The Forest Alliance NSW is a coalition of over 20 environmental NGOs working to protect NSW’s native forests, and the species that depend on them, from the damaging effects of industrial native forest logging. 

NSW’s public native forests have significant carbon value, and ending logging would deliver substantial emissions reductions while protecting biodiversity and forest integrity. However, carbon credits are not required to justify ending native forest logging. Native forest logging is accelerating the loss of biodiversity, driving threatened species closer to extinction, and degrading forest structure and habitat in ways that cannot be reversed within meaningful ecological timeframes.

Native forest logging is also economically unsound. It is a loss-making activity that costs more to carry out than it generates in timber revenue, requiring more than $100 million in public subsidies since 2020. For these reasons, Forest Alliance NSW strongly opposes any approach that uses carbon credit mechanisms to support, subsidise, or extend the life of public native forest logging.

Concerns with the draft Improved Native Forest Management method

Across Forest Alliance NSW, there are differing views on the use of carbon credit mechanisms in cases where logging is permanently ended and forests are protected in perpetuity. However, there is clear and consistent agreement on two critical issues in the draft Improved Native Forest Management method.

First, the deferred logging component must be removed from the method. 

As defined, deferred logging allows industrial logging to continue while generating carbon credits through longer rotations and reduced extraction volumes. This would permit the ongoing loss of mature forest structure, including the felling of large, 100+ year-old hollow-bearing trees critical to forest ecosystems. The method incorrectly assumes that short-term regrowth can compensate for the loss of mature forest structure and, in practice, would enable continued logging in public native forests without permanent protection.

Second, baseline settings must reflect post-bushfire, real-world harvesting levels, not theoretical or modelled volumes.

Since the 2019–20 bushfires, Forestry Corporation NSW has consistently been unable to deliver the harvest volumes it projects. Using these projected volumes as baselines risks generating carbon credits for logging that would never have occurred in practice. This would result in over-crediting and undermine confidence in the integrity of the method. To avoid this risk, baseline settings must instead be grounded in independently verifiable, post-fire harvesting data that reflects actual operating conditions. 

In short, any method that allows for the continuation of logging, or a baseline that is grounded in unrealistic data will not be supported by any member of the Forest Alliance NSW.

Signatories:

• The Nature Conservation Council of NSW 
• WWF-Australia 
• Wilderness Australia
• North East Forest Alliance
• Brooman State Forest Conservation Group
• South East Forest Rescue
• North Coast Environment Council