Peer-reviewed research and extensive surveys by government scientists show that koala populations are extensive and, in general, stable. Population data from 224 sites over a 7-year period showed that well-regulated timber harvesting or low-severity fire did not reduce koala occupancy rates. Harvesting prescriptions provided sufficient habitat for koalas to maintain their density, both immediately after selective harvesting and within 5-10 years after heavy harvesting.

Furthermore, recent (2024) extensive aerial surveys (involving ~ 4000 km of drone flights) in northern NSW suggest that koala densities and occupancy are similar in National Parks and adjacent harvested forests, and the same was found for southern greater gliders.

A CSIRO study (2024) revealed that nationally, koala numbers may be up to 10 times greater than estimated in 2021 by the Australian Koala Foundation. In NE NSW, CSIRO found that koalas are abundant and doing well except after severe wildfire – suggesting that the koala should not be regarded as ‘endangered’ in the region. Much evidence suggests that extensive wildfires, rather than sustainable harvesting, pose the long-term threat.

Collectively, these robust findings strongly question the rationale for establishing the proposed GKNP in NE NSW and banning sustainable harvests to achieve this goal. Will the park have a value beyond emotional appeal and overzealous conservation calls?

The government is also claiming that the establishment of the GKNP will protect old-growth forests. Protect them from what? – certainly not from harvesting because old-growth forest has not been harvested for more than two decades in NSW. The major threat to old growth is from wildfire, and there is no evidence that wildfires are less extensive or intense in conservation forests than they are in multiple-use forests. Cessation of harvesting, however, is likely to reduce capability for fire prevention and suppression, apart from the imposition of needless adverse effects on local economies and livelihoods.

It appears that the establishment of the GKNP is contingent upon the income from a yet-to-be-approved carbon project based on a proposed Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) methodology. If the GKNP is so critical a priority for preventing koala “extinction”, and protection of old growth forests and water catchments how can the government justify such a precondition? Clearly, there is an assumption that the carbon project will deliver significant monetised carbon credits. Is this realistic?

To generate carbon credits, net emissions must be lower after the cessation of harvest. Research in NSW, Victoria and internationally shows that this is not the case, and that net carbon benefits and sustainable harvests can be complementary. There is a central issue, but it is often unrecognised by anti-forestry activists.

Estimation of net carbon emissions in harvested native forests requires the application of a full Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) framework that accounts for temporal changes in carbon stock at the harvested site; carbon emissions associated with managing and harvesting the forest, transporting and processing harvested wood products; storage of carbon in wood products in service and after disposal in landfill; any carbon emissions saved by using residues to generate energy otherwise produced by the combustion of fossil fuels; benefits of substituting wood for more carbon-intensive materials such as steel, aluminium or concrete in construction; and the often higher carbon footprint of wood products sourced from overseas to replace Australian production. When all these factors are taken into account, sustainable harvesting from native forests and the subsequent use of forest biomass to produce wood products or energy can reduce net carbon emissions.

If sustainable harvesting does not result in net carbon emissions, how can banning harvesting create credible carbon credits? Ceasing harvesting within the area of the GKNP will increase the import of hardwood and the use of high-emission construction materials, such as steel and concrete, both of which result in emissions leakage to other sectors of the Australian economy or internationally. There will be no reduction in net emissions and no benefit for the climate. It is highly misleading to claim otherwise. Should the INFM methodology be either incomplete or a poor model of reality, carbon credit estimates will not be credible and considered to be ‘fake’.

If the Government has used new evidence that differs from that referred to here to underpin the decision to establish the park, it should be made immediately available to the public, given that there are sound scientific and other reasons to dispute the need for a new park to protect koalas. If not, it is disingenuous to claim that there is a valid scientific case to back this plan. Claims that koalas will be better off as a result of establishing the GKNP are purely speculative. There is no scientific logic to support the claim that the cessation of harvest in sustainably managed native forests will generate additional and reliable carbon credits.

