VALUES OF VISITATION TO NSW NATIONAL PARKS OUTWEIGH LOGGING

 In a media release issued on April 22 the North East Forest Alliance called for the NSW Government to stop logging State Forests and protect them as National Parks in light of the latest visitation statistics which show that national parks attract millions of visitors to regional areas, injecting billions of dollars into regional economies and generating thousands of jobs.

The Government identifies that the 65.6 million visits to NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) parks last year injected $19.5 billion into the state’s economy and supported 62,000 jobs.

National Parks in north-east NSW, north from Gosford, attracted 14.9 million visits last year. With 22.8% of NSW’s visitation, on a pro-rata basis, national parks in north-east NSW are responsible for injecting around $4.4 billion into the regional economy and supporting some 14,100 regional jobs.

“Conservation groups have fought hard over many decades to create most of our national parks, so it is reassuring to see that our efforts have been good for the environment and regional economies," North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

“Visitation to National Parks is rapidly increasing, over the past decade growing 25% in north east NSW. Creating new parks will increase future recreational opportunities.

“Because of their outstanding biodiversity, State Forests in north-east NSW have been identified by the Commonwealth as the highest national priorities for addition to the reserve system to satisfy the Global Biodiversity Framework target to protect 30% of Australia by 2030.

“Last year we lost $32 million logging our public native forests to prop-up a declining industry being out competed by cheaper plantation timber.

“Its time we stopped logging and degrading our public native forests as it is in the community’s best interests to protect them and allow them to recover.

“Recovering native forests will provide improved visitor experiences, while restoring animal habitats, sequestering and storing CO₂ out of harm’s way, reducing fire risk, increasing stream flows, and reducing flood peaks” Mr.Pugh said.

 

NSW's KOALA BASELINE SURVEY IS WRONG

NORTH EAST FOREST ALLIANCE 

MEDIA RELEASE 

6 February 2026 

A review of the NSW Government’s Koala baseline assessments for the North East Forest Alliance has found the Government’s models of Koala densities broad and inaccurate, with cleared paddocks near Kyogle claimed to have higher densities of Koalas than the Great Koala National Park, resulting in greatly inflated population estimates for NSW.

The NSW Government recently released the outcomes of their Koala baseline assessments, intended to identify koalas’ distribution and abundance across NSW, and to provide a baseline against which future population changes can be correlated. The outcome included models of Koalas’ distribution and densities, and a total NSW koala population estimate of around 274,000, which is over 10 times higher than most other estimates.

The review’s author, Dailan Pugh OAM, described the aims of the baseline survey to obtain accurate maps of Koala habitat and populations across NSW as important and worthy.

“Unfortunately the outputs of the $20 million project are too inaccurate to achieve its aims or  provide a baseline to measure future population changes against.

“The modelled koala densities have not adequately accounted for cleared land, identifying very high Koala numbers in farmers paddocks, resulting in misleading mapping and grossly inflated population estimates.

“The assessment utilised drone surveys to identify actual Koala densities at 384 sites across the whole of NSW, which is a very small sample.

“They primarily relied on recordings of male koalas calling at least once in the breeding season, over two weeks at 1,179 sites, to model Koala distributions and densities.

“This appears to have falsely inflated densities because it does not account for the fact that some males may be transients dispersing through poor quality or unsuitable habitat, therefore calls are not necessarily representative of good habitat or resident populations.

“They extrapolated their survey results across NSW using coarse mapping of aridity, distance to rivers, canopy height, Koala feed tree density and soil nitrogen, without  accounting for numerous other habitat attributes known to affect Koala densities.

“At the very least they should have excluded cleared paddocks from their model.

“Based on the model, the largest area of the highest density Koala habitat in NSW is to the north-east of Kyogle, with cleared paddocks shown to have higher densities of Koalas than found in the best habitat in the Great Koala National Park” Mr. Pugh said.

 

 

 

WOOD-FIRED POWER STATION REJECTED BY INDEPENDENT PLANNING COMMISSION

 MEDIA RELEASE 

Conservation Groups Welcome Independent Planning Commission’s Rejection of Proposal to Increase Landclearing for Electricity

North East Forest Alliance and North Coast Environment Council welcome the IPC’s rejection of Verdant Earth's proposal to restart the closed coal-fired Redbank power station, using trees obtained from clearing more than 20,000 ha of land a year, to spew 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

On the September 15, the Independent Planning Commission refused the development application from Verdant Earth Technologies Ltd to restart the Redbank Power Station at Warkworth using biomass instead of coal tailings as fuel.

