Stop Logging in the Styx — sign the petition to the NSW Parliament

The release of the devastating State of the Environment Report (see analysis by Australian Conservation Council) last week highlighted the need to end native forest logging in NSW.

There is something we can all do: please sign this petition calling for the end of native logging in NSW. 20,000 signatures are needed by the start of August to have it debated in the NSW Lower House.

The petitioners ask the Legislative Assembly to develop a plan to transition the native forestry industry to 100% sustainable plantations by 2024; place a moratorium on public native forest logging until the regulatory framework reflects the recommendations of the leaked NRC report; immediately protect high-conservation value forests through gazettal in the National Parks estate and ban use of native forest materials as biomass fuel.

This issue impacts on us here in the Armidale Regional Council LGA.

In March 2020, just weeks after fires ripped through many NSW forest, the Nature Conservation Council obtained evidence of unburnt forest being logged in the Styx River Forest east of Armidale — see Nature NSW

The region around Styx River State Forest, halfway between Armidale and Nambucca Heads, was heavily burned in the catastrophic bushfires. The few healthy patches left are some of the most important unburnt habitat in the region for the Spotted-tail Quoll, Greater Glider and the Hastings River Mouse. In the period from late 2019 to March 2020, over 100 hectares of Styx River State Forest was logged destroying critical unburnt habitat and pushing threatened species closer to the brink of extinction. As the map shows, areas of the Styx are open to logging at the moment, Unfortunately we simply don’t have the resources to monitor this activity.

In an article on 13 July 2022 NCC reported that Forestry Corporation was being prosecuted by the NSW Environment Protection Authority for breeches inland of Coffs Harbour for the fifth time in four weeks which had incurred fines and costs of $530,600.

NCC Acting Chief Executive, Jacqui Mumford, asked “What will it take for Forestry Corporation to end its careless disregard for our forests and environmental law?”

“Forestry Corp is behaving like an outlaw organisation, not a government agency entrusted with managing two million hectares of public forests.”