FOREST and Wood Communities Australia Chair Steve Dobbyns says the NSW Government’s justification for the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) is increasingly contradicted by its own scientific evidence.
He said it appears to be driven more by carbon credit generation than koala conservation.
“The NSW Government’s Environment Minister Penny Sharpe continues to promote the Great Koala National Park as essential for koala conservation, yet its own scientific evidence does not support the claim that regulated native forestry is causing widespread koala decline on the Mid North Coast.
“Instead, the proposal is increasingly being driven by the prospect of carbon credits under the proposed Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) methodology – a scheme that raises serious concerns about carbon leakage, displaced timber production and questionable net climate benefits.”
Mr Dobbyns said hardwood is still needed for construction, pallets, poles, flooring, fencing and packaging, and, because harvesting has halted across proposed GKNP forests, that demand has simply shifted elsewhere.
“That ‘somewhere else’ includes increased logging on neighbouring private property, increased pressure on remaining state forests, interstate harvesting, greater reliance on imports from countries with weaker environmental standards, and substantially higher transport emissions.
“In carbon accounting this is known as leakage – and it can completely undermine the claimed climate benefits of the project.”
According to Mr Dobbyns, years of NSW Government-funded research failed to support the political claim that ending native forestry would “save koalas”.
“Research undertaken by NSW Department of Primary Industry Forest Science and reviewed through the NSW Natural Resources Commission, found no statistically significant decline in koala density following selective timber harvesting in north-east NSW state forests,” he said.
“Published peer-reviewed research reached the same conclusion – regulated native forestry operations in north-east NSW did not reduce koala density.”
Dailan Pugh, from the North East Forest Alliance, disagrees.
He said the assessment of logging impacts on koalas by the Department of Primary Industry’s Forest Unit is fundamentally flawed because all it is gauging is whether a male koala is calling somewhere within 300m of a recorder before and after logging.
“A lone male wandering through a forest vainly trying to find a mate can be counted as multiple records, which says nothing about how females and overall koala populations were affected.”
Most significantly, he said, the study did not assess how many mature koala feed trees were logged, as koala densities are likely to be primarily related to the densities of their preferred feed trees.
“Logging has more than halved the volume of carbon stored in our forests, which they will be able to slowly regain from the atmosphere and sequester out of harm’s way as they recover.
“We can actually make a carbon profit from protecting the Great Koala National Park.”
Mr Dobbyns said a more credible approach would focus on targeted habitat protection, stronger fire management, plantation expansion, continued ecological monitoring and sustainable multiple-use forest management.
“Otherwise, the Great Koala National Park risks becoming less a conservation initiative and more a carbon-credit land-use transfer with uncertain climate benefits and significant regional economic consequences.”
By Andrew VIVIAN
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