Future Forests

Our precious South West forests are under threat from logging like never before. 600 year old trees are being cut down for woodchips under Barnett. Most Western Australians don’t support logging in our native forests. Only the Greens are standing up for our forests, with a plan to create secure jobs in the South West.

WA’s native forests are well loved and extremely valuable. According to a recent report, we could earn more from managing our native forests as carbon stores, than we currently do from logging them.

There is abundant evidence that we have enough plantation timber to meet Australia’s timber needs. There is no longer any need to log the South‐West native forests. 

Local community groups have recently discovered that karri trees up to 600 years old are being logged and turned into woodchips. This has outraged many West Australians, who had hoped that all ancient trees had been protected from logging following the banning of old‐growth logging in 2001. 

In the past, the main drivers of native forest logging were the need for timber and the need for jobs. However, this has changed: there is a now a serious question mark over the viability of the native forest industry, and uncertainty about the sustainability of those jobs. 

Native forestry in Western Australia is not profitable. It is loss-making. We are literally paying to log our forests.