Logging: a highly subsidised industry
Allocations of Public Resources for Logging
There are 918,145 ha of State forests in north east NSW (Lower and Upper North East RFA regions). A total of 306.472ha (33%) of these forests are zoned for protection in Forest Management Zones (1, 2, 3A) which prohibit logging. Some 40,338ha is claimed to be hardwood plantations and 37,048ha is pine plantations.
These forests belong to the people of NSW and are managed by the Forestry Corporation of NSW (AKA Forestry Commission, State Forests and Forests NSW). In the 1970’s the intent was to cut over the forests of the coastal plain and dramatically reduce logging until the regrowth matured in 2020-2040, keeping up sawlog supplies by one-off unsustainable logging of oldgrowth forest in steeper country and on the tablelands until pine plantations matured in 2010.
In the 1980’s the coastal forests began to be over-logged to maintain revenue and pacify sawmillers, while community alarm at the depletion of oldgrowth forests initiated campaigns to stop the liquidation logging of oldgrowth. The 1990’s saw a greater emphasis on reducing logging to a sustainable level while creating an adequate reserve system encompassing most oldgrowth forest and wilderness. The reserve system was doubled and most oldgrowth and wilderness protected on public lands.
In the 2000’s the State and Commonwealth Governments ignored evidence that yields were over-estimated and issued Wood Supply Agreements to millers for free at intentionally unsustainable levels. Since then NSW taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars helping mills modernise, paying compensation to millers for inability to supply, buying back commitments from millers for timber that never existed, buying timber from private land to meet commitments, and establishing plantations. Despite this sawlogs from public native forests continued to decline and the predictions were that the 2020’s will see massive reductions. (see The Battle for Sustainable Yields is Lost).
In 2014 the yield predictions for the next 100 years were inexplicably doubled. Previously predicted dramatic declines in yields in 2023 and again in 2065 were converted into increasing yields over time. How the parameters underlying the modelling were changed to achieve this have not been identified, though it is partially attributable to increasing logging intensity and treating native forests like plantations. Despite this dramatic turn-around the NSW Government separated the yields from native forests and hardwood plantations to change a modelled resource surplus into a deficit to justify major wind-backs of environmental constraints, and the opening up of oldgrowth and rainforest protected in the reserve system for logging. (see 2018 Timber Review).The proposal to remap oldgrowth and rainforest for logging was abandoned after the fires in 2020.
In 2019-20 wildfires burnt through half on north-east NSWs State forests, causing widespread tree deaths, with estimates that at least a third of the region’s State Forests were significantly affected, with a loss of 10-50% of large sawlog sized trees over 30 cm diameter at breast height, and 50-100% of smaller trees. Overall, across both burnt and unburnt north coast State forests, the Forestry Corporation estimates are there was a loss of around 10% of sawlogs and 25% of smaller trees. North from Coffs Harbour these losses increase to 15% of sawlogs and 35% of smaller trees. Despite this the Forestry Corporation unbelievably claimed short-term losses of only 4% and long-term losses of just 1%. (see NEFA 2021 Submission into the forests and forests product industry).
The outcome was that in 2022 the NSW Government extended Wood Supply Agreements due to expire in 2023 for a further 5 years at existing levels.
Woodchipping
Export woodchipping began from north-east NSW in the 1980s and because of the massive volumes, low manufacturing coasts and quick returns proved to be very profitable for millers. It was stopped in 2013 due to competition from overseas eucalypt plantations and an inability to get independent environmental certification for north east NSWs logging. Now there is the even bigger threat of burning native forests in furnaces for electricity (see A History of Export Woodchipping from North East NSW). In 2018 the Government offered new commitments of low quality logs to overseas buyers in 10 year agreements, including reassigning all hardwood plantation resources as low quality for export. (see 2018 Timber Review). As at 2022 the biggest threat is the resumption of woodchipping as biomass to generate electricity, with a proposal to repurpose the closed coal-fired Redbank power to burn 850,000 tonnes of wood per annum.
Creative Plantations
After 1980 the Forestry Corporation (in all its previous incarnations) abandoned the concept of plantations, intensively logging where they wanted, and throwing around seed or planting jiffy pots in an ad-hoc manner. In 1990 the Forestry Corporation decided they needed hardwood plantations so began progressively reclassifying native forest as hardwood plantations based on often flimsy evidence that they had seeded areas or planted jiffy pots in some part of intensively logged areas (including many areas logged in the 60s and 70s not previously claimed as plantations). This reclassification continues today. (see Creative Hardwood Plantations)
Transition Strategy
Frontier Economic’s 2022 report ‘Transition support for the NSW native forest sector’ prepared for WWF estimates that a generous government-funded structural adjustment package for the 1,000 workers affected by stopping logging of all NSW's public native forests would only cost $302 million, with this cost likely outweighed by a range of positive budget impacts. (see Frontier Economics Transition Plan 2022).
