Forest campaigners have accused the federal government of hypocrisy for hosting a global nature-positive summit in Sydney while logging resumed in public forest 400km away in mid-north New South Wales.
The NSW Forestry Corporation has started its harvesting operations in Bulga state forest, inland from Port Macquarie. The area is a stronghold for threatened species including endangered koalas and the endangered greater glider – Australia’s largest gliding possum.
Campaigners said logging had begun in an area of the forest about 200m from a site where Guardian Australia photographed a greater glider emerging from its den in July.
Citizen scientists have spent months registering den trees for the species in an effort to protect some habitat.
The state-owned forestry agency has been met with resistance from local forest advocates, who have maintained a presence at the forest since last week.
Susie Russell, vice-president of the North East Forest Alliance and a resident who has spent decades advocating for the protection of the Bulga region’s forests, said 11 campaigners had been arrested so far.
She said it included two people on Tuesday – one who locked on to logging machinery and another on to a structure that had been erected on a locked gate – as the nature-positive summit got under way at the International Convention Centre in Sydney.
The summit has brought together about 1,000 delegates to talk about nature protection and ways to drive private investment in conservation.
“I feel sick,” Russell said. “The hypocrisy and the greenwashing is just beyond belief. That they [the government] could stand on the global stage and proclaim themselves environmental protectors and as playing some kind of leadership role – it’s just bullshit.”
Russell said even if exclusion zones were retained around greater glider den trees, harvesting would still occur within the gliders’ home range and within the habitat of numerous other endangered species.
“We know that gliders don’t persist in fragmented and logged habitat so we are worried,” she said. “It’s frustration, you know. I’m just really upset.”
Justin Field from the Forest Alliance of NSW and a former independent member of the NSW upper house, said: “There is clear hypocrisy in asking for private investment to protect and restore nature while allowing and funding its destruction through native forest logging.”
About 40 protesters gathered outside the summit on Tuesday morning to call for stronger nature protections and protest logging operations throughout northern NSW and the federal government’s recent approval of three coalmine expansions.
The NSW Greens environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, told the protest that campaigners at Bulga were “literally on their knees begging for their government to hear them and to really understand what the people who know what nature-positive looks like are doing today”.
“We know the environment minister [Tanya Plibersek] thinks nature-positive is heading to Taronga Zoo, holding animals in cages and telling the world we’ve got it sorted. Well, she’s wrong, and it’s time for the truth, for all of us to stand up in the face of this madness,” she said.
In response to questions, Plibersek’s office directed Guardian Australia to the minister’s keynote address to the summit, in particular its conclusion, which said, “We are at the start of the road when it comes to nature-positive and turning things around.
“Our job is not just to do the work, but to take others along with us. To build coalitions, with unlikely allies as well as our traditional partners,” Plibersek told delegates.
She said “those who might demand perfection and jump on anyone who falls short while they are learning and trying – I urge you to listen, talk and persuade instead. Make the case. Win people over, don’t alienate them.”
A spokesperson for the NSW Forestry Corporation said the agency carefully planned sustainable timber harvesting operations in line with requirements set under the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approvals.
“This includes implementing the augmented protections for southern greater gliders which were put in place by the EPA [NSW Environment Protection Authority] in May 2024,” they said.
“Forestry Corporation’s trained ecologists have undertaken nocturnal surveys for gliders and dens and put exclusion zones in place.”
The spokesperson said more than 50% of the area would be set aside and not harvested, more than required under the operations approval.
“While Forestry Corporation respects the right of members of the public to protest, harvest operations are active worksites, and it is unlawful and unsafe to enter closed areas,” they said.
The logging operations at Bulga state forest are expected to continue for several weeks.
