Australia’s Native Forests

When left to grow, forests capture up to 30% of our CO2 emissions and store significant amounts of carbon. They play a major and fundamental role in the carbon capture capabilities of our earth’s biosphere, which, if left intact, remove up to 50% of CO2 annually.

In 2019-20, 87% of logs harvested in Australia came from plantations.

Native forest logging provides far fewer jobs than the plantation sector and does not produce substantial employment opportunities in any mainland Australian state.

About 87% of sawn timber used in home construction is derived from plantations.

The vast majority of native forest logged in Tasmania, Victoria and southern NSW goes into woodchips and paper pulp.

• WA is ending native forest logging by end of 2023
• VIC is ending native forest logging by 2030, still leaving many years of logging.
• NSW and Tasmania have not made the same commitments.

There’s now irrefutable evidence that logging native forests make them prone to more severe bushfires. Analysis of the 2019-20 Black Summer fires showed logged forests burn more severely than intact ones.

Care for the future of life on Earth, and our obligation to ensure that Australia's natural beauty, diversity and inspiration is not lost to future generations, drives this urgent call on you to protect Australia's forests. Now.

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Communities for Forests is our national community organising program that wants to put native forest protection on the federal agenda. To date, we have a thriving community of action-takers around the country who are working in their electorates, building people-powered change for Australia’s native forests.

We know that if we want to see real, permanent and long-lasting protection for Australia’s remaining native forests, we need a government that prioritises forests and the environment. Through building electorate based-community support and constituent led political engagement with state and federal MP’s, we are committed to seeing native forests protected through positive policy change.

No matter where you live in Australia, we have real, practical actions you can take to start building the movement in your community.

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Critically Endangered Swift parrots are the fastest parrot on Earth.They only breed in Tasmania’s native forests. At severe risk of extinction as logging in their breeding habitat continues.

In 2015 the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the Swift parrot as critically endangered and recommended that all public lands that support Swift parrots be placed under secure, permanent conservation management. This has not happened.

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Endangered - Logging and landclearing are the main reasons why the koala is disappearing. Overall, about 80% of koala habitat has been cleared since white settlement, almost none is protected.

Learn more here

Tasmania’s forests are of global significance. Independent assessments have found that Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests and takayna / Tarkine are of outstanding universal value. They are home to many threatened species such as the Masked owl, Tasmanian devil, Swift parrot and the Giant Freshwater Crayfish. Tasmania is also home to the most carbon dense forests in the world.

There is over a million hectares of land under threat from logging in Tasmania. Hundreds of hectares of important breeding areas of the critically endangered swift parrot have recently been destroyed. Old-growth forests are still being logged in Tasmania, with giant trees of over 5 meters in diameter being felled. Logging old-growth forests and threatened species habitat are two of the reasons that Sustainable Timber Tasmania have failed Forest Stewardship Council certification twice.

In Tasmania’s forests we still witness clearfelling of forests on steep slopes by cable loggers in areas so iconic such as the Styx valley. Where the Tasmanian government closes public tourist roads to log the forests.

Tracts of tall old giant sentinels are still being logged in the highlands at places like Wentworth hills, where spagnum moss ecosystems and King Billy pine pockets in gullies and on ridge lines rely on the moisture held by these forests at their foothills. Rampant logging occurs here with 24 hour log trucks carting ancient trees many hours away to the woodchip mill and exported to China.

At the edge of the World Heritage Area, yet under imminent threat, these old and lush Eucalyptus forests host a vulnerable island of biodiverse ecosystems. Among flowering Blue Gums and Waratahs. Under the canopy of some of the tallest trees in the Southern Hemisphere. Under patches of rainforest. The swift parrots, like many other species, are dependent on the maturity of these forests: they rely on the senescence of these old Eucalyptus to give birth. These requirements can't be artificially or technologically reproduced: if we pursue the logging of these forests... if we are ignoring these facts... we will very soon be sitting in the dock, guilty of the (forever) swift parrot extinction.

Native forest logging in Tasmania is hugely unprofitable and a drain on the economy, with Sustainable Timber Tasmania (formerly Forestry Tasmania) losing a staggering $454 million dollars over 20 years. The industry has been kept afloat by numerous state and federal subsidies, receiving close to $1 billion dollars over the last few decades. This money could be better spent on ways that would protect the environment, economy and benefit our communities.

Our Foundation takes frontline action against the logging and clearfelling of Tasmania’s Native Forests across the state, including in takayna / Tarkine, Wentworth Hills and the Eastern Tiers.

Every autumn, wildlife-rich native forests are hacked to the ground at a cost to the taxpayer of tens of millions of dollars. The forest remnants are then scraped into waste debris piles and burnt by incendiaries dropped from helicopters.

These post-logging infernos fill Tasmania's air with toxic fumes as millions of tons of carbon are released into our struggling atmosphere.

Incinerating old forests and growing young monocultures in short cycles has a hugely detrimental effect on climate, biodiversity, native species and river health and increases the incidence of bushfires from escaped burns.

We must stop this decimation of our forests, the carbon they store and their unique wildlife.

Tell our government to Stop Incinerating Native Forests. Instead, native forests should be protected for their climate, wildlife, economic and water values.

See the forests that Forestry Tasmania wants to burn next here.

Concerned about a coupe in your area? Shoot us an email

If you have any information or would like to get involved, contact Courtney, drop into our nipaluna / Hobart Campaign Centre or phone 03 6494 0620.

Instead of being a sustainable source of power, Biomass spells forest destruction, increasing the demand for timber ‘waste’ products and replacing woodchips as the financial justification to prop up the economically failing logging industry.

As support for biomass increases globally, there is an increasing risk that Australia’s native forests could be used as biomass energy – it is already occurring in some of NSW’s Native Forests. Turning native forests into liquid biofuels, biomass power and wood pellets poses a serious threat to Australia’s wildlife and will unlock carbon which has been stored in our forests for decades.

Biomass burning is not carbon neutral and emits more carbon per unit of energy than coal20. It takes many decades to centuries for forests to regrow and recapture carbon. We need to move away from burning fossil fuels entirely – not just swap coal-burning power stations for native forest furnaces.

While biomass from native forests is often described as ‘waste’, leftover from other logging products such as sawmill timber or veneer, we know that this is not the case. By far, 30 – 70% of logged forests end up as ‘waste’, and biomass is providing an economic incentive for this product. Vast areas of Australia’s native forests could be destroyed by industrial scale biomass burning.

Biomass energy is a bad idea for our forests and the climate. We need to be urgently moving away from energy sources which release carbon into the atmosphere and transition to renewable technologies. We also need to protect Australia’s native forests as they are important for carbon sequestration and storage and are a meaningful way to mitigate climate change.

We cannot let our remaining native forests be logged under the guise of ‘renewable’ energy.