The logging rules explained
Logging Prescriptions
Forestry operations have a profound impact on native plants and animals. Natural forests are normally multiaged, with large numbers of big old trees providing hollows for nesting and denning, along with abundant nectar and seed resources. They also contain mature and young trees providing for succession as trees senesce and die. The understorey may naturally be open and grassy or more often is comprised of a wide diversity of understorey plants providing nesting sites, foraging habitat, and essential food resources for a suite of species. Even the dead trees and logs are critical habitat for numerous species.
In general, forestry aims to remove the mature trees for timber and get rid of the big old trees and unsuitable species that suppress regrowth of commercial species. Understorey and logs are just impediments. The outcomes are often a mess due to loss of critical habitat trees, early removal of potential sawlogs, excessive damage to retrained trees, poor regeneration, escaped burn-offs, significant soil erosion, stream pollution and massive weed invasion.
Plants are killed by logging, trampling with machinery, burning and being smothered by weeds. Animals are directly killed in falling trees and by being crushed in logs and burrows, and slowly by loss of dens, nest sites, territories and essential food resources.
Of those 175 animal species identified as being of particular conservation concern in north-east NSW, a total of 7 mammals (excluding bats), 27 bats, 31 birds, 16 frogs, 5 turtles, 15 lizards and 8 snakes were identified as being specifically vulnerable to logging, with many of these species, and a number of others, also vulnerable to the associated fire regimes, hydrological changes, stream pollution and weed invasions. For 41 of these 109 species logging is identified as a primary (number 1) threat. (see Threatened Species).
In a natural forest rainfall is mostly intercepted by the canopy or absorbed by the ground cover. Subsurface flows of excess waters then generate streamflows. In logging operations the reduced canopy and widespread soil compaction and baring result in overland flows that transport large volumes of sediments and nutrients directly into streams where they have significant long-term impacts on stream biota (see Logging impacts on streams). Impacts on stream flows are also long lived as the regrowth forest has high water demands and there is less surplus for streams (see How Forests Regulate Streamflows).
It is obvious that if we want to limit the impacts of logging on native species, soils and streams then we need to restrict the scale and location of activities we allow to occur. Regulation of forestry activities was found to be necessary because of the Forestry Corporation’s repeated failures to voluntarily minimise their impacts (see The Battle to Protect Threatened Species, The Battle to Protect Soils and Streams).
Forestry operations on public lands in north east NSW are governed by the Integrated Forestry Operations Approvals (IFOA) for Upper North East Region and Lower North East Region, and the licences they contain. These are referred to as Environmental Protection Licence (EPL), Threatened Species Licence (TSL) and Fisheries Licence (FL). Together with various clauses of the IFOA these constitute the regulatory regime applied to forestry operations on the public’s state forest lands in north-east NSW
The Integrated Forestry Operations Approval is one of the means by which NSW implements obligations and undertakings given in the joint NSW and Commonwealth North East NSW Regional Forest Agreement (Cl 36,48) and is the principal vehicle by which Environment and Heritage Values that are impracticable to include in reserves can be considered. The IFOA, along with the CAR reserve system, is required to provide for the protection of rare or threatened flora and fauna species and ecological communities (Cl 60). A key requirement is to monitor and review the sustainability of forest management practices (ie Cl 53), which includes the IFOA (Cl 52).
While we now have a comprehensive regulatory process for the management of State forests, the prescriptions are inadequate because they are the result of numerous political compromises with expert opinions and evidence often ignored. Neither have they been subject to monitoring and expert review. Even the minimalist prescriptions now applied are routinely flouted by the Forestry Corporation. (see Protecting Exclusion Areas, Doing Surveys, Protecting Threatened Fish, Protecting Habitat Trees).
Commonwealth Requirements
There are a number of species that are threatened at a Federal level and should be taken into account before the Commonwealth Government signs off on Regional Forest Agreements. This is another aspect of government process that is a dismal failure.
This report reviews the protection applied both in theory and practice to nationally threatened species and ecological communities in forestry operations in the North East NSW Regional Forest Agreement (NE RFA) area.
For more information on other aspects of logging prescriptions see the following links:
The Battle to Protect Threatened Species
The Battle to Protect Soils and Streams
How Forests Regulate Streamflows
NOTE: The Forestry Corporation has undergone many name and structural changes since the Forestry Commission of NSW was first formed in November 1916. In August 1993 the Forestry Commission adopted State Forests of NSW as its trading name and was overseen by a board of Governance. Nothing much changed on the ground. In November 2005 the Forestry Commission again tried to change its image by adopting the new brand name of Forests NSW. On 1 January 2013 Forests NSW was corporatized and became the Forestry Corporation. These names are used interchangeably throughout this site, though to avoid confusion attempts have been made to use the name Forestry Corporation to apply to all incarnations.