Firstly, it is important to note that 60% of Tasmanian native forests are in conservation tenures and thus excluded from wood production. Where harvesting does occur in available and suitable public and private forests, it is now mostly in regrowth forests, unlike in the past, when older and higher-carbon-density forests were being harvested. The sustainable harvesting of Tasmania’s native forests is underpinned by a world-class forest practices system that includes a legislated Code of Forest Practice and an independent Forest Practices Authority that monitors compliance with that Code.  

Accounting for the effects of timber harvesting on carbon emissions is complicated by the diversity of forest types involved, the different timber harvesting systems used, and the relic effects of past logging and wildfire. Despite the claims of anti-logging advocates, clear-felling and burning is used only in certain forest types, and selective harvesting is now the most common harvesting system employed.

Publicly available data from ABARES shows that in 2022-23, 935,000 cubic metres of log was produced from the State’s native forests. Of this, about 200,000 m³ came from privately-owned native forests, while 735,000 m³ was from the available and suitable portion of the public native forest estate. This level of annual log production from Tasmania’s native forests has been steady for the last 12 years.

We know from detailed research that each cubic metre of harvested wood contains approximately 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e). We also know from extensive field measurements across many forest harvesting operations, that approximately 70% of felled biomass is removed off-site in harvested logs (which is considerably more than the 40% claimed by anti-logging advocates); while the remaining 30% is left in the forest to be either burnt or to decay over time.  

Using the information in the previous paragraph, the total carbon in the felled trees in public forests that produced about 735,000 m³ of logs annually is estimated to be 1.05 Mt CO2e. Even if we assumed that all that carbon was emitted (which it is clearly not as discussed below) it would represent only 30% of that emitted annually from Tasmania’s highest emitting sector (Energy) (+ 3.5 Mt CO2-e).

Part of the carbon in harvested wood enters long-term storage either whilst in service or in landfill. Wood is also used in construction to substitute for high-emission alternative materials (steel, concrete, and aluminium) and to create wood products that might otherwise be sourced from overseas, where production emissions are much higher than in Australia. When these factors are properly assessed in a lifecycle analysis, it has been shown that sustainable harvesting does not cause net carbon emissions and that harvesting leads to greater mitigation of carbon emissions than an alternative no-harvesting forest management option.

Claims by anti-forestry activists that harvesting of native forests is the largest contributor to carbon emissions in Tasmania are wrong.

The Australian government uses IPCC-approved methods to produce the National Inventory Report on changes in forest carbon. This includes changes in forest carbon stocks as well as change in the carbon pool in harvested wood products. The substitution benefits of using wood are not credited to the forest sector but are still beneficial to Australia’s overall net carbon balance.

The Tasmanian government (2024) has summarised and interpreted data from the National Inventory Report showing that Tasmania overall was carbon negative by 4.34 Mt CO2-e in 2022. This is largely because both harvested private native forests (minus 6.06 Mt CO2-e) and harvested multiple use State forests (minus 5.54 Mt CO2-e) are acting as major carbon sinks. This is largely due to the carbon being stored in regrowth generated by past wildfires and harvesting events. 

Sequestration of carbon has been relatively steady in the private forest estate for the last decade, and relatively steady in multiple use State forests since 1990 despite very large reductions in wood harvests during that period. Clearly, sustainable harvesting of native forests is not depleting forest carbon stocks in Tasmania.

The Tasmanian public deserves better than to be repeatedly deceived by false claims that native forest timber harvesting is a major source of carbon emissions.

A recent detailed review of relevant scientific evidence published in the journal Australian Forestry (Raison, 2024) reached the following conclusions:

Point 1: Reliable assessment of the complete C balance associated with harvested native forests requires the application of a full Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) framework that accounts for temporal changes in C stock at the harvested site; C emissions associated with managing and harvesting the forest, transporting and processing harvested wood products (HWP); storage of C in wood products in service and landfill; any C emissions saved by using residues to generate energy otherwise produced by combustion of fossil fuels; benefits of substituting wood for more C-intensive materials such as steel, aluminium or concrete in construction; and the C footprint of wood products sourced from overseas to replace Australian production.

