DEAR News Of The Area,

YOUR readers may appreciate some background on how wildlife is protected in State forests (Yellow-Bellied Gliders Take Refuge In Proposed Headwaters Nature Reserve, p34, 20 August 2021 Edition).

State forests support a remarkable range of threatened and endangered species and significant biodiversity.

These same forests have also been continually harvested for timber and regrown for more than a century.

Forestry operations in NSW are strictly managed and well regulated to ensure threatened and endangered species and their habitats are identified, protected and continue to thrive even in areas where timber is produced.

Less than one per cent of State forest is harvested for renewable timber products each year, and only a selected proportion of the trees is harvested in each operation before the entire area is regrown.

Before we touch a single tree, our ecologists carry out detailed surveys and planning to identify threatened and endangered species and set aside their habitat throughout the harvest area and in the surrounding forest.

For each species, there is a specific set of rules developed by expert scientific panels that spells out the number and type of trees that need to be set aside to ensure they continue to thrive.

Importantly, every harvest area is regrown to ensure the same forests continue to provide habitat, protect waterways and produce renewable timber for future generations.

Yellow-Bellied Gliders are regularly detected in forests on the north coast and that’s why we implement the strict environmental rules that are in place for all timber harvesting in our forests. These regulations include the need to set aside on average half of every harvest for conservation of species habitat and to ensure that important habitat features such as hollow trees and suitable feed trees are identified to be retained in any area where timber is harvested.

We welcome the Yellow-bellied glider sightings reported by community members, as this is an important sign that the State forests we manage are in good health, and we encourage any community members who do identify threatened species in the forest to share the information with us so we can ensure they are recorded on the NSW Wildlife Atlas to ensure they are protected,

Regards,

Dean KEARNEY,
Senior Planning Manager,
Forestry Corporation of NSW.