Furphy: Logging helps to prevent climate change because regenerating forests soak up more carbon than intact forests.

Fact: Protecting forests stores more carbon than logging and regenerating them.

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 (Sanger 2022).

This is because of the burning of some of the “waste” biomass (known as slash) in the forest, the conversion of most of the wood removed from the forest into short-lived products like paper and cardboard, and carbon released from sawmill waste. Most of the remaining carbon is released within 50 years from decomposing woody debris on the forest floor. Just 4 to 8 per cent of the carbon is locked up in sawn timber (4 per cent in southern NSW, 8 per cent in northern NSW), with a life of up to 90 years (Sanger 2022).

Old, intact forests store far more carbon than logged, regenerating forests. Moreover, large, old trees, which store most of the carbon in a forest, continue to grow and accumulate still more carbon (Lindenmayer 2024, pp.179-181).

Regenerating forests do capture carbon from the atmosphere. But it can take up to centuries for a regenerating forest to soak up all the carbon emitted from when it was logged, most of which is released in the first few years (Sanger 2022).

Native forest logging in NSW emits 3.6 million tonnes of carbon each year, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 840,000 cars (Sanger 2022).

Stopping native forest logging would prevent these emissions. Moreover, the forests would continue to grow and draw down carbon.

While some carbon is released to the atmosphere when mature forests burn in bushfires, the large majority of it remains intact in the burnt trees (Keith et al. 2014).

Further reading

Dooley, K. (2004). ‘Ending native forest logging would help Australia’s climate goals much more than planting trees’, The Conversation, 14 June. Available at: https://theconversation.com.

Sanger, J. (2022). NSW forest carbon: an effective climate change solution. The Tree Projects. Available at: https://www.thetreeprojects.com.

Lindenmayer, D. (2024). The forest wars. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, pp.179-185.