17/05/2026
The ongoing destruction of NSW’s native forests under the guise of “sustainable forestry” has become one of the greatest environmental failures in modern Australia. Those acting as mouthpieces for the native forest logging industry continue to promote misinformation, while ignoring the overwhelming evidence of environmental harm, repeated legal breaches and the catastrophic impacts on biodiversity.
The reality is that the NSW native forest logging industry has become synonymous with environmental destruction, regulatory failure and the systematic degradation of some of Australia’s most biodiverse public forests. The repeated prosecutions and convictions of Forestry Corporation of NSW in the NSW Land and Environment Court demonstrate a deeply entrenched pattern of unlawful conduct during native forest logging operations. These are not isolated incidents or minor technical breaches. They involve serious environmental offences, including the destruction of habitat for threatened species and breaches of legally binding environmental protections.
If private landholders or ordinary citizens caused similar levels of environmental destruction to threatened species habitat, they would face severe penalties and potentially criminal prosecution. Yet under the Regional Forest Agreement system, industrial native forest logging continues to enjoy extraordinary exemptions from national environmental laws that would apply to virtually any other industry.
The Regional Forest Agreements have effectively operated as a political licence to log and destroy critical habitat across vast areas of public native forest. These agreements were established decades ago under assumptions that no longer reflect the biodiversity and climate crises confronting Australia today. Numerous scientists, conservationists and former judicial figures have questioned how an industry responsible for ongoing ecological damage can continue to operate with such weak oversight and limited accountability.
The destruction of hollow-bearing trees, rainforest elements, stream buffers and the habitat of threatened species including the Greater Glider, Koala and Yellow-bellied Glider is not “sustainable forest management.” It is environmental vandalism on a landscape scale.
At a time when Australia is facing accelerating biodiversity decline, worsening climate impacts and increasing extinction risks, continuing native forest logging in publicly owned forests is indefensible. The overwhelming majority of Australia’s timber and housing construction needs can already be supplied from plantation resources, removing any credible justification for the continued destruction of high conservation value native forests.
NSW’s native forests are far more valuable standing intact — protecting water catchments, storing carbon, supporting tourism, preserving Aboriginal cultural heritage and safeguarding wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. Future generations will rightly question how governments allowed the continued industrial destruction of these irreplaceable ecosystems despite repeated warnings from scientists, conservationists and the courts.
The time has come to end native forest logging in NSW permanently and transition fully to sustainable plantation-based timber production.
