Australian forest scientists have turned their attention to six areas of disinformation and ideology that threaten the sustainable management of Australia's forests.

For decades there have been varied, and often contentious, views on how best to manage Australia's large and diverse forests. Over time, the forest management methods used by forest agencies have been carefully researched, tested in practice and improved. In Australia too, disputes have sharpened over the benefits of active forest management, particularly timber harvesting, and over how best to respond to increasingly frequent forest fires and the threats they pose. Unfortunately, environmental activists' opposition to sensible forestry practice has become excessively politicised, coordinated, ideological and based on selective use of the available scientific information, often disregarding real practical experience. An unwillingness or inability to acknowledge differing scientific evidence, practical experience and opinions has been observed even among representatives of academia. Such a situation encourages the spread of disinformation.

According to ABARES estimates, in 2016 Australia had 132 million hectares of forest, of which 28.1 million hectares are regarded as suitable for timber harvesting on public and private land. Taking local restrictions into account, the area of multiple-use public forest available for harvesting may be around 5 million hectares. Of that, only 73,000 hectares (1.5%) were harvested in 2015–2016. Over the past 20 years, timber harvesting in the country has fallen by 75%, to 2.5 million cubic metres in 2022–23. The volume is split roughly equally between sawlog and pulpwood assortments.

The article examines the issues and offers brief comments on six main areas of disinformation used to object to the sustainable management of native forests in Australia.

Disinformation and contradictions. The key areas

1. Harvesting native forests is a burden on taxpayers

This crude assertion fails to take account of the fact that the forest areas concerned are managed productively. The timber industry and other manufacturing sectors provide substantial employment and create economic benefits for rural communities. For example, in 2023 and 2024 in New South Wales (NSW), roughly US$23 million of the US$29 million earned from forestry was spent on so-called public-good activities, such as maintaining road, bridge and rail infrastructure across some two million hectares of state forest, providing fire safety, supplying clean water and maintaining facilities in order to support the wellbeing of local communities and tourism.

Ernest and Young carried out a study covering 2021–2022 which shows that the growing and processing of hardwood (from native forests and plantations) employed almost 9,000 people across New South Wales and generated gross revenue of about US$2.9 billion (with value added of US$1.1 billion). Native forests accounted for more than 75% of these benefits. Moreover, well-managed native forests supply substantial volumes of water to regional communities and urban populations. If native forest management companies received income from water supply, they would become highly profitable businesses.

Protected forests (national parks and reserves) also require considerable public funding for their management, which on a per-hectare basis may be even higher than for managed multiple-use native forests, where revenue from timber sales covers part of the management costs.

2. Timber harvesting is “forest clearing” and “forest destruction”

Critics frequently and deliberately spread disinformation (lie) by claiming that timber harvesting amounts to the intensive removal of trees from “old” forests of high natural (biological) value, even though for decades almost all harvested forests have regenerated after harvesting or forest fire. Harvesting is permitted only in planned and precisely defined small forest compartments. It is further claimed that harvesting causes permanent loss of forest (that is, deforestation), even though under the forest management practice set out in legislation every hectare felled must be regenerated.

Forest regeneration methods are well researched and are applied appropriately to the specific site. Regeneration outcomes are monitored so that corrective measures can be taken if required. At present, selective felling rather than clearfelling is mostly used in native forests. It is clear that sustainable harvesting is not “forest clearing”, which does not stop the malicious propaganda that equates sustainable harvesting and regeneration practice with “forest clearing”. Forests are a renewable natural resource. Regenerating forests of many different ages across the landscape provides greater habitat diversity for native animals and plants.

3. “Clearing” native forests harms forest ecology, particularly threatened species such as koalas

Here too the industry's critics deliberately ignore the scientific evidence and the fact that considerable effort goes into applying science-based harvesting rules that reduce the impact on the forest and the environment as a whole. For example, a study by NSW Primary Industries that monitored koala populations at 224 sites over seven years concluded that well-organised timber harvesting or low-severity fire does not reduce koala occupancy rates. The harvesting rules “provided koalas with sufficient habitat to maintain their density immediately after selective harvesting and within 5–10 years after intensive harvesting”.

