A fire sparked on Camp Point Rd in the Ourimbah State Forest (OSF) on Saturday, November 26, has reinforced community fears that piles of logging debris present a huge risk going into bushfire season.
“The fire’s origins appear to be a campfire that had been left smouldering and had spread out of control by the next morning,” Camp Ourimbah spokesperson Ursula Da silva said.
“This is a worrying precedent for the predicted hot summer to come.
“Luckily the fire was contained in time by the RFS.”
Da Silva said the outcome could have much worse, with the fire site just over a kilometre away from a 300-acre pile of flammable debris left behind by Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW) after recent logging operations.
Camp Ourimbah and community members have criticised FCNSW’s inaction in removing vast piles of drying logging debris since logging activities ended in August.
“It is scary to think that this is the third incident of a fire in OSF – including car torchings – in the past few months and FCNSW have refused to mulch the literal fire bomb they have left on the borders of people’s properties, and in the middle of the Central Coast,” Da Silva said.
“My home was only four kilometres away from the fire that day.”
FCNSW’s answer to the issue of flammable logging debris is to schedule a hazard burn in OSF next year, according to correspondence received by residents.
Da Silva said FCNSW claimed, in a recent Coast Community News article, to have environmental protections in place and “a thorough planning process [that] must be completed ahead of every operation … to identify and protect environmental features such as rainforest and old growth, wetlands and riparian zones … and habitat for wildlife including koalas”.
“Some riparian gullies appear to have been encroached on by the recent FCNSW logging and, like the rest of the logged areas, are drying out,” she said.
“They no longer have the wooded canopies to protect and shade them.
“A domino effect of ecological destruction is taking place, which leaves our forests more fire prone than ever.”
At present, forestry operations covered by a regional agreement are exempt from the current national environmental laws.
OSF is under such an agreement.
“On August 30, FCNSW was issued two successive stop work orders by the EPA in Tallaganda State Forest when the body of a dead endangered Greater Glider was found,” da Silva said.
“It was then revealed surveys for this nocturnal creature were in fact undertaken in daytime.
“Just months later, another EPA-issued stop work order was given to FCNSW for inadequate protections regarding greater glider habitat in Flat Rock State Forest.
“In a period of two years (2020-2022) $684,700 of fines were issued to FCNSW according to the Nature Conservation Council.
“According to a report by the Wilderness Society, the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia and the South East Forest Rescue, it is alleged that FCNSW have breached their own regulations more than 1,200 times in the logging of Tallaganda State Forest alone.”
Horticulturalist Deidrie Jinks said the problem with the FCNSW surveys was that they are done from a desk with no-one on the ground.
“If they do go on the ground to survey it is in one day, whereas ecological surveys can take up to years,” she said.
“As a result, numerous protected species, such as parma wallabies, platypus, koalas, brush tailed rock wallaby, greater gliders, pygmy possums and so on have been omitted from their surveys of OSF.”
Da Silva said residents had been asking FCNSW to undertake koala surveys in OSF for three years, after photographic evidence of a healthy male koala emerged in 2020.
But she said FCNSW still refused to acknowledge the existence of a ‘contemporary koala record’ in its harvest plans.
“I can’t see how they can claim protection of koalas and their habitat if FCNSW will not even admit their existence, let alone conduct appropriate surveys,” she said.
“The community will participate in a legal breach survey of the logged area to see if FCNSW has complied with its own regulations.
“Please email campourimbah@gmail.com if you would like to be involved.”