DEAR News Of The Area,

INDUSTRIAL logging of our hardwood forests is in decline in our region.

The Great Koala National Park will accelerate this process but the industry is also facing public opinion backlash nationally.

This is what I witnessed in Bellingen last weekend as around 900 people took to the streets calling for an end to forest logging and reflects the changing attitudes of Australians nation-wide who are increasingly concerned about forest logging links to climate breakdown and the biodiversity extinction crisis.

This is reinforced by former Australian politician Bob Debus, who recently wrote, “supporters of continued logging speak of the maintenance of a ‘sustainable industry’ but it’s too late for that… “The idea of ‘balance’ is no longer effective.

“We must accept that the repair and improvement of the environment needs to have primacy over all other social and economic considerations.”

Industrial-scale logging is breaking our fragile Coffs Coast forests’ ability to support biodiversity across the landscape and threatens to undermine our region’s water catchment health.

We need a transition out of native and plantation forest logging and into forest restoration and rehabilitation programs.

These are good jobs for forest workers and will bring lasting benefit to our local economy and the wider environment.
The major parties have failed to provide a sustainable timber industry.

The issue of timber as a resource needs to be rethought and shouldn’t come at the extinction of native animals, threatening our region’s water supply or accelerating climate change.

Further, the waste generated by hardwood forest logging on-site and throughout the supply chain is designed to increase the value of scarce products regardless of the externalities they produce along the way.

So, in responding to Jamax Forest Solutions letter (22/3/24), our hardwood forests are worth more standing and increasingly Australians want an end to the misuse of our public forest estate.

It’s our future and they are our forests!

Kind regards,
Jonathan CASSELL,
Emerald Beach.