The heads of a state-owned corporation fined thousands of dollars for each tree it mistakenly cut down have been summoned to a ministerial meeting after a court described a "significant history" of unlawful operations.
Forestry Corporation of NSW was this week fined $360,000, almost $6800 for each one of the 53 eucalypt trees it should not have cut down in 2020.
The state-owned logging corporation pleaded guilty to breaching conditions after failing to mark two environmentally significant areas on an operational map for harvesting.
Logging operations took place in one of those areas in the Yambulla State Forest, near the Victorian border in southern NSW, between April and July 2020.
Despite Forestry arguing its past should not be taken into account in regards to those offences, Land and Environment Court Justice Rachel Pepper considered its "extensive antecedents" in setting the fine.
"It has a significant history of unlawfully carrying out forestry operations, which is exactly what the mapping and harvesting offences are," she said in her judgment.
Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty told AAP she expected the corporation to take its environmental responsibilities seriously.
"I have demanded that the chair of the corporation, Stef Loader, and (chief executive) Anshul Chaudhary, meet with me as soon as possible," she said.
A Forestry spokeswoman confirmed the meeting had been requested on Thursday but did not reveal its purpose.
Ms Moriarty said the Yambulla offences, as well as others the corporation has been recently prosecuted over, occurred years ago under the former government.
Opposition agriculture spokesman Dugald Saunders said the corporation was held to the highest standards for sustainable management of more than two million hectares of state forest.
"(Forestry) has acknowledged its mistake and the necessary steps must now be taken to ensure it doesn't happen again," he told AAP.
The state's Environmental Protection Authority has another prosecution on foot alleging damage to habitat or threatened species in the Wild Cattle Creek State Forest on the NSW mid-north coast, which it began investigating in July 2020.
