Brief Audit of Wild Cattle Creek

Dailan Pugh, North East Forest Alliance, July 2020

On the afternoon of 28 July 2020 NEFA undertook a brief audit of Compartments 32, 33 and 34 of Wild Cattle Creek State Forest near Cascade on the Dorrigo plateau to assess compliance with the new Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (CIFOA) logging prescriptions.

The EPA had found significant logging breaches on 9 July and imposed a Stop Work Order on 18 July, allowing illegal logging to continue for 9 days.

The legal breaches we found from a brief inspection of a small part of the logging area were:

• 2 'giant trees' felled

• 4 giant 'hollow-bearing trees' damaged by machinery and tree felling

• 6 marked small tallowwood Koala Feed Trees significantly damaged

  These show that breaches are more widespread and significant than identified by the EPA.

  These forests contain significant numbers of massive Sydney Blue Gums and Tallowwoods hundreds of years old, making them of exceptional importance for the many fauna species dependent upon large hollows for denning and nesting. These species are also key Koala feed trees, with the logging areas identified as high quality Koala habitat, partially within and adjacent to the largest Koala Hub (resident population) identified on the Dorrigo Plateau.

Click this link to read the full audit.