MEDIA RELEASE 16 September 2025

Conservation Groups Welcome Independent Planning Commission’s Rejection of Proposal to Increase Landclearing for Electricity

North East Forest Alliance and North Coast Environment Council welcome the IPC’s rejection of Verdant Earth's proposal to restart the closed coal-fired Redbank power station, using trees obtained from clearing more than 20,000 ha of land a year, to spew 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

On the September 15, the Independent Planning Commission refused the development application from Verdant Earth Technologies Ltd to restart the Redbank Power Station at Warkworth using biomass instead of coal tailings as fuel.

“Burning forests produces higher CO₂ emissions than burning coal, so it is madness to replace coal with wood to generate electricity as it undermines our transition to a low carbon economy”, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

MEDIA RELEASE 7 September 2025

North East Forest Alliance and North Coast Environment Council welcome the Minns Government’s decision to place a moratorium on the full Great Koala National Park while they resolve the issue of obtaining carbon credits for creating it as a national park.

Finalisation of the Great Koala National Park will be a historic step forward in forest conservation, on par with Wran’s  historic 1982 Rainforest Decision that protected 120,000 ha of forests in north-east NSW and ultimately led to the protection of all rainforests, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“NEFA thanks Environment Minister Penny Sharpe for maintaining this commitment at the last election, and undertaking a robust environmental assessment. We trust that she will now see this through to fruition.

“This park will protect 12,000 Koalas and enable their populations to recover as their feed trees regrow. This is the sort of action we need if we want to double their population in NSW.

MEDIA RELEASE 27 February 2025

The loggers are once again spreading false information in their attempts to stop the Great Koala National Park (GKNP), this time by claiming that the assessment of Koalas was based upon Koala scat searches when they know it was based upon comprehensive drone surveys that identified actual Koalas.

For the GKNP repeated night time drone surveys were undertaken using infrared at 169 59ha sites to identify individual Koalas, involving 4,000 kms of drone flight by a team of 26 drone pilots.

The results of this unprecedented survey intensity were extrapolated to map the density of Koalas across the GKNP, identifying a total population of 12,000 Koalas, NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

The North East Forest Alliance accuses the AWU of unfounded scaremongering with their claims of 9,000 job losses if the Great Koala National Park is created, as NEFA’s assessment identifies only 118 to 218 industry jobs in north east NSW will be directly affected by creation of the park.

See NEFA’s The Impact of the Creation of the Great Koala National Park on Logging Industry Employment in North East NSW for details

MEDIA RELEASE 7 February 2025

The Forestry Corporation has reduced yields from public native forests in NSW by 28%, though they are only doing so by dramatically reducing the volumes of products they previously claimed to have obtained in each of the past 3 years, according to the North East Forest Alliance.

The Forestry Corporation is legally required to prepare annual Biomaterial Reports that detail areas of native forests logged, and volumes of products obtained, on a compartment basis.

We welcome the Forestry Corporation admitting gross errors in their reporting of timber products by releasing revised Biomaterial Reports for the past 3 years, though we are flabbergasted that they have retrospectively reduced volumes by 28% from what they previously certified they obtained, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“For the past 3 years they have reclassified 65,584 m³ of premium large high quality logs as lower value small high quality logs, and reduced claimed yields of low quality logs by 616,384 tonnes (36%), NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

MEDIA RELEASE 13 January 2025

The Minns Government was elected on a promise to save Koalas and create the Great Koala National Park, but a new assessment by the North East Forest Alliance shows that in the 21 months since the election they have logged 7,185 ha of the park, 8.4% of the State Forests able to be logged, with new operations now starting.

“It is outrageous that despite their promise the Minns Government has accelerated logging of the Great Koala National Park, while rejecting repeated requests to implement a moratorium, phase-out strategy or protect core Koala habitat, report author Dailan Pugh said.

The report is here: ‘Accelerating Logging Within the Great Koala National Park’

MEDIA RELEASE 17 December 2024

The pressure is growing on the NSW Government to stop logging of public native forests since the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) identified that part of the problem is that the Forestry Corporation is not even covering the costs of cutting down the trees and delivering them to mills, leading IPART to highlight the growing costs to taxpayers when compared to alternative uses for native forests such as for tourism and carbon sequestration, and urging the Government to review the long-term feasibility of native timber harvesting.

“The Government needs to heed the advice of IPART that there are concerns about native forestry in NSW due to impacts on the environment and threatened species, climate change impacts and its economic viability, making it essential they review the long-term feasibility of native timber harvesting” NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

MEDIA RELEASE 14 December 2024

In response to the Forestry Corporation posting a loss of $29 million on its hardwood logging operations last year, almost double their loss of $15 million the previous year, the North East Forest Alliance is again calling for an immediate end to the logging of public native forests.

The logging of public native forests is an economic basket case, costing taxpayers a fortune to pay to degrade a public asset and drive numerous species towards extinction, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

MEDIA RELEASE 27 August 2024

The North East Forest Alliance is concerned that the NSW Government’s recently announced Independent Forestry Panel is not independent and is calling for the appointment of a forest ecologist to provide some balance.

The three member Independent Forestry Panel can not be considered independent when Peter Duncan AM was once the Chief Executive Officer of the Forestry Corporation and Mick Veitch was previously the ALP’s shadow Forestry Minister, NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

“We would welcome a truly independent and impartial review of logging of public native forests in NSW as the evidence is that it is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable.

MEDIA RELEASE 7 August 2024

Pugh’s Frog (Philoria pughi) has recently been uplisted to nationally Endangered, with logging identified as a threat, leading the North East Forest Alliance to call upon the NSW and Commonwealth Environment Ministers to immediately change the logging rules to protect its habitat from logging.

Pugh's Frog (Credit Stephen Mahony)