Forestry officials have blocked journalist access to scientists at a global forum this week to monitor the destruction of native forests.
Senior members of the federal Department of Agriculture who are organising the event have deemed that media should not be privy to, nor share with the public, this “Common understanding” of sustainable forest management.
Jesse Mahoney, another Director of International Forest Policy at the Department of Agriculture, Australia’s representative at the meeting, was not a member of another government.
So why might Australia’s federal government be so determined to block media access to Australia’s representative, a public servant, at an international meeting?
“We do know about our deforestation levels because you get that from satellites and somebody else is flying satellites over Australia pretty regularly. But when it comes to things like threatened species, only about a third of Australia’s threatened species are properly monitored, including many threatened species in forest environments.”
“Yeah, each state does its own thing. There are lots of lovely glossy documents saying ‘We’re going to stop deforestation and forest degradation’ and all that sort of stuff. But we’re still clearing about 500,000 hectares every year.”
“WWF has pointed out that no other developed country in the world is still clearing forests. We compare with The Congo and other developing countries.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It was the 32nd meeting of the Montreal Process Working Group, an international collaboration between 12 countries representing 60% of the world’s forests, scheduled to run through the weekend at Sydney’s 5-star Hyatt Regency Hotel.
In 1995, the Montreal Group endorsed a comprehensive framework of seven criteria and indicators to provide a common understanding for describing, assessing and evaluating a country’s progress towards sustainable forest management.
Unfortunately, senior members of the federal Department of Agriculture who are organising the event have deemed that media should not be privy to, nor share with the public, this “common understanding” of sustainable forest management.
After the common bureaucratic rigmarole of finding the right email address, MWM and other journalists were told by a Department spokesperson, “The MPG has no permanent staff or headquarters and the Australian Government is not able to facilitate contact or interviews with its members”.
What has been identified publicly, by readers across the state with there mobile phones, are the very common sightings of logging trucks carting about what used to be native forest trees.
Nathaniel Pelle, the business and nature lead at the Australian Conservation Foundation, says that Australia’s high levels of deforestation have flown under the international radar.
The original article contains 1,076 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
