2022-11-07
Support is building for a planned transition out of native forest logging with the release of the ‘Transition support for the NSW native forest sector’from Frontier Economics. The NSW Government should take this opportunity to complete the recommendations of the ‘Inquiry into the long term sustainability and future of the timber and forest products industry’that calls for a cost-benefit assessment of public native forests and development of strategies to support workers and communities to transition away from native forest logging.
Greens MP Sue Higginson and spokesperson for the environment and agriculture said “The native hardwood division of Forestry Corporation lost $20 million in 2020-21 and their sustainability report acknowledged that this is unlikely to improve for several years due to supply shortfalls.
“The industrial scale logging of our public native forests is not sustainable and NSW residents are paying through the nose to destroy them. It is time for the Government to take responsibility for the future of forestry in NSW so that communities, workers and the environment are guaranteed into the future."
“The Frontier Economics report estimates that a full transition plan could be implemented for $302 million ($30 million per year for 10 years). This figure doesn’t even take into account the savings that would be made from no longer subsidising the destruction of our precious native forests"
“The benefits from nature based tourism and carbon banking if public native forest logging was transitioned could mean more than $1 billion for the NSW economy and create almost 10,000 additional jobs compared to the 1,000 workers directly involved in native forestry."
“This transition plan would mean that no worker or community is left behind with generous redundancies and retraining opportunities on offer as well as protecting business with Wood Supply Agreement (WSA) buybacks."
“The transition from public native forest logging to 100% sustainable plantations is inevitable, necessary and long overdue. The largest obstacle to this happening right now is the Government’s opposition to investing in and supporting the plan."
“The Greens want to see truly sustainable timber harvesting exist well into the future but the current practice of decimating our recovering public forests is outdated and frankly dangerous. We want the Government to invest now and save workers, communities, and the environment from the rapidly approaching end to public native forest logging,’ Ms. Higginson said.