court accepted EPA submissions Forestry had a pattern of environmental offending, did not have a low likelihood of reoffending, or have good prospects of rehabilitation.
Justice Rachel Pepper ordered Forestry to take out newspaper ads disclosing its breach, the felling of trees and the harm it caused, as well as the impact on refuge habitat for multiple threatened bird species, in addition to fines.
“(Forestry’s) offending conduct was not trivial and occasioned substantial actual and potential environmental harm,” Justice Pepper said in her judgment on Wednesday.
“(Forestry) will continue to undertake forestry harvesting activities and has not sufficiently demonstrated genuine contrition and remorse for its commission of the offences."
Greens environment spokeswoman Sue Higginson alleged further unlawful logging operations have taken place in the years it has taken to prosecute "this rogue state-owned corporation".
“The crimes committed by the Forestry Corporation on this occasion are not isolated, and their ongoing logging of native forests in NSW is regularly reported by the community as having occurred unlawfully,” she said in a statement.
Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty has been contacted for comment.
The EPA and Forestry return to court for other matters in August.