“Burning forests produces higher CO₂ emissions than burning coal, so it is madness to replace coal with wood to generate electricity as it undermines our transition to a low carbon economy”, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“It is particularly galling that in this case the proponents claimed that burning 850,000 tonnes of biomass per annum would result in no CO₂ emissions at all, when in fact the power-plant would release 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ through its smokestacks each year, thereby significantly increasing atmospheric carbon when we urgently need to be transitioning to non-polluting solar and wind power.

“This is compounded by the fact that the biomass was intended to be obtained by clearing native vegetation, which is contrary to the need to restore and increase native vegetation as it is the only means we have of removing carbon from the atmosphere at scale. 

“The Independent Planning Commission rejected the proposal on the grounds that there had been no assessment of the environmental impact of increasing land clearing in western NSW from the current 6,635 ha per annum to over 20,000 ha per annum” Mr. Pugh said.

“It is madness in the midst of our current biodiversity and climate emergencies to contemplate cutting down the homes of a multitude of species and burning them to release more carbon into the atmosphere”, said Susie Russell from the North Coast Environment Council.

“This is the culmination of a six year community campaign against generating electricity by burning wood, and specifically this proposal that had initially proposed to take timber from north coast forests.

“The IPC meeting with stakeholders in Singleton last month received many presentations from both concerned locals, environment groups and biodiversity experts, critical of the proposal.

“They were proposing to clear land 600 kilometres from the power station, woodchip it, store it and then using B doubles, truck it to the Hunter Valley. There was no accounting for the emissions from any of that process which would have been fuel intensive. The whole project just didn’t stack up,” Ms Russell said.

The ALP’s 2024 NSW Labor Platform states:

3.112 NSW Labor recognises that burning timber and cleared vegetation for electricity is not carbon neutral and is neither clean or renewable energy, and therefore forms no part of a credible strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Labor will introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity.

“We call upon the NSW Government to urgently implement their commitment to introduce legislation prohibiting the burning of any forests and cleared vegetation for electricity, to stop any repeat of this madness” Mr. Pugh said.

-  North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) & North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) .

 

 

RICHMOND RIVER KOALA PARKS PROPOSAL

Conservation and community groups are calling for 56,000 hectares of State Forests in the southern Richmond River Valley and along the Richmond Range to be protected.

The aim of this proposal is to:

• Ø   Safeguard a nationally important Koala population, genetically distinct from those in the Great Koala National Park.

• Ø    Protect the habitat of more than 130 threatened species.

• Ø    Improve the health of the Richmond River.

• Ø    Create a regionally significant wildlife corridor linking Bundjalung National Park on the coast to the Border Ranges National Park.

• Ø    Advance NSW’s target of 30% land protection by 2030 in one of Australia’s richest biodiversity hotspots.

As part of the campaign Ballina MP Tamara Smith has arranged an information session about the new national park proposal in the Macquarie Room at Parliament House on Wednesday 17 September from 6-7 pm.   

Speakers will be Dailan Pugh OAM from NEFA and koala expert Dr Steve Phillips.

Balance Needed in Independent Forestry Panel

North East Forest Alliance 

MEDIA RELEASE 27 August 2024

The North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) is concerned that the NSW Government’s recently announced Independent Forestry Panel is not independent and is calling for the appointment of a forest ecologist to provide some balance.

The three member Independent Forestry Panel can not be considered independent when Peter Duncan AM was once the Chief Executive Officer of the Forestry Corporation and Mick Veitch was previously the ALP’s shadow Forestry Minister, NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.

“We would welcome a truly independent and impartial review of logging of public native forests in NSW as the evidence is that it is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable.

“In 2022/23 the Forestry Corporation lost $15 million on its native forestry operations, costing the NSW Government $1,281 per hectare to log the homes of Koalas and Greater Gliders. In addition the Forestry Corporation was paid $31 million of taxpayer’s money for its community service obligations in 2022/23, while also receiving regular massive public handouts.  

