GUMBAYNGGIRR Elders and Coffs Coast conservationists are despairing at the latest logging by Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW).

Newry State Forest west of Valla, between Urunga and Macksville, which Elders and conservationists say supports nationally-significant colonies of koalas and greater gliders, is today being logged.

Both koalas and gliders are threatened by industrial logging, land clearing and fire.

Plans to log 2,500 hectares at Newry State Forest, which includes key areas proposed for the Great Koala National Park, have given rise to frustration and have resulted in action to try to halt the logging.

A protest camp was established by Gumbaynggirr elders in the forest and a ceremonial fire lit.

NSW fire service extinguished the fire and Gumbaynggirr Elders were physically moved away.

Uncle Micklo Jarrett, Gumbaynggirr Elder and spokesperson said, “the Newry State Forest holds our Nunguu Miirlarl, our sacred men’s place, and is home to many endangered animals, particularly our koalas and our possum glider.

“The NSW government promised a Great Koala National Park yet they continue to log huge areas of koala habitat,” he said.

FCNSW installed locked steel gates around the public forest and the first truckloads of trees were observed leaving the forest on Tuesday morning under police guard.

Two young people locked onto a harvester and halted the second day of new logging operations.

One of them said, “we are seeing Forest Corporation ramp up their efforts to take as much as they can while they still have access to these forests, regardless of the fact that there are species in here on the brink of extinction”.

“What’s left should be protected for climate and culture, not pulped,” she said.

“Our forests are worth more standing.”

North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh said surveys undertaken within an area now being logged in Newry State Forest had identified numerous threatened species 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 and within the proposed Great Koala National Park, to be logged,” Mr Pugh said.

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

Forestry Corporation said it had a plan and was sticking to it.

“Each year Forestry Corporation publishes an annual plan of operations on its website indicating to the community where operations are intended to take place,” a spokesperson said.

“This plan continues to be adhered to and there has been no intensification of harvesting in any area of the north coast.

“The long-term sustainable yield, which is the amount of timber that can be harvested each year without depleting the stocks of timber in the forest, is calculated and reviewed regularly and not exceeded,” the spokesperson said.

Deanna Markovina, spokesperson for the Forest Ecology Alliance (FEA), said FEA was devastated, and Forestry Corporation had fenced a larger-than-usual area of forest.

“The tactics so far have been over the top, heavy-handed and disrespectful,” she said.

With the announcement that the Oakes compartment Kalang Headwaters are also approved for logging, Ms Markovina said FCNSW was ripping the heart out of the Great Koala National Park.

Greens MLC and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said, “What’s happening is shocking. This is logging under martial law.

“The government’s decision to log this forest now, in the circumstances, is dangerous and very divisive.

“People have vowed to stand up to protect this forest,” she said.

She said Newry was critical habitat to a number of forest-dependent species threatened with extinction including the koala, greater glider, yellow-bellied glider, masked owl, glossy black cockatoo and Newry golden wattle.

Ms Higginson said Labor had promised to create the Great Koala National Park and it was socially, economically and politically misleading “to now log the heart of it”.

News Of The Area asked Environment Minister Penny Sharpe for comment, but had not received a reply at the time of going to press.

By Andrew VIVIAN