Most of the forests and woodlands that existed prior to European invasion in the lands now known as NSW are gone. Numerous threatened species, such as gliders, owls, koalas and quolls, are at heightened risk due to logging. Bushfires are becoming more severe because of climate change, and logged native forests are more flammable than unlogged forests. Native forest logging mostly produces woodchips and pulp rather than higher value sawn timber and operates at a loss to the taxpayer. For these reasons, calls from the community for the NSW government to end native forest logging, as Victoria and Western Australia have done in the last year, are increasing.
On September 30, the Australia Institute held an event at Redfern Town Hall on the topic “A Pathway out of Native Forest Logging”. People from across Sydney attended this interactive discussion facilitated by environmental lawyer Vanessa Bleyer and with panellists Dr Sophie Scamps MP (independent member of the federal electorate of Mackellar) and journalist Stephen Long.
Dr Scamps explained her work in the federal parliament and wider community to end native forest logging across Australia and improve biodiversity outcomes. This includes the Forest Pledge, to which politicians, former politicians, scientists and organisations are invited to commit and “do everything in our power to pressure local, state, and federal governments to end the destruction and loss-making logging of our precious native forests”. Save the Aussie Bush is a community petition that individuals can sign to call upon the Australian government to end native forest logging.
Matters of national environmental significance, including threatened species, are protected under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. However, logging is exempted from the Act, which weakens the protections for forests not only in NSW but also in Tasmania. Dr Scamps and other parliamentary colleagues are pushing for this loophole to be closed.
Stephen Long described his investigation of continued logging of koala habitat inside the proposed Great Koala National Park on the NSW north coast despite the new NSW government’s commitment upon taking office in March 2023 that it would establish the park. One reason appears to be that the government is waiting until it has developed a mechanism to sell carbon credits from the forests to carbon emitters such as the fossil fuel industry as “offsets” for their emissions. This perversely creates an incentive to continue logging in the meantime because “it will be easier for the government to argue when it does finally halt the felling that the planned carbon credits represent genuine ‘avoided deforestation’”.
Neither Victoria nor Western Australia resorted to carbon credits to end native forest logging, and research by the Australia Institute shows that “market mechanisms are at best a distraction from, and at worst a hinderance to, an effective transition” away from native forest logging.
Ms Bleyer invited those present to support and publicise two petitions initiated by The Australia Institute: one calling on the federal parliament to remove of the exemption for logging from the EPBC Act, and the other to Premier Chris Minns to end native forest logging in NSW.
