David Heilpern

NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia — A former magistrate and one of Australia’s most experienced scientists have launched an extraordinary attack on the New South Wales government’s logging agency, describing it as effectively a “criminal organisation” that should be shut down after a string of court convictions. Prof David Heilpern, a NSW magistrate between 1998 and 2020 and now the dean of law at Southern Cross University, said the state’s Forestry Corporation should be “disbanded” as it was was no longer fit for purpose. …A NSW Forestry Corporation spokesperson said Heilpern’s suggestion that the corporation be compared to a bikie gang was “ridiculous”. “Forestry Corporation will not respond to this analogy,” they said. …Heilpern’s comments follow a judgment in the NSW land and environment court last year that fined the Forestry Corporation $360,000 after it failed to accurately map two environmentally significant areas in the Yambulla state forest.