The NSW Forestry Corporation has finally tabled their Annual Report and it’s a shocker! It cost the NSW public $29 million to industrially log and harm our precious public native forest estate in the last financial year.
Yes you heard it right - you paid $29 million to destroy critical koala and greater glider habitat, driving these endangered iconic animals even closer to extinction, along with many other forest dependent threatened species.
We paid $29 million to add massive amounts of fuel to the climate crisis. Logging emits around 3.6 millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, and every time our forests are logged their capacity to draw down and sequester carbon is diminished, destroying our chances of dealing with the worst impacts of climate breakdown.
It cost us $29 million to make our precious public forest estate more vulnerable to more frequent and intense wildfire, placing our forest ecosystems, including all forest dependent plants and animals and the communities who live around our forests at serious risk of catastrophic harm.
The Forestry Corporation’s losses of $29 million are almost double last year’s losses of $15 million. Over the past few years it has cost us over $72 million in direct costs and losses to destroy our forests. This needs to be added to the millions and millions in direct payments and subsidies that have been handed out to the Forestry Corporation and the native forest logging industry.
The financial cost of native forest logging has hit the absurd!
In a report also just released, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has found that the native forest logging industry is not "economically viable" and the State Government should consider shutting it down if its prospects do not improve.
We know it won’t improve, it will only get worse from here and the real costs, the loss of the health and integrity of our precious forest ecosystems is not even being counted!