By Jed Lanyon
VicForests has lodged an appeal over a landmark Federal Court decision made last month in its case against Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum (FLP), which saw an injunction placed on 66 areas of forest.
The court reached its conclusion on the case in May, with injunctions granted on 21 August, which saw coupes home to the threatened Greater Glider and critically endangered Leadbeater’s Possum protected from logging.
Justice Mortimer also made formal declarations of unlawful logging by VicForests in those 66 areas and ordered the state logging agency to pay FLP’s costs of running the case.
“Having carefully considered the recent decision of the Honourable Justice Mortimer in the Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum matter, VicForests has made the decision to appeal,” a VicForests spokesperson said.
“VicForests will appeal Her Honour’s decision on a number of legal grounds.”
The decision set a legal precedent applying federal threatened species protection law to the logging industry, which has operated under a special exemption from federal environment law for more than 20 years.
Following the win by FLP, Environmental Justice Australia senior lawyer Danya Jacobs said this was the first time the Federal Court had granted an injunction to prevent logging of threatened wildlife habitat and the first time Victoria’s logging industry had been held to account under federal environmental law.
“The outcome of this case demonstrates that properly enforcing our environment laws is critical to stem the loss of wildlife in this country,” Ms Jacobs said.
“This case proved that a state agency unlawfully logged 26 areas home to species at risk of extinction which are meant to be protected by both state and federal law – and planned to unlawfully log another 66.
“We hope the Court’s orders send a strong message to governments and industry across the country that if they flout the law at the expense of our threatened wildlife, the community will hold them to account in court.”
“Australia has just lost billions of animals to catastrophic bushfires – one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory – and Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world.”