Point 2: Only one Australian study has adopted a complete LCA approach. That study concluded that harvesting of sustainably managed native forests and the subsequent use of forest biomass to produce HWP or energy can make a positive contribution to mitigating national net C emissions. Other studies claiming that native forest harvesting increases net C emissions have either been incomplete, used inappropriate parameters to estimate components of the total C balance, or overestimated the rate of C gain in older forests and the ability of unharvested forests to store C for the long-term under threat from wildfires, and consequently have underestimated the C benefits due to wood harvest and use. This has led to the erroneous conclusion that cessation of harvesting would provide better C outcomes than sustainable management for wood production.

Point 3: Changes to C storage in Australian native forests are driven much more by extensive wildfire than by harvesting. Harvesting affects only a small proportion of the forested landscape, and logs harvested annually from all Australian native forests contain only about 2.5 Mt CO₂-equivalent or about 0.6 % of Australia’s total net anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Additional emissions of C from the decomposition or combustion of slash produced during harvest are about a third of this figure. These C removals from the forest are offset by sequestration of C in new regrowth and are supplemented by benefits derived from harvested wood. In contrast, in very bad fire seasons such as the summer of 2019-20, C emissions were about twice Australia’s total annual anthropogenic (i.e. excluding wildfire emissions) GHG emissions and about 200 times greater than C removals in wood plus emissions from logging slash.

Point 4: When examined at the landscape scale, there is no credible evidence that harvesting leads to increased area burnt, fire severity or C emissions caused by wildfires.  However, wildfires in the large and contiguous areas of thick regrowth created after the ‘black summer’ fire season will pose a major threat to C stocks in all forests during the coming decades.

Point 5: Timber harvesting in native forests, providing it is well conducted in carefully selected parts of the landscape, can provide ongoing C benefits.

These findings mean that a proposal to establish a new INFM (Improved Native Forest Management) methodology to estimate C emissions savings from the cessation of harvesting in State forests lacks any scientific logic. The method development is backed by the NSW government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and it has been prioritised by the Federal Government via the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee for further development. The Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation claim that ceasing native forest harvesting could generate abatement of more than a million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) annually, with a value of approximately $100 million. Such claims are fanciful and ignore scientific knowledge and the following facts about native forestry in NSW.

Just 9.1% of the forest estate in NSW is State Forest, and only a small part of this is harvested annually using mainly selective harvesting practices. Privately owned native forests occupy a much larger area (33.8%), some of which is actively managed for wood production. National parks represent 25.1% of the forest estate. Publicly available data (ABARES, 2024) shows that in 2022-23, only about 650,000 cubic metres of logs were removed from the State’s native forests (public + private) – annual log production from native forests has declined markedly during the last 20 years.

Detailed research shows that each cubic metre of harvested wood contains approximately 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e). We also know from extensive field measurements across many forest harvesting operations that approximately 70% of felled biomass is removed off-site in harvested logs (considerably more than the 40% claimed by anti-logging advocates), whilst currently, the remaining 30% is waste that is left in the forest to be either burnt or to decay over time. 

Using the above information, the total C in all the felled trees in native forests that produced 650,000 m³ of logs annually is approximately 0.93 Mt CO2-e or about 0.8 % of the annual anthropogenic GHG emissions in NSW. This figure sets an upper limit for C emissions caused by harvesting if we assume that all that C was immediately emitted into the atmosphere. However, part of the carbon in harvested wood enters long-term storage either whilst in service or in landfill.

Wood is also used in construction to substitute for high-emission alternative materials (steel, concrete, and aluminium) and to create wood products that might otherwise be sourced from overseas, where production emissions are much higher than in Australia. When properly assessed in lifecycle analysis, sustainable harvesting does not cause net C emissions but instead leads to greater mitigation of C emissions than an alternative no-harvesting forest management option.