Stopping native logging in NSW could create $100 million in climate-related benefits annually, according to a new report released last week, compared to the $9 million the industry cost taxpayers in 2022.
Climate emissions of 3.6 million tonnes from native logging in the state are equivalent to that produced by 840,000 internal combustion cars, writes Dr Jen Sanger in her latest report ‘NSW Forest Carbon’ for The Tree Project.
The report is part of a series that Sanger began publishing in June last year, covering Tasmania, Victoria and NSW looking at what native logged trees are actually used for and that impact on carbon emissions.
She found that in NSW sequestering carbon in native trees rather than logging them could yield as much as $2.7 billion in carbon mitigation benefits between 2023 and 2050.
In Victoria that financial benefit comes to $3.1 billion and in Tasmania it’s $2.6 billion, for a combined $8.4 billion across the three states.
Although new research is indicating that old growth forests reach a saturation point in their ability to absorb more carbon, they do lock existing carbon stores away. A growing body of research from sources around the world also point to “unmanaged” forests reducing the severity of fires, as particularly in Australia older, larger eucalypts provide fewer small branch ‘ladders’ for flames to reach the explosively flammable canopy.
Heaping more pressure on logging operations
Native logging industries are under pressure, with The Tree Project’s NSW report just the latest to indicate native forests may have better uses than as paper and state industries reporting losses.
The state-owned NSW Forestry Corporation reported a $6 million loss in its logging operations in 2021 from the cost of logging red gum, ironbark and cypress trees mainly for woodchip exports and firewood, and a $9 million loss in 2022,
Last year, the right-leaning Blueprint Institute suggested that if Victoria halted wet forest native logging it could reap $59 million in benefits from tourism, water supply and carbon credits alone this decade, and it costs taxpayers more to keep the industry running than it gives back in jobs and profits.
Victoria has committed to phasing out native logging, but has also promised to subsidise jobs to the tune of $200 million to protect the dwindling number of workers from the loss of industry.
Tasmania’s state-owned forester clocked up $1.3 billion in losses in the 20 years to 2018, yet provided fewer than 13,000 jobs compared to tourism’s 15,000 in 2014, according to the Australia Institute.
Where forest timber ends up
In terms of what happens to the biomass during native logging, most ends up as waste.
“People imagine that when a forest gets logged the trees get turned into wood and that lasts for ages, but depending on the state only about 6 per cent is stored in wood products,” Sanger told RenewEconomy.
“When a forest is logged, about 60 per cent of the biomass is left behind. Of the biomass that is removed, the majority goes to woodchips which is turned into paper and pulp and has a lifespan of two years.”
Most of the removed from forests in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania goes to woodchips and ends up in short-term products such as paper, which releases some 64 per cent of a forests’ carbon within a few years of logging.
About 6 per cent ends up as sawn timber, 24 per cent as paper products, 10 per cent heads into mill waste, 30 per cent is destroyed through slash burning, and 30 per cent is left as debris on site.
While forests containing some 2.2 million tonnes of carbon are logged each year in NSW, annual emissions are estimated to be twice as high as that due to the lag of debris breaking down within forests.
State government 2050 net zero goals are impossible if native forest logging continues, says Greens MP and environment spokesperson Sue Higginson.
“Claims by the Liberal-Nationals that logging native forests is carbon neutral are untrue. Native forests take around 100 years to recover their carbon stores after logging operations, but the NSW Government’s Forestry Corporation is regularly logging forests that are struggling to survive,” she said.
“Last week I travelled to the South East forests and I was flabbergasted by what I saw. Our public native forests that are trying to recover from the devastating black fires of 2019/2020 are being destroyed by intensive logging. They are being clear-felled, for wood chips. They are turning our public native forests into what looks like a war zone.
“It is completely untrue that we need native forests for their timber value because we waste most of this resource.”
