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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/27/native-forest-logging-must-end-in-order-to-reach-labors-emissions-reduction-target-expert-says>
"The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging “at a
minimum” in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the
Climate Change Authority.
One of Australia’s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of
the Australian National University, has also written to the authority
questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all
native forest logging.
The authority’s report, released last week, said ceasing old growth logging and
halving re-clearing rates would be one of the steps required to meet even the
lower end of a goal to cut emissions by 62% to 70% by 2035.
The report found that ending old growth logging, reducing other types of native
forest harvesting and planting new forests “where it makes sense” could deliver
about 6% of the necessary emissions reductions.
Last Friday, a day after the government announced it had accepted that target
range, the environment minister, Murray Watt, told ABC radio in Tasmania –
where logging of old growth forest continues – “it’s not the government’s
intention to stop old growth logging altogether”.
The Greens forests spokesperson, the Tasmanian senator Nick McKim, said the
authority’s advice was clear that “even Labor’s bottom-of-the-range target of
62%” could not be met unless old growth logging, at a minimum, ceased.
“Labor needs to announce a date to end old growth logging, and if they’re not
going to do that they need to explain where they are going to find the
emissions reduction to make up the shortfall,” McKim said.
Some states, such as NSW, already have restrictions on logging identified and
mapped old growth forest, which is forest that has either not been logged or
cleared previously or where evidence of past disturbance is negligible. But
logging of other high conservation value native forest continues.
The Greens position is that all native forest logging should end and it has
called on the government to use forthcoming reforms to Australia’s environment
laws to ban the practice.
McKim said ending native logging and reining in land-clearing would be one of
the cheapest, fastest and most effective ways the government could cut
emissions and protect biodiversity.
“You could end native forest logging literally in months and it would have a
massive emissions benefit,” he said.
“It would actually save taxpayers money because it’s a heavily subsidised
industry and what you’ve got to do is just transition communities.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