“Logging increases the risk of extinction of many threatened species, reduces stream flows and inflows to regional water supplies, increases wildfire risks to local communities, spreads weeds, increases erosion, while reducing the carbon stored in forests and forests’ ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere” Mr Pugh said.

For north east NSW Blueprint Institute (2023) found that ending native forest logging in 2023–24, and instead utilising the land for carbon sequestration and tourism will deliver a net benefit valued at $45 million in present-day dollars. This includes the estimated cost of providing transitional packages to the industry as it shuts down, as well as the cost of breaking wood supply agreements that extend to 2028.

“NEFA considers that if the NSW Government was fair dinkum about undertaking an independent assessment they would ensure the assessment was undertaken by a balanced panel that will fairly deal with our evidence.

“The appointment of an independent ecologist could provide the balance needed” Mr. Pugh said.

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CALL TO STOP LOGGING KOALA HABITAT ON NSW PUBLIC LANDS

 North East Forest Alliance

MEDIA  RELEASE

February 29, 2024

The NSW Government has released Reviewing the NSW Koala Strategy  discussion paper  and is seeking community input on current koala conservation actions.

The NSW Government’s 2021 Koala Strategy identifies that the highest priority to avoid the extinction of Koalas in the wild by 2050 is to protect their habitat, to this end they have allocated $71 million to buy private properties and implement conservation agreements over up to 22,000 hectares.

So far they have bought 10,000 ha of land to add to national parks and entered conservation agreements over 7,700 ha of private land.

Only part of this is high quality Koala habitat, said NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

“There are 230,000 hectares of State Forests on the NSW North Coast identified as high quality Koala habitat by the NSW Government and as Nationally Important Koala Areas by the Commonwealth Government, yet both Governments refuse to stop logging them.

“The Forestry Corporation is losing $15 million a year, and getting tens of millions in equity injections, to log tens of thousands of Koala feed trees in thousands of hectares of high quality Koala habitat every year.

“If the Government was serious about saving Koalas and saving money then their highest priority must be to protect Koala habitat on public land

“The Government has identified 50 koala populations “where koalas have the potential to persist over the long term”, and in 2021 prioritised 19 of these for immediate protection of strongholds, including in the Banyabba Area of Regional Koala Significance (Whiporie-Rappville).

“Despite this they are right now logging identified Koala strongholds in Braemar and Myrtle State Forests within the Banyabba ARKS.

“The Government is asking people to tell them what else they should be doing to protect koala habitat.

“Please tell them to immediately stop logging Koala habitat on public lands” Mr. Pugh said.

 

 

 

A SAD DECISION FOR NATIONALLY THREATENED SPECIES

 NORTH EAST FOREST ALLIANCE

Media Release January 10 2024

Justice Perry ‘s judgement of today in North East Forest Alliance vs The Commonwealth of Australia is that no contemporaneous assessment is required before extending Regional Forest Agreements beyond the originally intended 20 years, noting:

the question of whether or not to enter into or vary an intergovernmental agreement of this nature is essentially a political one, the merits of which are matters for the government parties, and not the Courts, to determine.

NEFA objected to the Governments extending the North East NSW Regional Forest Agreement in 2018 based on 1997 data, without requiring a new assessment, it is therefore extremely disappointing that after a 5 year legal battle this process of not requiring a contemporaneous assessment has been legally validated, NEFA President Dailan Pugh said.   

“This judgement means that it is valid to roll over Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) forever-more based on data collated in 1997 and politicised outcomes that ignore the science, including the rapidly increasing extinction risk faced by many forest fauna and the accelerating impact of climate heating upon them and forests. 

The original North East NSW forest agreement was made unilaterally by NSW in 1998 based on a 1997 assessment, and was only intended to last for 20 years, after which a new assessment was promised. This was adopted for the joint NSW-Commonwealth RFA in 2000.

After the 20 years was up, in 2018 Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison decided that they would not do a new assessment and, without any consideration of climate change, extended the existing RFA indefinitely as a variation.  

