Behind all Australian state logging authorities and the rest of our logging industry is the quasi-academic 'Institute of Foresters'.
Through their 'professional' members in the 'economic chamber' of FSC, the Institute of Foresters has almost complete control of FSC Australia. The IFA has known for a long time that the big bucks they once made from clear-felling public native forests are no longer there. The IFA's own forest certification schemes are now forgotten and they desperately need the FSC tick of approval on their 'Brazilian waxed forests'. (A term we coined to describe clear-fell logging operations)
The IFA has even managed to get some enviros working for them. Groups like TWS and ACF have worked for the logging industry. They were convinced the IFA would save high conservation forests in return for their support. We predict it will not be long before the IFA dumps it's pro-genetically modified trees policy, bringing them inline with the weak FSC policy on modified trees. The fact is, FSC is certifying the functional equivalent of genetically modified trees. They don't flower, they are clonal and nobody really knows what else has been altered.
Have a look the IFA board of directors? Most of this 'white shoe brigade' has either logged or is logging Tasmania in the role of running Forestry Tasmania. These university educated buffoons thought nobody would notice most of them have been on the payroll of the state logging authorities in Tasmania and Victoria. Where the big trees used to be.
That's not surprising because the university forestry course was set-up by the state logging authorities. They all went to either the ANU School of Forestry or The Creswick Chainsaw Sharpening Academy in Victoria. These people are not interested in forests, they are interested in their bank accounts.
Today the FSC is finalising an Australian national 'standard' that was paid for by the Gillard Government specifically to get Forestry Tasmania certified.
Although Tasmania was once blessed with beautiful forests like Vancouver Island, it is now an economic backwater. The island runs mostly on welfare and the Feds would rather bankroll rogue Indian coal miners like Adani. The Turnbull Liberal psychopaths just can't destroy the Great Barrier Reef fast enough can they?
But what a ridiculous system FSC is running? FSC calls a clonal tree plantation a 'forest', they call a pine oil plantation a 'forest' and they call a Brazilian waxed wasteland a 'forest'. And they churn-out thousands of pages doing it. FSC do not operate 'on the ground'. Data is taken by certification companies or 'auditors' at face value and rarely checked. FSC certification is mostly a desktop publishing project.
Reading through FSC's myriad 'standards' and 'normative' documents you can see that exclusions and trade-offs abound. It's pretty obvious that for FSC trees only exist to enrich humans. Just like the Institute of Foresters AU.
Forestry Tasmania Chair de Fegely accuses fellow IFA members of mismanaging Forestry Tasmania
Rob de Fegely is president of the Institute of Foresters AU and now the ex-Liberal candidate for Eden Monaro he is also Chair of Forestry Tasmania.
In an extraordinary letter to Tasmanian Ministers Gutwein and Barnett pleading for more money, de Fegely lays blame at past managing directors of Forestry Tasmania for writing sweetheart contracts giving away trees at less than commercial rates. The kicker here is those past directors of Forestry Tasmania are also members of de Fegely's own organisation the IFA. One of them is on the IFA board and another is a life member. There was also stand-in chairman of FT Bob Annells who did not write any long-term contracts as far as we know.
We will not name the two notorious FT directors here because one of them is addicted to buying silence by legal action.
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