Coalition’s $220m pledge for native forestry ‘bad news’ for threatened species, conservationists say

A logged area of the takayna/Tarkine in Tasmania. Scott Morrison has committed $220m to the state’s forestry industry in a bid to secure the most marginal electorate in the country. Photograph: Krystle Wright/The Guardian

Scott Morrison has promised he will not support “any shutdown of native forestry” as he pledged $220m for the industry as part of his bid to hang on to marginal seats in Tasmania.

Echoing a successful pro-logging pitch by the former Liberal prime minister John Howard in northern Tasmania during the 2004 election campaign, Morrison said that, if re-elected, the Coalition would boost the industry by creating a national institute for forest products innovation based in Launceston and support “new wood processing technologies”.