On 15 March 2022, NSW Budget Estimates Portfolio Committee No 4 saw Justin Field MLC and David Shoebridge MLC once again argue the closure of selective harvesting of native forests in NSW.

Justin Field:

“It is an important time to be looking at the future of forestry in New South Wales. Minister, are you aware of the Natural Resources Commission report on post-fire logging, which concludes that there is a risk of serious and irreversible harm to New South Wales native forests as a result of the compounding effects of fires and harvesting?” (p 8)

“…it does say that the assessment of the impact on high-quality wood supply over the last five years as a result of fires and other impacts on the forests is a reduction of 84 per cent on the South Coast and 19 per cent on the North Coast.” (p 9)

“…in the last month that shows that Forestry Corporation has sent out letters to North Coast wood supply agreement holders … Minister, how can Forestry Corporation be negotiating in good faith with wood supply agreement holders and be considering extensions to contracts at existing annual quantities when there has been a demonstrable collapse in wood supply? …  The NRC report, which you have acknowledged you have only been moderately briefed on, points to a dramatic fall in wood supply, particularly in the short term. This is the period these contracts would be extended for. How does that gel with what you are saying about a 100-year time line?”  (p 9)

Field does not acknowledge that two years ago in December 2020 Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) placed the report ‘2019-20 Wildfires NSW Coastal Hardwood Forests Sustainable Yield Review’ on its website.

Another inconvenient truth!

This FCNSW Report provides:

• Post fire modelling by the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) has revealed that 7.9 million cubic metres of high-quality sawlog remains standing in the State forests of the NE Region[1]. Under FCNSW’s proposed supply arrangements (100-year non-declining yield) this volume will be eked out over many decades and will be progressively replaced by ingrowth [2].

• FCNSW acknowledges that the effect of the fires on high quality sawlog availability is a modelled estimate. As the modelled effect for the NE Region is small, it is appropriate that further assessment and monitoring occur before applying any adjustment. Monitoring needs to occur over an extended period as it will take at least five years before the full effects on wood quality materialise. 

• The NE region timber industry accepts that an adjustment to the sustainable yield may be required in the future. The industry supports FCNSW’s position to apply any required adjustment from 1 January 2029.

Field claimed that a leaked (Cabinet in Confidence) report prepared by the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) questions the environmental sustainability of native forest timber harvesting post fires.

This claim needs to be viewed in context. Ninety percent (90%) of the NE region’s public native forests are unavailable for timber harvesting, having been set aside for environmental protection in either formal or informal conservation reserves. Of the ten per cent of public forest that is available less than four per cent is subject to selective harvesting in any given year. The proposed extension of the WSA applies to half of the sustainable harvest over a five-year period. 

In effect, Field and Shoebridge are seeking to focus public attention on what is happening on just 0.01%[3] of the region’s public native forest estate (while ignoring the other 99.9%). By any objective measure their claims should be viewed as overstated and unduly alarmist.

The weighting ascribed by Field and Shoebridge to the NRC report should also be questioned. Although we have not seen the report, we know that it was not informed by any on-ground forest monitoring; either before or after the 2019-20 bushfires. Any views expressed in the NRC report will have been based on desktop and remote assessment. It should also be made known that the NRC is not a scientific research body. The NRC may have consulted some scientists before compiling their report but any advice they did receive would have been based on opinion not data. 

The proposed extension of Wood Supply Agreements (WSA) in NE Region does not apply to all agreement holders.  The proposed extension applies to those who have 20-year agreements which expire on 31 December 2023. There are about a dozen affected parties which when combined account for about half of the region’s sustainable high quality sawlog yield allocation (230,000 m3 per year).

Pentarch (formerly Boral) has the other half of the high-quality sawlog allocation. This company had its WSA extended until 31 December 2028 back in 2014.

The holders of the common WSAs are almost entirely family-owned and operated businesses who together directly employ over 700 people. The future of these people’s welfare now hangs in the balance.

Blocking the 5-year extension of the common WSAs is unjustified on both scientific and ethical grounds. Any delay in this decision will further undermine industry confidence which is already at a low point.

David Shoebridge MLC

“Of the native forest harvested last financial year, how much of it, by volume, went on woodchip? “(p 18)

“By bulk, the primary outcome for many of the logging operations in New South Wales is export woodchip.” (p 18)

Scott Hansen FCNSW:

“Google it, because it is all publicly available.”

“The last figures, which were 2020, for hardwood native out of New South Wales: “saw and veneer logs” was 456,000 cubic metres, “pulp logs” was 149,000 cubic metres and “other” was 23.84 thousand cubic metres.” (p 19)

FCNSW website figures 2019

Pulpwood is timber that is not suitable for saw milling due to the quality of the timber.

On the North Coast for 2019 figures on FCNSW website:
20,341 t of 405, 788 t harvested in 2019 was sold as pulpwood.

This is 5% of North Coast Crown timber.

On the South Coast and Eden Forest:
214, 158 t of 360, 551 t harvested in 2019 was sold as pulpwood.

This is 59% of South Coast Crown timber.

South Coast is higher because of the quality of the timber in the State Forest in the South Coast.

The forests around Eden have had a long history of being high graded prior to the chip mill. One member of Timber NSW remembers his Dad saying “there were 460 sleeper cutters working in the forests around Eden prior to him getting there in 1970. The forests were degraded from fire history, and they had taken all the good logs for sleepers. The idea behind the chip mill was to make use of lots of useless trees and restart the forests by turning them into regrowth”.

For the entire State of NSW, the figures for Crown State Forests are, according to Forestry Corporation biomaterial data for 2019 for NSW (available on the FCNSW web site):

Total of Crown state forests yielded 766,339 t

[1] FCNSW (2020) 2019–20 Wildfires NSW Coastal Hardwood Forests Sustainable Yield Review

[2] Young trees that grow into sawlog size trees

[3] 10% of public forest x 4% harvested each year x 5 years x 50% of the harvested forest