VicForest is notorious for breaching environment laws and its own regulatory guidelines. We have taken VicForests to court on two grounds:

• That VicForests is not preserving a 20 metre wide vegetation buffer along roads and tracks in order to screen logging operations from view.

• That the net area it plans to log in many coupes exceeds the net area specified in the Timber Release Plan.

More than 40 environment groups have called on Japan’s Nippon Paper Group to remove timber logged in Victoria’s native forests from its supply chain in the aftermath of bushfires and a landmark judgment that found a government forestry agency repeatedly breached conservation regulations.

After a forest is logged, it is burnt. The area is ignited by napalm-like substances and burnt at high temperatures. This destroys the biota both above and below the soil. They also create a massive smoke plume, which can affect residents living nearby.

The Federal Court decision of 27 May is momentous for our endangered species and forests.

In Victoria, state-owned “business” VicForests demolishes state-owned native forests and sells the logs to a handful of mills, who struggle to profit from flogging the resulting product. This is done almost solely to preserve native timber jobs. It is too generous to even call it a make-work scheme. At least when such schemes were used after World War I and in the Great Depression, Victoria created assets such as the Great Ocean Road. This system consumes a state asset.

— Australian Financial Review