Fire management in Victoria amounts to de facto native logging industry, conservationists say

Conservationists and a leading ecologist have accused the Victorian government of allowing a de facto native logging industry to emerge ‘under the guise of fire management’. Photograph: Wildlife of the Central Highlands

The Victorian government has been accused by conservationists and a leading ecologist of allowing a de facto native logging industry to emerge under the guise of fire management just months after closing down the industry.

Environmental lawyers said the state government agency, Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV), was acting “with impunity”, and conservationists and the Victorian Greens called on state and federal ministers to step in.

Logging in Victoria’s native forests ended at the beginning of this year, but Prof David Lindenmayer, a forest ecologist at Australian National University, said: “There’s a de facto logging industry now emerging under the guise of fire suppression.

“To me, when you cut down big trees and put them on a truck and take them to a sawmill … that is logging.”

On Thursday conservationists and the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) expressed shock after discovering a dead greater glider in an area where trees had been felled by FFMV.

Blake Nisbet, of campaign group Wildlife of the Central Highlands, said: “This is endangered wildlife culling. We specifically told the government that greater gliders were nesting in this tree. Instead of stepping in, they chose to knowingly kill endangered wildlife. This is disgraceful, and has to stop.”

Greater gliders were given national endangered species status in 2022, only six years after first appearing on the threatened species list as vulnerable.

VNPA said it had told FFMV, the state environment minister Steve Dimopoulos and his federal counterpart, Tanya Plibersek, that scores of old hollow-bearing trees were being destroyed along 250km of fire breaks in the Yarra Ranges national park.

This was critical habitat, the association said, for threatened species including the gliders, Leadbeater’s possums, gang-gang cockatoos and swift parrots.

Lindenmayer said he had similar concerns with the removal of old trees – which are vital for many species – in the Wombat state forest.

FFMV and the state’s conservation watchdog – the Office of the Conservation Regulator – are housed in the state government’s department of energy, environment and climate action.

Lindenmayer said he was currently working on advice commissioned by the department on how to save greater gliders, which would include retaining old trees.

“One part of the same government department is trying to work out how to stop the greater glider going extinct while another is pushing it to extinction,” he said.

“The broad-scale impact on animals is colossal and makes a mockery of the government’s biodiversity strategy and a mockery of their process of supposed environmental regulation. There are some deep systemic problems here.”

He added that there was growing evidence thinning and logging in native forests could make them more flammable, not less.

Matt Ruchel, executive director of VNPA, said the Office of the Conservation Regulator should be moved to another department, which would allow it to regulate the forest fire management work – a suggestion echoed by the leader of the Victorian Greens, Ellen Sandell.

Sandell said any logging and storm “clean-up” works should be immediately halted and the OCR should be “empowered” to investigate.

Environmental lawyers acting for conservationists have written to the state and federal environment ministers asking them to step in.

Danya Jacobs, special counsel at Environmental Justice Australia, said destroying hollow-bearing trees and killing greater gliders was “clearly illegal” under state and federal laws.

“Forest Fire Management are acting with impunity and must be reigned in by the regulators,” she said.

Questions to the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, were referred to her department, which said in a statement: “The department is making enquiries to determine whether national environment law is being complied with.”

Guardian Australia sent questions to the Victorian environment minister and the state department of energy, environment and climate action.