Logging occurs against a backdrop where more than half of the forests and woodlands in NSW that existed prior to European invasion have been destroyed.

Logging in NSW public native forests now involves both “intensive” and “selective” logging and is done in the context of significant cumulative damage.

By definition, an endangered species has undergone a severe decline in numbers, has a restricted geographic distribution, and is at high risk of extinction.

There are areas of forest in NSW classified as plantation that resemble native forests and which have important biodiversity values. This includes regrowth native vegetation as well as small remnants of native forest that were never cleared.

Stopping logging in public native forests and instead managing them for conservation, carbon storage and tourism would yield positive economic benefits.

The overwhelming majority of timber used for housing construction in Australia now comes from softwood plantations. The native forests of NSW, particularly those in the northeast, provide hardwood used to construct and furnish homes, but this contribution can be further substituted from other sources. 

There is no evidence that this decline has led (or that its further decline will lead) to increased logging of the native forests of southeast Asia.

Extensive research on forests has shown that logging increases the risk of high severity bushfires. This is true in NSW, other parts of Australia and North America.

Generating income from carbon credits should not be used in the transition away from native forest logging, for several reasons.

The NSW government could fund a structural adjustment package both to offset the reduction in hardwood timber supply resulting from ending public native forest logging and to create alternative jobs in the affected regions.

Based on their monitoring of koalas in Pine Creek State Forest, independent researchers Andrew Smith and John Pile found that high intensity logging has a detrimental impact on koala populations on the NSW north coast.

When native forests in NSW are logged, most of the carbon ends up in the atmosphere in the short term, with more than 60 per cent released within two years of the logging taking place.

Native forest logging is highly mechanised, meaning the number of people needed to fell, transport and process logs is small. Direct employment in the public native forest industry in NSW is estimated to be only 1,070 employees.

Economic impact analysis by researchers from the University of Newcastle found that establishing the full GKNP would deliver significant economic gains for the Mid North Coast, increasing the economic output by $1.18 billion over 15 years.

Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) “has a pattern of environmental offending, has not provided any compelling evidence of measures taken by it to prevent its reoffending, and does not accept the true extent of harm that it has caused by its offending,” according to a 2024 Land and Environment Court judgment.