This decision was strongly objected to in 2018 by then opposition environment spokesperson, Penny Sharpe, who said the science underpinning the RFAs is out of date and incomplete, committing that ALP Labor will not sign off on a rollover of the RFAs until there is a proper, independent, scientific assessment of their outcomes, and the assumptions of the original RFAs are revisited. (3)

“The decision to not require a new assessment put at risk the survival of a multitude of species that have rapidly declined since 1997, including many nationally threatened species that are not adequately protected under NSW’s logging rules and are being significantly impacted” Mr Pugh said.

NEFA have identified that within north-east NSW’s State forests that are currently being logged, or proposed for imminent logging, there are nationally significant populations of over 11 nationally threatened animal species and 13 plant species. Of particular concern are the Endangered Koala, Southern Greater Glider, Spotted-tailed Quoll, Hastings River Mouse, Rufous Scrub Bird, and Giant Barred Frog.

We are in the midst of extinction and climate crises, aggravated by the 2019/20 wildfires, rising temperatures and logging, so it is reprehensible that these species are still not receiving the immediate increase in protection Professor Samuel’s review of the RFAs identified as needed back in 2020, said NEFA vice-president Susie Russell.

“It is time for Tanya Plibersek to provide the immediate protection for threatened species identified as required by Professor Samuel in 2020 and for Penny Sharpe to step up and end this sham RFA”, Ms Russell said.

NEFA thanks the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) for their work in mounting this case, and for the counsel who acted on our behalf: the now Hon Justice Kirk of the NSW Court of Appeal, Claire Roberts and James Johnson.

PENNY SHARPE TAKES HER HANDS OFF THE WHEEL AS SHE DRIVES KOALAS TO EXTINCTION

 

North East Forest Alliance

Media Release

31 July 2023 

Surveys undertaken for the North East Forest Alliance have identified numerous threatened species within an area now being logged in Newry State Forest, within the proposed Great Koala National Park, including confirming the ongoing occupation of a Koala Hub identified by the Government in 2017 as one of the most important areas to protect for Koalas.

It is grossly irresponsible for the Minister for the Environment, Penny Sharpe, to allow this irreplaceable Koala habitat, identified as both a Koala Hub and a Nationally Important Koala Area, within the proposed Great Koala National Park, to be logged, NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said

“Penny Sharpe has taken her hands off the wheel as she drives Koalas to extinction.

“NEFA wrote to Minister Sharpe on 3 April pointing out that within the proposed Great Koala National Park over the next 12 month the Forestry Corporation was intending to log over 1,300 ha in 28 Koala Hubs¹ identified by the Office of Environment and Heritage in 2017 for protection as known resident Koala populations of outstanding importance.

“We thought that given their limited extent and outstanding importance for Koalas that it would be easy for her to rule them out for logging

“We provided her with a map showing the location of the Koala Hub in Newry and advised her that it was under imminent threat. A recent assessment by Biolink for NEFA confirmed that Koalas are still resident in this Koala Hub and recommended its protection.

“We also provided her with maps of Koala Hubs in Moonpar, Orara East, and Boambee State Forests that she has since allowed to be logged.

“Koala strongholds are being destroyed while Penny Sharpe stands aside.

“A survey just completed by for NEFA  by Bower Books Works in Newry identified five threatened plant species from 40 locations, a Greater Glider den tree, Koala scratches on numerous trees, and significant patches of high quality habitat for the nationally threatened Glossy Black Cockatoo, Koala and Greater Glider.

“Two of the threatened plant species and the Greater Glider den tree require protection under the CIFOA logging rules so we have  written to the Forestry Corporation and EPA for immediate action to protect them.

“The fact that these brief surveys have revealed additional threatened species and records highlights the inadequacy of Forestry Corporation’s surveys, and in particular the refusal of Penny Sharpe to require pre-logging surveys for nationally Endangered species such as Koalas and Southern Greater Gliders.

“Logging in Newry State Forest should be halted immediately, the Koala Hub protected, and independent surveys undertaken to identify the area occupied by Koalas and Greater Gliders, and all locations of threatened plants. 

“Penny Sharpe is now part of the problem, its time she came part of the solution to avoid the extinction of Koalas” Mr. Pugh said.

1.     Koala Hubs were identified in 2017, at the request of the Chief Scientist, the Office of Environment and Heritage analysed Koala records "to delineate highly significant local scale areas of koala occupancy currently known for protection", identifying “areas of currently known significant koala occupancy that indicate clusters of resident populations known as Koala Hubs”.