In 2013, Clarence Valley residents responded to a survey asking them to rate 25 services provided by the council in order of importance. The results came back with 83% of respondents rating “protection of wetlands, natural environment and wildlife” in ninth place, as important to very important.
To reflect this community sentiment, our Council later formed a Biodiversity Community Advisory Committee to provide advice to Council. This committee was highly relevant given the region’s internationally recognised reputation as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
However, recent events have suggested, to me at least, that despite emphatic claims to the contrary, our political leaders at all levels of government pay little more than lip service to environmental considerations.
At a local level, this became evident when the Biodiversity Advisory Committee recommended that Council follow the lead of other NSW councils and ask the state government to phase out logging in public forests, and transition to more profitable plantation forestry.
Apart from the multi-million-dollar losses incurred annually by Forestry Corporation’s native forest division, the Advisory Committee rationalised that logging was also incompatible with the region’s lucrative tourism and hospitality industry; efforts to protect our rapidly declining biodiversity; and Australia’s international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The fact that modern industrial logging was contributing to record turbidity levels in our drinking water at the time was also a consideration, along with a Southern Cross University survey showing 70% of residents opposed to logging in state forests.
However, an aggressive campaign by the timber industry against the motion, actively encouraged by some councillors, saw the motion fail. This was followed by an internal review seemingly aimed at reducing the environmental committees’ influence, resulting in the Biodiversity, Climate Change, Clarence Coast and Estuaries Advisory Committees being rolled into one committee.
Our Council is responsible for managing over 10,000 hectares of bushland, over half of which it actually owns, and with no ecologist, or advisory committee, and a bush regeneration team of just two. This hardly reflects ratepayers’ expectations.
Nor is it an appropriate strategy for managing this unique biodiversity hotspot.
John Edwards