Environmentalists have released what they say are the first maps of nearly 40,000 hectares of protected Tasmanian native forests that the state government plans to open to logging in what critics have described as “political point scoring”.
They suggest significant parts of the state’s north-east around the Ben Lomond national park and near the town of Scottsdale could be made available to the forestry industry if the Liberal government wins support for the changes in parliament. A smaller area of forest could be opened up in the north-west between Smithton and Wynyard.
The premier, Jeremy Rockliff, announced in February that a re-elected Liberal government would allow logging in 27 areas that have been protected since a “peace deal” was struck between the timber industry, conservation groups and unions in 2012 in an effort to end the decades-long conflict known as the “Tasmanian forest wars”.
The policy to expand logging of native forests puts Tasmania at odds with Victoria and Western Australia, which banned the practice this year. It prompted accusations the Liberals would accelerate environmental damage. A forest lobby group argued Rockliff was treating the industry as a political football.
Ten months on, the state government is yet to reveal which forests could be logged. The Wilderness Society mapped the proposed zones based on documents released under right-to-information laws last week that describe what has been included and excluded.
The organisation says it includes forests that could be habitat for 37 threatened species, including the masked owl, wedge-tailed eagle and multiple types of quoll. The combined area is about 60 times larger than the Melbourne CBD.
Guardian Australia asked the government if the maps were correct. The business, industry and resources minister, Eric Abetz, did not directly answer, but said the government had “clearly communicated” its policy was to open up to 40,000 hectares of forest to industry and it had “received a mandate to deliver on this commitment”.
The Liberals won 14 out of 35 lower house seats at the March election and retained power with the support of crossbench MPs, who promised support on confidence and supply bills.
Abetz said work was under way to prepare the information needed to win parliamentary approval to convert the protected areas into logging coupes. He said the forestry act required that environmental and heritage values of the land be considered and “balanced against the economic opportunities”.
Alice Hardinge, the Wilderness Society’s Tasmanian campaigns manager, said the reserves should be protected from logging as promised. She said Australian taxpayers had already paid $121m in transition packages for workers affected by a reduction in logging in the state.
“These forests, which communities fought so hard to protect and which contain such rich ecological and First Nations cultural significance, must be permanently protected, not handed over to loggers for political point scoring,” Hardinge said.
The Liberals have promised to open up additional forests to logging since claiming power in 2014, designating 356,000 hectares of protected forest as a “wood bank” or “future potential production forest”. Those areas have not been logged in the decade since, and timber business leaders have warned attempts to fell trees in some areas could reignite protests and market campaigns that would damage the industry.
As reported by the ABC, a right-to-information request by BirdLife Australia last week revealed the government had asked the state-owned forestry agency (formerly known as Forestry Tasmania, rebadged as Sustainable Timber Tasmania) in late 2021 if it wanted expanded access to native forests.
The agency responded in March 2022 with a list of 27 areas, including more than 6,000 hectares that it acknowledged were “old growth” forest with “negligible” past disturbance. The forests are mostly eucalyptus – stringy bark, gum-top stringy bark and swamp gum. About 88% of trees in a 18,000 hectare area proposed for logging was estimated to be more than 80 years in age, and the agency conceded some of the land was “unsurveyed or poorly surveyed”.
The government policy followed projections suggesting a drop in available native forest timber for sawmills after 2027. Nearly 90% of the timber produced in Australia comes from plantations.
Abetz said environmentalists had an “ideological opposition to native forestry”, and their lobbying led to Labor governments shutting down native forestry in Victoria and WA. He said if Australians did not produce the hardwood timber it needed it would import more from native forests in the US, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and South America.
“Tasmanians can have confidence that the relevant environmental and cultural values will be identified and carefully managed before any forestry operations occur,” Abetz said.
