2024 Update: Protecting Australia's native forests

As 2024 draws to a close, some may be disheartened by the Albanese government’s failure to secure their promised environmental law reform.

Others may see this as the golden opportunity for corporate Australia to act, and act boldly, to reject timber, pulp, bauxite, or beef sourced from Australia’s precious high conservation value native forests.

It has been nearly 5 years since the Samuel review recommended an overhaul of the Federal environment law, including to close the loopholes and carve outs that give deforestation and native forest logging a free pass for the destruction of nature. The recommendations were ignored by the Morrison government, and the Albanese government has failed so far to move any significant updates to the EPBC act for forests through parliament.

Of course there is plenty of scope for state governments:

• The newly elected Chrisafulli government in Queensland can close notorious loopholes in that state's Vegetation Management Act, and continue to invest in the groundbreaking Land Restoration Fund (LRF).

• In Victoria, the Allan government has unfinished business, having promised “the largest expansion to our forest reserve system in our state’s history”.

• In Western Australia, increasing scrutiny on more than six decades of unfettered bauxite mining is clearly imperilling the planet’s only jarrah forests, demonstrating the urgency of protecting these precious forest ecosystems to all parties contesting the March election there next year.

• And in Lutruwita / Tasmania, native forest logging aficionado, Eric Abetz, is currently the state’s resources minister, and his dogged commitment to the native forest logging sector is supported by both the Rockliff government, and the Winter ALP opposition.

• In NSW the ALP government has promised to create the Great Koala National Park, yet things are slow moving.

Over the past four decades, shifts in community attitudes, concepts of social licence, changing government commitments and policies (domestically and internationally), and a developing corporate recognition of nature risk has laid the groundwork for inevitable industry change and stronger forest protections. Unfortunately over this time, the biodiversity crisis has escalated. Bushfires threaten endangered forests with increasing severity, intensity and frequency, and more forest wildlife is imperilled with extinction.

The Wilderness Society is dedicated to protecting, promoting and restoring wilderness and natural processes across Australia for the survival and ongoing evolution of life on Earth. It’s our reason for being, and the reason tens of thousands of Australians are part of the organisation, taking action every day for the protection and restoration of large, intact, functioning ecosystems across deserts, oceans, rivers or savanna woodlands.

Integral to this purpose is a fierce advocacy for the protection and restoration of native forests across the continent—not just for the benefit of nature, but for the benefit of communities and the rich and living cultural heritage of this continent.

Forests across this vast and magnificent landscape face different threats and exist in different ecological spaces. An array of species, climates, and societal and cultural needs mean there is no one size fits all when it comes to native forest protection. Nor one way to get there.

The Wilderness Society advocates for a variety of solutions to protect special, intact native forests, and to restore those forests that have been subject to decades of industrial logging, or snapped like matchsticks by dozers pulling chains, or strip mined for minerals.

Protected Areas

The Wilderness Society steadfastly advocates for various kinds of formal and legislated protected forest areas. These are places like national parks or national heritage areas, conservation reserves or cultural heritage reserves, land handbacks or sole or joint management with or by Traditional Owners.

These types of protections can and must recognise the rights and aspirations of Traditional Owners, be tailored to the unique needs of the forest and species, and responsive to the local communities—like providing enduring protection for threatened species, supporting access for recreation, or protecting cultural values and ongoing cultural practices.

Often, these values cannot be adequately protected without limiting destructive activities like native forest logging or mining.

And this is not to say there’s not an Australian wood and fibre, or mining industry that all Austalians can’t be proud of.

The Wilderness Society has a long and demonstrated history of successfully securing protections such as these. National parks and reserves protect the river red gum forests on both sides of the Barka / Murray River, with some jointly managed with the Yorta Yorta Traditional Owners. Another is the creation of the Greater Otway National Park in south-western Victoria almost twenty years ago. In 2012, the Tasmanian Forest Agreement, was negotiated by the Wilderness Society Ltd and the Wilderness Society Tasmania, along with a number of other environment organisations and industry stakeholders. The Agreement secured the protection of hundreds of thousands of Lutruwita / Tasmania’s iconic forests and wildlife habitat, ushered in much needed wood volume reductions, and supported regional communities and the industry to transition. The Tasmanian Forest Agreement was trashed by the Liberals in 2014. Today, regardless of the range of views about the TFA’s relevance, the facts are that the Rockcliff government is lining up to expand native forest logging into protected reserves.

Today, we continue to work to protect more forest areas across the continent. Right now:

• The Wilderness Society is part of a concentrated effort to ensure the tall forests of Victoria’s east are formally protected through visionary proposals like the Great Forest National Park.

• The Wilderness Society and allies are urging the WA government to establish a network of new protected areas that recognise the rights and aspirations of the Noongar Traditional Owners across the remaining intact ecosystems throughout the jarrah forests. These forests are home to thousands of species that aren’t found anywhere else on Earth, mining companies have been destroying the jarrah forests for 60 years, through deforestation loopholes in state and federal environment laws. is possible, and one of the key asks of the WA government from

• In NSW we are working with Traditional Owners, conservation allies, regional communities, governments and corporates to protect the heritage-value forests of Wollemi, and to create the Great Koala National Park and other reserves to protect the Gondwnanan forests of the coasts and ranges of NSW.

• Across Queensland, year on year state government data shows hundreds of thousands of hectares of deforestation, including in endangered species habitat, and forests and bushland that are catchments for the Great Barrier Reef. At least 65% of land clearing and deforestation in Queensland over the last five years of government reporting (2017-2022) was to make way for pastures for beef.

Protected Values

Many of the features that make Australia’s forests so special need also to be protected in their own right.

An example of this is forests that are home to threatened species. In Lutruwita / Tasmania, the world’s fastest waylitja / parrot, the swift parrot, persists despite ongoing predation of its babies by introduced sugar gliders, exacerbated by the impacts of native forest logging, which destroys habitat and feed trees for this bright little bird. The preservation of their habitat is critical to the survival of this species. Both the Tasmanian government and the Federal government have the power, right now, to protect these forests from destructive industries.

Meantime, all actors in supply chains using wood from these forests—or any high conservation value forests on Australia’s mainland—have choices and decisions, every day, about what deforestation they will partake in.

Better Management and Monitoring

However all of this is not enough without monitoring and effective forest management and as a last resort, restoration. Much of this is currently a state responsibility, but this is also where corporations must be held to account. Environmental laws must ensure that extractive industries are not destroying these critical forest habitats and that they are fully-delivering on commitments to restore forests from any previous activities.

There is also important work required to support regional communities, workers, and their families through inevitable market-driven changes. Buyers are increasingly concerned about products sourced from old-growth timber and habitats critical to threatened species, as these represent unacceptable nature loss.

As has been the organisations’ long-held position, the Wilderness Society advocates for the sourcing of credibly-certified wood and paper products from plantation and recycled timber or pulp within Australia, over the sourcing of such products from native forest.

For wood imports, there should be clear preference for local production and value adding. However, some wood products may be imported, and some imported products may be preferred due to higher standards of protection for conservation or other values.

A range of conservation and forestry approaches in overseas markets must be considered and determined if they are compatible with the protection of conservation values, labour practices and human rights. Substantial due diligence on imported wood product supply chains is legally required. Local and imported timber and pulp processed, manufactured, utilised and retailed in Australia must be held to the same standards.