Recent aerial surveys indicate that koala density and occupancy are similar in national parks and in adjacent forests where harvesting takes place. This calls into question the need for the proposed Great Koala National Park (Greater Koala National Park, GKNP) in north-eastern New South Wales. Recent extensive CSIRO research in the northern part of New South Wales suggests that koala numbers may be up to 10 times higher than earlier estimates, indicating that koalas in this region should not be regarded as “threatened”.

Extensive, high-intensity forest fires are a far greater threat to forest biodiversity than harvesting or burning. In the 2019–2020 fires, billions of native animals died and the populations of many threatened species fell substantially. In addition to the damage to vegetation and wildlife, high-intensity fires cause significant soil erosion and damage watercourses and water quality. The environmental damage can persist for decades or centuries, yet environmental activists forget about it very soon after the fires.

4. Expanding plantations can quickly and easily replace the timber currently obtained from native forests

It is highly naive, even foolish, to claim that Australia can easily switch to plantations for all the timber it needs for product manufacture. Over the past decade the area of hardwood plantations has declined (mainly because land use has changed, reverting to agriculture). The area of softwood plantations has remained unchanged over the past 30 years. Australia faces a growing shortage of timber, which delays new house building and makes it more expensive. Given the country's ambitious plans to address the “housing crisis”, the problem is expected to worsen further. Forest and wood products research in Australia indicates that some 2.5 million new dwellings must be built in the country by 2034 to keep pace with population growth and meet rising demand. The timber shortfall is forecast to be met either by imports or by using steel or concrete, which generate very high carbon emissions. Claims that additional building materials can easily be obtained from existing or new plantations are mistaken and unrealistic.

Despite the fact that timber supply from native forest areas has fallen by about 75% over the past twenty years, plantation expansion receives no support. A serious obstacle to delivering it is finding suitable land, community support and private investment. It should also be remembered that some 20–30 years will pass between establishing a plantation and harvesting roundwood, which creates significant financial and logistical barriers. The plantations were established to serve profitable export markets. The main eucalypt species are also unsuited to commercial sawlog production.

Reduced harvesting leads to increased imports. According to Forest and Wood Products Australia estimates, hardwood imports into Victoria rose by 40% between 2019 and 2023. This followed the announcement that native hardwood harvesting would cease. Most of the imports were sawn timber from Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and the USA.

5. Timber harvesting increases fire hazard and the threat of forest fires

Extensive wildfires threaten life and property, as well as most forest values (soil and water, carbon stocks, timber stocks, biodiversity). After the so-called Black Summer fires in south-eastern Australia, millions of hectares of densely regrowing young eucalypt and acacia stands have regenerated; critics claim that such areas should be managed for many decades without further timber harvesting. If such a strategy were adopted, the opposite can be expected: forest fire risk to local communities and ecosystems will increase.

The repeated claims that harvesting native forests increases fire hazard and the risk of high-intensity forest fires across the landscape have been scientifically rejected by three detailed studies (which have been published) of fire severity and extent during the “Black Summer” forest fires of 2019–2020. The studies demonstrated that prior harvesting had no significant effect on the extent or severity of the fires.

A recent “theory” claiming that controlled burning increases the flammability of the understorey, making eucalypt forests more fire-prone rather than helping to contain fires, has been firmly challenged. A 2025 review published by a forestry association concluded that the evidence does not support such claims. Areas long unburnt burn very intensely, whereas areas subject to regular controlled burning have almost no understorey. Strategically applied mandatory burning is an important part of the suite of measures for managing the risk and impact of intense forest fires in Australia's native forests.

