Today’s release of the NSW Independent Forestry Panel’s Stakeholder Consultation Report again highlights the risk of continuing to spend taxpayer money to cut down NSW native forests. 

“The evidence is overwhelming that native forest logging is environmentally destructive and loss making, and the obvious solution is to move to a plantation-based industry,” said Jacqui Mumford, CEO of Nature Conservation Council NSW (NCC).

“We have serious concerns about this methodological approach. Asking an outdated, loss-making industry to define its own future risks locking NSW into the same failed policy settings that have caused decades of environmental damage and financial losses,” Mumford continued. “Decisions about the future of NSW forests should be based on the best available evidence, not on the demands of the industry seeking to preserve the status quo.”

This highlights the importance of not caving to Industry demands by extending Wood Supply Agreements past the December 2028 expiry date, and instead supporting the transition to a sustainable, profitable and secure plantation based industry.

NCC CEO Jacqui Mumford said: 

“Locking in logging for years to come would continue to kill and harm endangered species such as koalas and greater gliders, incur ever more losses by Forestry Corporation NSW, and risk putting taxpayers on the hook for financial compensation claims that could run into the hundreds of millions.”

“It would also lead to millions of tonnes of carbon emissions being released.”

“The report demonstrates the broad community support for a forestry transition plan that rapidly ends logging, protects and restores forests, funds a fair and just transition to plantations and value adding through wood manufacturing, and provides land justice for First Nations.”

The Forest Alliance NSW agrees with the report’s statement that: “The long-standing conflict between two uses (forests for timber as against forests for nature) is one that cannot be resolved within the existing policy settings for NSW’s forest estates” (see page 53).

Sascha Hawkins, NSW Forest Campaigner with The Wilderness Society said:

“The NSW Government will shoot themselves in the foot if they extend wood supply agreements and continue logging NSW's native forests. Industrial native forest logging is only a pathway to more extinctions and financial losses that the NSW taxpayer will have to pay for.”

North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh said:

“This report confirms that the community wants logging of public native forests to end and instead be protected for wildlife, carbon sequestration, recreation, tourism and water.

“The logging industry focussed Forestry Industry Action Plan is not the right forum to decide the future of our public native forests, the NSW Government needs to make an independent decision based on a holistic consideration of all values, and the growing threats of climate change and wildfires.