Highlights from April to June 2026

Please watch this short video from three Wilderness Society campaigners to find out how you, and tens of thousands others, are making an impact for nature.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Kirsty Howey as Wilderness Society's new CEO. Kirsty is an environmentalist and strategist with more than two decades of experience driving policy, campaigns and real change for nature in Australia. 

Read more here.

Australia’s most trusted brand, Bunnings, stocks timber products certified by PEFC. But certifications are only as solid as the standards they are built on.

In Australia, PEFC has a consistent track record of certifying products coming from highly destructive logging operations—including logging of endangered species habitat, high conservation value forests, old growth forests and illegal logging.

Across the country, Wilderness Society supporters and Bunnings customers are speaking up—visiting stores and calling on Bunnings to do better. 🪵🌳 Our volunteers showed up at stores across the continent to turn up the heat on Bunnings. 

Together, we're asking Bunnings to stop selling PEFC-certified timber and commit to deforestation-free sourcing in Australia. This is possible by choosing timber grown in sustainable plantations, recycled, or that is FSC Forest Management certified.

The good news is over 90% of Australia’s timber already comes from plantations—demand can be met without native forest destruction. 

A sustainable plantation-based Australian timber industry that doesn’t rely on forest destruction is possible.

Bunnings has the buying power to shift the whole industry. If a company this size raises the bar, others have to follow. And it has before! When VicForests was found to be logging illegally, Bunnings dropped it as a supplier.

Backed by you, we’ve lodged an ACCC complaint, exposed the issues in national media, and more than 10,000 people like you have emailed Bunnings’ Managing Director demanding action. 

Bunnings can be part of the solution to protect Australia’s native forests. Thank you for being part of this movement.

In June, Four Corners travelled to Lutruwita / Tasmania to interview our forest campaigners for Timber Turmoil—an investigation into the future of native forest logging in Australia. You can watch the episode now on ABC iview.

The story at the heart of the episode is one we've been raising for years: Victorian taxpayers have already funded a transition away from industrial native forest logging, yet those same sawmills, including one partly owned by the Victorian government, are now importing forest destruction from Lutruwita / Tasmania. This contradiction can't stand.

Over 90% of Australia's timber already comes from plantations. The vast majority of what native forest logging produces is exported as low-value woodchips. We are destroying irreplaceable ancient forests to generate minimal economic benefit, and the communities and workers who depend on the industry deserve a genuine just transition, not a shell game that shifts the destruction interstate.

Australia's ancient native forests hold the culture and stories of First Peoples. Their law is embedded in the trees and the landscape. In Lutruwita / Tasmania, the Palawa have never consented to their lands being destroyed. 

These forests also belong to future generations. They store carbon, shelter threatened species, and provide the ecological foundations communities will increasingly depend on as the climate changes.

As our Forest Campaigner Hughie Nicklason told Jessica Longbottom:

Big media opportunities that reach a national audience are only possible because of people like you. It’s your support—as well as the communities, scientists, and Traditional Owners—who help bring stories like this to light. 

What's missing is political will. National environmental challenges need national leadership, and it's time for laws strong enough to actually protect what remains.

Since 1994, the Wilderness Society has been celebrating children’s books that promote a love of nature and connection to place.

Why are wombat poos square? Why are rivers magic? Why do we need trees? This year’s 2026 Karajia and Environment Awards for Children’s Literature explore these questions and so many more.

The books we read as children become part of who we are. Stories create a connection to wildlife, rivers, forests, beaches and mountain tops. They shape our values, and introduce us to cultures and places that are different to the ones we know.

This year, 21 incredible books that spark curiosity and ignite a passion for the world around us have been shortlisted. We can’t wait for you to read them.

We’re partnering with Harry Hartog, who are donating 10% of sales of the shortlisted titles back to the Wilderness Society to help protect nature for the next generation. Visit eacl.org.au to explore the full shortlist and pick up your next read.

A huge thank you to our incredible judges: Linden Ashcroft, Shelley Ware, Kristin Darell, Marlee Silva, Aunty Munya Andrews, and John Williamson.

You can hear John interviewed on Life Matters talking about the importance of nature and the Awards.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has missed a critical opportunity to make fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil and Woodside fully remove their giant oil and gas rigs from the Bass Strait between Victoria and Lutruwita / Tasmania. On your behalf, we have made our disappointment known—and warned that this represents a serious failure of regulatory responsibility.

By not mandating full removal now, the regulator risks locking in more delays—on top of the decades of delays we’ve already had—which increases the environmental, safety and financial risks from toxic oil and gas structures.

We know from experience, in Australia and globally, that postponing decommissioning makes projects significantly more dangerous, technically complex, and costly—while heightening the risk of environmental damage in sensitive marine ecosystems such as the Bass Strait.

Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to obtain and release legal advice which confirms that full removal of these offshore structures is required under Australia’s existing international obligations.

The platforms in question are operated by global fossil fuel companies ExxonMobil and Woodside Energy.

“The Wilderness Society is appalled that NOPSEMA continues to allow global gas giants ExxonMobil and Woodside to delay major decommissioning works,” says our Fossil Fuel Industry Campaigner, Fern Cadman. “From top to bottom, these platforms should be in the process of being removed now—while the world’s most suitable speciality vessel is already on-site.”

“NOPSEMA’s failure to require full removal is galling. These companies have always known clean up was coming. They’ve had five years already, since directed by NOPSEMA to plan for the work, and they now want until 2032 to plan removal of the lower platform sections. ExxonMobil and Woodside are kicking the can down the road in the hope of avoiding the removal of this vast quantity of steel, and NOPSEMA is letting them get away with it.”

