Forestry fails to find 98 out of 102 threatened species habitat trees in Glenbog State Forest

The NSW Forestry Corporation has already started cutting down trees with heavy logging machinery in the Glenbog State Forest despite missing 98 of the 102 recorded den trees in the planned logging areas. The additional 98 den trees are recorded in an ecological report prepared by the community that includes 775 records of threatened and at-risk species in the logging area of 515 hectares.

Glenbog State Forest is one of the few high elevation ‘cloud forests’ in southern NSW and is a critical refugia for biodiversity with a consistently cool, damp and stable environment. The community report includes records of 666 wombat burrows in the planned logging area that will be blocked and crushed if the full logging plan proceeds.

The community ecological report was prepared in collaboration by Wilderness Australia, Birdlife Southern NSW, Jarake Wildlife Sanctuary, Bob Brown Foundation, and South East Forest Rescue, and has been provided to the Forestry Corporation of NSW, the NSW Environment Protection Authority, and the Ministers for the Environment and Agriculture.

Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said:

“The Forestry Corporation is already in Glenbog destroying trees with their industrial scale logging machinery, despite receiving this incredible report that shows just how poorly they conducted their pre-logging surveys,”

“Here in NSW, the Minns Government has put their Forestry Industry Action Plan on hold while they try to sell the carbon in our native forests, but the changes to federal biodiversity laws late last year means that the logging industry won’t continue to receive exemptions from our nature protection laws,”

“The whole situation is now untenable. The Government needs to read the writing on the wall and plan now for the end of native forest logging,”

“The unique and biodiverse environment of Glenbog State Forest should be permanently protected with a moratorium on all logging. Instead, the Forestry Corporation is rushing to log as much as possible before they are finally held accountable under federal environment laws,”

“This latest example of the Forestry Corporation failing to find 95% of protected den trees just reinforces that they are failing to meet the bare minimum environment protections that they currently have. The work by the community means that these den trees won’t be logged, but the heavy machines will still destroy most of the habitat in these forests - including hundreds of wombat burrows. Enough is enough,” Ms Higginson said.