Opponents of controlled burning advocate only a so-called response strategy for bushfire management. This approach was tried in the forests of the western United States, where an aggressive fire suppression strategy was pursued for decades. It is now recognised as a failure, because it has harmed forest health and in recent decades destructive forest fires have become widespread. Low-intensity burning and thinning of dense forests are now being introduced. A leading US ecologist recently reported in the journal Nature that “fire suppression (in fire-prone systems) is a deeply flawed and unsustainable conservation strategy”.

6. Timber harvesting generates large carbon emissions and harms the climate

A credible assessment of the carbon balance associated with harvesting requires a full life cycle analysis (LCA) framework that takes account of changes in carbon stocks over time at the harvest site; the carbon emissions associated with forest management and harvesting, transport and the processing of harvested wood products (HWP); carbon storage in wood products during their service life; any carbon emissions avoided by using residues for energy generation that would otherwise be produced by burning fossil fuels; the benefits of substituting wood for more carbon-intensive materials such as steel, aluminium or concrete in construction; and the “carbon footprint” of wood products imported from overseas to replace Australian production.

A wide-ranging review in 2024 concluded that to date only one Australian study has used a full carbon life cycle analysis. That study concluded that harvesting sustainably managed native forests and the subsequent use of forest biomass for HWP or energy generation can make a positive contribution to reducing the country's net carbon emissions. Other studies claiming that native forest harvesting increases net carbon emissions are either incomplete or have used inappropriate parameters for assessing the components of the overall carbon balance. Rates of carbon accumulation in older forests and the long-term capacity of unharvested forests to store carbon, which is threatened by forest fires, have also been overestimated. As a result, the carbon benefits of harvesting and using timber have been underestimated. All of this has led to the mistaken conclusion — and the propaganda that follows from it — that ceasing harvesting would supposedly deliver better carbon sequestration outcomes than sustainable management that includes timber harvesting in selected areas.

These findings mean that the proposal to develop a new INFM (Improved Native Forest Management) methodology for assessing the carbon emissions savings generated by ceasing harvesting in native forests lacks any scientific logic. The development of the method has been supported by the New South Wales government's Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. The Australian federal government, through the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, has made its further development a priority. Claims that a complete ban on harvesting native forests will yield large volumes of monetised carbon credits are an illusion.

Conclusions

Many decades of research and practical experience underpin and support the sustainable management of Australia's native forests. Despite this, some still advocate a complete ban on native forest harvesting and claim that science justifies the need for such a ban. Yet the “theoretical” claims that timber harvesting increases forest fire severity, causes greater carbon emissions, reduces catchment water yields and threatens koalas have been rejected by several detailed scientific studies over the years. Over the past 60 years, the use of strategically planned burning has developed as part of an integrated fire management approach that helps to contain and reduce the impact of wildfires at an early stage, as well as improving firefighter safety.

We have the knowledge, the practical skills and the legal framework to manage native forests sustainably, including harvesting timber in small, carefully chosen areas. Most harvested native forests are currently subject to sustainability certification using international best practice methods. Rural communities and the country can benefit in a number of ways by adopting science-based policy and management practice. The forest practice systems used, for example, in Tasmania are world-leading. They also ensure continuous improvement in this field.

The public, land-use policymakers and politicians generally should be wary of the increasingly selective and unbalanced use of scientific findings, dressed up in an ideology that promotes anti-forestry views.
https://woodcentral.com.au/scientists-call-out-misinformation-fuelling-the-native-forest-debate/

About the authors

• Dr John Raison and Dr Sadanandan Nambiar are former Chief Research Scientists at CSIRO (https://www.csiro.au/en/about). For several decades they have led research and advised policymakers and forest managers in Australia and internationally.

• Dr Glen Kile AM is the former Chief of CSIRO's Division of Forestry and Forest Products. He oversaw major CSIRO research on native forests and bushfires.

• Dr Tony Bartlett has extensive experience in native forest management and is a leading expert in forest fire management and suppression.