With your backing, we’ll continue calling on NOPSEMA to urgently enforce full removal requirements—to ensure oil and gas companies meet their legal obligations, and Australians are not left with a legacy of toxic pollution in our waters.

When the Wilderness Society entered Parliament’s mural gallery on 23 June, we brought the ocean with us—our wonderful volunteer, Wil, painted blue and covered in marine life. Together, we were there to expose the Albanese Labor Government for continuing to invite oil and gas companies to bid to drill Australia’s wild seas—a bid that costs chump change to these oil and gas companies. 

At a press conference, the ocean presented their own bid, in the form of a novelty cheque, while a strong showing of cross-benchers provided their support.

Like much of politics, it was theatrical. And definitely a bit absurd. 

But more absurd is this: year after year, our government invites oil and gas companies to nominate which offshore areas they want to drill—and then they get to bid for them. Quietly and secretly, bids are accepted by our government, and new legal rights are handed out for the next fossil fuel frontier.

In December 2025, the Albanese Labor Government opened 25,000 square kilometres of ocean near Victoria and Lutruwita / Tasmania for bidding. This region is a global biodiversity hotspot for whales, seals, dolphins, seabirds, seaweeds, sponges, crustaceans and many other unique species. Also present: unstable deep-water submarine canyon systems, making gas drilling high risk—a spill would have catastrophic consequences for Tasmania’s World Heritage coastline.

Our thanks to Senator Steph Hodgkins-May, Andrew Wilkie MP, Dr Monique Ryan MP, Dr Sophie Scamps, Nicolette Boele MP, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson and Zali Steggall MP for speaking out on this issue. The ocean is not empty real estate to be exploited, and the MPs who stood with us understand this. So do the communities that have fought offshore oil and gas projects for years—from PEP-11 off the New South Wales coast, to seismic blasting battles in Victoria, to the long resistance against new drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

With your support, we will continue to stand with these communities, work with decision-makers, and speak out on behalf of Australia’s oceans and all the wondrous life they contain. 
 

On 4 June—the day before Environment Day—the Wilderness Society joined representatives from Victoria National Parks Association, Environment Victoria and Victorian Forest Alliance to announce a powerful new coalition for nature. 

The Victorians for Nature alliance has come together with a shared goal: that by 2030, Victoria’s nature and national parks are valued, respected, genuinely protected, properly resourced, and managed to restore biodiversity and safeguard nature for future generations.

The alliance was officially launched inside Parliament House after a screening for Victorian MPs of Forest Country: a powerful 2025 documentary by filmmaker Lewi Haskins that spotlights the continued destruction of native forests in Victoria—despite the government's ban on industrial logging. 
 

“The towering forests of Victoria hold irreplaceable ecological value. We must act now to secure their protection forever.”
—Jo Hopkins, Victorian Campaigns Manager

At the same time, the alliance launched a public accountability campaign that will run to the November 2026 election and beyond. It’s bold and attention-grabbing, and will name the loopholes, backflips, funding cuts and broken commitments that are quietly undoing Victoria's nature protection—across forests, fish, fauna, funding and feral species. 

The campaign gives Victorians a way to see what’s happening, make some noise about it, and put pressure on the politicians who can fix it. The more visible the pressure is before the election, the harder it becomes to ignore. To learn more, visit victoriansfornature.au.
 

Following this, the alliance staged a ‘critters on the lawn’ event, giving MPs the chance to get up close and personal with some of the many special native animals that can be found in Victoria—all of whom depend on Victoria’s nature being healthy and protected.

This was a fantastic opportunity to showcase the wonder and diversity of wildlife in Victoria, and urge the ministers to act to protect their habitats. 

As part of the alliance and together with your support, we look forward to organising and mobilising a powerful community base to demand strong protection of Victoria’s unique and spectacular natural heritage. 

Nature has always inspired art. And art has always moved people to act. 

It was a photograph of the Franklin River that galvanised a nation. Drone footage of Queensland's forests brought Australia's deforestation crisis into living rooms across the country. 

For 50 years, the Wilderness Society has been part of that story, and three art events brought the story to life across the country.

Queensland: Art exhibition and silent auction 

To mark our 50th anniversary, we gathered in Meanjin / Brisbane for a special art exhibition and silent auction. Generous artists from across Australia donated powerful works, to raise vital funds for our ongoing work to defend forests and threatened species across Queensland and beyond.

People like you have stood alongside the Wilderness Society and stepped in to protect wild places. When communities show up together, forests and wildlife are protected.

New South Wales: Day of the Species 

The Wilderness Society was a proud partner of Day of the Species, an art activism project started by Carmel Killin in 2019. Australia is a world leader in mammal extinctions, with more than 2,100 species on the national Threatened Species List. This ongoing initiative resulted in 2,075 hand-drawn sketches on recycled pieces of cardboard, roughly half the size of a credit card. 

South Australia: Wild Places photography exhibition

The Wilderness Society SA presented a free photographic exhibition in the wisteria arbours of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. 

Sweeping landscapes, dramatic seascapes, and remarkable wildlife from the Nullarbor, Coongie Lakes, Goyder Lagoon, Kallakoopah Creek, and the Great Australian Bight were on display through to May, open to all during regular Garden hours.

All of this is possible thanks to supporters like you. Whether you bid on a piece, visited an exhibition, or continue to make our work possible behind the scenes: thank you for helping bring people together for the wild places worth protecting.