The NSW Forestry Corporation has been discovered amending three years of sustainability reports, dramatically reducing the reported yield from native forest logging since 2021. The changed data forms part of legally required reports by the State Owned Forestry Corporation and represents a 28% decline in reported yield across NSW. The misreporting of yields was discovered by community members from the North East Forest Alliance and South East Forest Rescue in 2024 and has caused Greens MP Sue Higginson to invite the NSW Auditor General to investigate the Forestry Corporation for maladministration.
Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said "The reported yield from native forest logging forms a critical part of so-called ecologically sustainable forest management. For this data to be revised down by 28%, without any public announcement, calls into question the entire justification for continued native forest logging,"
"The changes made to the reports, and the complete lack of public acknowledgement by the Forestry Corporation, can only be described as maladministration. The original uncorrected data has been tabled in the NSW Parliament as part of Forestry's 'sustainability report' since 2022, those reports are now demonstrably misleading and the data sets behind them have been amended without any formal recognition by the Government or the Forestry Corporation,"
"As part of the environment law exemptions that native forest logging operates under, there is a legal obligation for yields to be measured and sustainable. We have known for decades that neither of these obligations were being met and now the data has been retrospectively amended to back that up,"
"The native forest logging industry in NSW is on its knees and has lost $73 million taxpayer dollars since 2020 according to the Forestry Corporations own annual reports. If the timber yield from native forest logging is 28% lower than the Government has been told, then the health of the forests is also clearly much worse than the Forestry Corporation is willing to admit,"
"The Minns Labor Government needs to read the writing on the wall and end the logging of our public native forests immediately. We know what it will cost to transition workers and communities, and it's significantly less than the continued destruction of our precious native forests," Ms Higginson said.
