"The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do."
Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia, Inaugural Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, August 1996.

The Evolution of Legislated Obligations for Forest Areas in Victoria

A Summary
Andy Beveridge (bio) & Mike Leonard (bio)

 

The story of the progressive removal of Victoria's forests, and the evolution of legislative and bureaucratic strategies to better understand, and to protect what remained, and to facilitate sustainable timber harvesting and fire management mirrors, and at times impacts significantly on the economic and social history of the Colony/State.

Pastoral squatting in the 1840s, gold rushes of the 1850s, a succession of Land Acts in the 1860s (which were designed in part to ‘...facilitate the alienation of the waste lands of the Crown...’), and the continued expansion of the transport network all combined, by the early 1900s, to produce a geographic distribution of forests that is similar to that of today. It was in 1907 with the passing of the Forests Act, and in 1908 with the creation of a State Forests Department, that the first significant steps were made towards the conservation of the State's forests. That task continued and expanded during the 1900s.

What follows is a brief history of that evolutionary process.

See also: Public Land Management - Evolution

Forest and Fire Responsibility in Victoria

A State Forests Department was established in Victoria in 1908. In 1918 the Forests Commission, Victoria (FCV) was formed to administer the relevant legislation and to manage the Department. From the outset a key requirement of the Department / Commission was to meet ‘…The need for an effective fire prevention and fire suppression organisation….’

Responsibility for the relevant legislation lay with the FCV until 1983. In that year the FCV was effectively incorporated into a new body, the Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands (CFL). That organisation’s successors in law have been the Departments of:

  • 1990: Conservation and Environment (DCE)
  • 1992: Conservation and Natural Resources (CNR)
  • 1996: Natural Resources and Environment (NRE)
  • 2002: Sustainability and Environment (DSE)
  • 2013: Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI)
  • 2015: Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP)
  • 2023: Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA)
Note also:
  • that the Land Conservation Council, which was formed in 1971, was to play the key role in determing the uses of public land in Victoria from that time.
  • that the Government exited the plantation business in 1998, when the plantation business was sold to Hancock Natural Resources Group to form Hancock Victorian Plantations (HVP). For fire management purposes, HVP would become an Industry Brigade under CFA legislation.
  • that in 2004, VicForests, a government commercial entity, was established to manage commercial timber harvesting on public land.
Sources for this Article Include:

Doolan, B.V. (2016). Institutional Continuity and Change in Victoria’s Forests and Parks 1900 – 2010. Master of Arts thesis - Monash University. 180 pp.
Moulds, F.R, (1991). The Dynamic Forest – A History of Forestry and Forest Industries in Victoria. Lynedoch Publications. Richmond, Australia. 232 pp.