UN calls for ban on logging and mining in Tasmania's world heritage area

The UN has called for a blanket ban on logging and mining in Tasmania’s world heritage area and demanded the Tasmanian government rethink its new management plan for the vast wilderness.

The 21 countries on Unesco’s world heritage committee have ratified a draft decision that the government must “ensure that commercial logging and mining are not permitted within the entire property” and that a proposed new strategy for the wilderness area is reviewed so that ecological values are fully protected.

The Tasmanian government wants to open up nearly 200,000 hectares for logging of some kind – an area that represents 12% of the state’s world heritage area. The new management plan also proposes escalating the building of tourism infrastructure.

Tasmania’s world heritage area covers around 1.5m hectares, which is about 20% of the state’s land mass. The protected area includes towering temperate forests, lakes and mountains, as well as important Aboriginal sites.

In its decision handed down in Germany on Wednesday, the world heritage committee said the new management plan needed “recognition of wilderness character of the property as one of its key values and as being fundamental for its management” rather than the proposed “remote recreation zone”.

The committee’s report also chides Tasmania over its failure to properly survey the cultural properties of the world heritage area. The committee said it is concerned that this survey, which would assess the key Indigenous sites in the area, would not be completed before 2018.

The committee added that plans to open up the area to greater numbers of tourists “raise a number of concerns” and that “strict” controls needed to be placed upon any new tourism ventures.

The Tasmanian government has mulled over 24 proposals for new tourism infrastructure in the world heritage area, including boat trips in Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour, the building of five huts along the South Coast track, a new adventure precinct and a mountain biking experience. 

While the government has stressed that this activity, along with “selective” logging, will boost the state’s struggling economy, environmentalists claim it would undermine the very essence of world heritage values. 

“Logging and mining have no role to play in the world heritage area,” said Vica Bayley, campaigner at the Wilderness Society. “You can’t log an area you’re claiming to protect the values for. These are some of the most spectacular and valuable forests in the world.

“This very clear call by the world heritage committee shouldn’t be ignored. It’s now up to the Tasmanian government as to whether it addresses the expectations of the international community.”

Last year the Australian government, backed by the Tasmanian government, tried to remove 74,000 hectares of forest from the world heritage area. The request was rejected in under 10 minutes at a world heritage committee meeting.

Bayley, who has been in Germany, said delegates have been “perplexed” as to why they have had to deal with fresh proposals to log Tasmania’s world heritage forests.

Rocky Sainty, the chairman of Tasmania’s Aboriginal Heritage Council who was also at the meeting in Bonn, said the assessment of cultural heritage was “urgent”.

“The Aboriginal community is proud to have its ancestral values recognised as some of the most outstanding cultural heritage in the world,” he said. “We want to see it properly researched, protected, managed and respected.”