Otway Ranges Environment Network

 

 

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Otway Forest Management Plan


Overview

The Otway Forest Management Plan (OFMP) was released in June 1992. It is supposed to provide direction to Forestry Victoria, for the protection all forest values in the Otway State Forest. (Forestry Victoria, is the section within Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) which manages State Forests.)

In practice prescriptions and directives within the OFMP designed to protect the forset from logging have been extensively breached by Government forestry bureaucrats. In the ten years since the OFMP was put in place, clearfell logging continues to compromise non-timber forest values such as domestic water supplies, forest based tourism and forest biodiversity.

The Victorian Government, Forestry Victoria and native forest logging industry (includes both woodchip industry and sawmill industry) claim forest management within the Otway State Forest strictly follows guidelines outlined in the OFMP. This is clearly not the case, as shown in breaches of the OFMP.

The native forest timber industry and Forsetry Victoria have used the OFMP as a public relations tool to deflect public criticism about the impacts of clearfell logging. They simply argue that the plan is followed although in more recent times, they have stopped trying to hide behind the plan as conservationists have publicaly exposed breaches.

Apart from regularly breaching the OFMP, the Forestry Victoria seem also to pay no attention to the priorities (ie. high, medium, low) set out in the plan.

It is important to note the OFMP is not a document of law, only a guide to forest management. There is not an official government enforcement process.

Some of the OFMP can be down loaded from the DNRE website.

 
   
 
 

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