Highlights from January to March 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.

In the final weeks of 2025, while families across Australia prepared to celebrate with loved ones, the federal government quietly opened 25,000 square kilometres of ocean off Victoria and Lutruwita / Tasmania to mindless new oil and gas exploration.

The Wilderness Society and wonderful supporters like you weren’t going to let this reckless behaviour slide. More than 21,000 people added their voices to the Wilderness Society’s submission in opposition to new gas. This is a powerful reminder that Australians won't stand for more irresponsible fossil fuel expansion.

These are not empty waters. This precious marine environment is home to 42 threatened species, including the endangered pygmy blue whale and southern right whale. This ocean region includes deep-water submarine canyon systems that are geologically unstable and wholly unsuitable for gas drilling, where any spill would be catastrophic.

At a time when climate change is already harming communities and nature, and Australia faces worsening fires and floods, opening vast new areas to seismic blasting and gas drilling is shameful and reckless.

This move also resurrects the threat of new drilling in the Otway Basin—a region where local communities have fought hard, and successfully so, to see off the industry over many years.

With the support of people like you, we have managed to stop this yearly process of opening oceans to new oil and gas for more than three years. Now it’s back, we’re more determined than ever to end it once and for all.

Thank you to the 21,005 people who added their names to our submission, sending a clear message: Australians want real climate action, not more fossil fuels.

Thank you for joining us in the fight to protect these precious marine environments for the future of communities, marine life and a safe climate.
 

You may have seen the news that our CEO, Matt Brennan, is stepping down after nearly 15 years with the organisation. After much reflection, Matt feels it’s the right time to seek a new challenge, and equally, give the Wilderness Society space to renew itself in this, our 50th anniversary year.

On behalf of all staff and supporters, we’d like to thank Matt for his many years of service and deep commitment to the organisation. He will be greatly missed.

A word from Matt

“Throughout my time with the Wilderness Society, I’ve been deeply conscious of the legacy and history of the Wilderness Society—its place in Australia’s environmental story, its reputation for courage and persistence, and the extraordinary commitment of its members, supporters, staff and volunteers.

I have had the privilege of working alongside people of immense skill and passion: campaigners with strategic clarity and laser focus, staff and volunteers driven by purpose, and supporters whose belief in protecting wilderness and biodiversity has sustained the organisation through challenging and ambitious work.

Before I finish my time at the Wilderness Society, I would like to share this: our ambitions have always been large—as they must be when the task is protecting wilderness and ecological systems at scale. Your continued support of those ambitions truly makes a difference.

It is only because of people like you—inspiring supporters, donors and members—that those ambitions can be realised. 

Thank you for your support. 

It has been an honour to work for an organisation with such ambition and integrity, one I am confident will continue to protect, promote and restore wilderness and ecological processes for generations to come.”

With Matt ready to pass the baton, we're currently recruiting for a new CEO to lead the Wilderness Society as we look to the next 50 years. 

Bunnings claims to source timber responsibly, but it’s not telling the truth about where some of these products come from. With your support, we’re able to take action to hold companies like Bunnings to account.

Our research shows Bunnings is sourcing wood from Forestry Corporation of NSW and Forestry Tasmania. Both of these companies are certified by PEFC, a dodgy certification scheme with a long track record of certifying the logging of old growth and other high conservation value forests in Australia.

Because of your support, we’ve been able to act on these concerns. We've filed a complaint to the ACCC calling for Bunnings to be investigated for greenwashing, due to our concerns that it's selling timber sourced from Australia’s native forests where destructive and illegal logging takes place. 

This work is only possible because we’re backed by tens of thousands of people like you. Your support makes it possible for us to do the research, hold big businesses accountable through complaints like this one, and get national media attention.

In February, Alcoa received a slap on the wrist for its continued destruction of WA’s Northern Jarrah Forest—critical habitat for three species of black cockatoos—which it’s been found to have been illegally clearing between 2019–2025.

Paying $55 million is chump change for Alcoa, but will do nothing to actually restore what has been destroyed. The truth is clear: strip mining removes the very foundations of this ancient ecosystem.

Instead of halting Alcoa’s operations for its illegal clearing, Federal Environment Minister Watt has issued Alcoa a ‘National Interest Exemption’ that allows Alcoa to continue to destroy the Northern Jarrah Forest for the next 18 months. Click here to learn more about this exemption and what it means.

Backed by you, we commissioned “an honest government” ad from Juice Media. If you haven’t seen it, please watch and share.

This is just the latest example of a long track record of environmental breaches and failed rehabilitation in Alcoa’s 60 year history of mining in the area.

Together, we have exposed Alcoa’s destruction every step of the way. From its greenwashing and failed rehabilitation efforts, to getting record breaking submission numbers against its current mining operations and expansion plans. We’ve helped shine a light on:

• The more than 28,000 hectares of Northern Jarrah Forest that has been destroyed by Alcoa, without a single hectare being successfully rehabilitated to the WA government’s rehabilitation criteria.
• The toxic waste piped over a public dam without approval, putting Boorloo / Perth’s drinking water at risk.
• The further 11,000+ hectares that Alcoa wants to destroy as part of its current mining practices and expansion plans.
• Alcoa’s greenwashing. In September 2025, along with our End Forest Mining (EFM) partners, the WA Forest Alliance and Conservation Council of WA, we filed a greenwashing complaint with Ads Standards Australia against Alcoa’s misleading rehabilitation claims—and we won!

This complex forest has evolved over millennia, no amount of rehabilitation can substitute the essential habitat that WA’s black cockatoos need to survive.

Thank you for defending this irreplaceable ecosystem.

Together, we pushed for industrial native forest logging in Victoria to end “officially” on 1 January 2024. But sadly, loopholes remain in state laws meaning these forests are still vulnerable.

Logging has continued under different names, including salvage logging and timber harvesting. Logging by any name is still destruction.

The Liberals have even said outright that if returned to power they’d bring back industrial native forest logging!

That means Victoria’s old growth forests, and the wildlife that depend on them, are still on the chopping block.

Right now, the Victorian government is drafting either a new Public Land Act or other legislation. New legislation is an opportunity to close these loopholes and protect Victoria’s tall forests for good.

Supported by you, hundreds of Victorians have emailed their MPs calling on them to close the loopholes and protect Victoria’s tall forests for good. Not only for the species that call them home but for Melbourne’s famously clean water and the climate too.

The Wilderness Society has also joined the Nature Alliance—a collection of Victorian groups working towards nature protection.

Thank you for supporting our work to protect forests for us, for the climate, and for all the species who call it home.

In late 2025, a Watch on Nature drone operation—part of our citizen science platform that exposes deforestation as it happens—captured the bulldozing of more than 150 hectares just days after new federal nature laws came into effect. This work is only possible thanks to generous supporters like you.

The destruction in this video was undertaken by big beef business to make way for beef production. The mature, regrown forest shown was over 15 years old and is mapped by the Federal government as likely habitat for several endangered species including the koala, greater glider and Australian Painted Snipe.

Under new nature law reforms introduced in late 2025, the habitat in this video should have required mandatory federal government assessment. In this case, it appears that no federal referrals were made.

Why is this a problem? Queensland is the epicentre of Australia's deforestation crisis. Destruction like this shows exactly why it’s critical we protect intact forests and bushland.

Thanks to your support, Watch on Nature operations like this can continue—helping expose potentially illegal destruction as it happens and bring it into the national spotlight.
 

Thanks to your support, the Wilderness Society Tasmania was able to commission a new report that has uncovered decades of financial and environmental mismanagement by the Tasmanian government and the native forest logging industry.

Titled Public Cost, Private Gain, this damning exposé was authored by economics researcher Andy Bakonyi and forest ecologist Dr Jen Sanger. The report finds that Tasmania’s native forest logging industry has, for decades, been sustained by extensive state and federal government intervention. Since the late 1980s, governments have committed more than $1.25 billion to keep this subsidy-dependent industry alive. 
 

The report provides a detailed analysis of market trends of the declining native forest logging industry, and also forewarns of potential further enormous taxpayer payouts should the reckless move to lock in long-term contracts to 2040 be finalised in the coming months.

“This report shows Tasmania’s native forest logging industry only survives because taxpayers keep bailing it out. More than a billion dollars has been poured into an industry that is not economically viable, while public forests are logged for low-value exports. Locking in new long-term contracts would double down on a failed model that Tasmanians do not support and do not need.”
—Hugh Nicklason, Forest Campaigner at Wilderness Society Tasmania

The report builds on vast evidence of elite cartel corruption by major logging companies operating in Tasmania, and debunks claims made by mainstream politicians and industry that native forest logging is essential to the Tasmanian economy. It concludes that the Tasmanian native forest logging industry cannot compete with plantation forestry or global markets, and that an end to the practice is inevitable without even further taxpayer subsidies.

Additionally, recent polling conducted has found that only 12% of Tasmanians support native forest logging, which puts forward a strong mandate: Tasmanians do not want or need destructive native forest logging.

Important research work like this can only happen with the support of people like you. Together, we will keep holding the government to account and building public support for the permanent protection of Tasmania’s spectacular forests.