Logging in high value koala habitat on the New South Wales mid-north coast will cease immediately while the state government consults experts about plans to establish a great koala national park.
The announcement follows weeks of pressure from communities that had accused the Minns government of stalling on an election promise and allowing forestry operations to continue in areas that had been earmarked for the proposed park.
The environment minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government had suspended logging operations in 106 “koala hubs” – areas of important habitat the NSW environment department identified in 2017 but which no government has acted to protect.
Sharpe said there had been no logging operations in these areas since 1 September after the government reached an agreement with the NSW Forestry Corporation.
The hubs cover about 5% of the 176,000 ha of forest that the government will assess for potential protection within a great koala national park but the government said they contain 42% of the recorded koala sightings in state forests in the assessment area since 2000.
The decision has been cautiously welcomed by conservation groups but the National Parks Association of NSW urged the government to go further and impose a logging suspension across the entire area of the proposed park.
The suspension will remain in place while the government embarks on a process to establish the park. The reviews are expected to be complete by the final quarter of 2024, with the park established as soon as possible after the process has been finalised.
The government has not set out a timetable but said the process will include an economic and social assessment, advisory panels made up of industry, Indigenous and community representatives, and an expert environmental and cultural heritage assessment.
It said it was balancing its commitment to protect environmentally sensitive areas with the “development of a plan to sustain a viable timber industry and jobs”.
“The creation of the great koala national park is essential to saving koalas from extinction in NSW,” Sharpe said.
“The government is taking serious steps towards its creation and will work closely with the community, Aboriginal organisations and industry as the areas for inclusion in the park are assessed.”
It follows months of protests over logging operations in forests within the proposed park – such as Newry state forest – as well as in areas further north.
Grahame Douglas, the president of the National Parks Association of NSW, said the group welcomed the chance to participate in the process, which he hoped would bring a quick resolution to establish the park and move to sustainable plantation timbers on the mid-north coast.
“There are other areas that are still in need of protection such as Oakes state forest where logging should also be suspended,” he said.
The NSW Greens environment spokesperson Sue Higginson said it was a “significant development in the six month conflict Labor waged against the community” but was not enough.
“This announcement will do nothing to protect Oakes State Forest or the Kalang Headwaters, areas that were categorised as the highest priority conservation areas in the state by the former government and that are within the boundaries of the proposed great koala national park,” she said.
She said, at a minimum, the government should also protect all koala hubs across the state’s entire native forest estate.
The EPA has been charged with ensuring that there is no increase in logging in the permitted areas to compensate for the halt to logging within the hubs.
The government has been under immense pressure to end native forest logging, following moves by two states – Victoria and Western Australia.
In May the Victorian government announced native forest logging in Victoria will end in December, six years earlier than previously planned, after the state government decided severe bushfires and legal campaigns had made it economically and environmentally unviable.
The agriculture and regional NSW minister, Tara Moriarty, said the government “commits to working closely with the industry to develop a blueprint for the future timber sector that accommodates both the park and the production of timber products”.
Continued logging of native timber forests in state forests, as opposed to plantation timber has become a hot button issue in several states due to the impact it has on threatened species that are under additional pressures due to bushfires.
NSW Forestry Corporation says the north-east hardwood industry, covering an area from the Hunter to the NSW-Queensland border, contributes $700m to the NSW economy and employs about 3,800 workers across the sector.
It has said that of the two million hectares of state forests that it manages, half is managed for conservation and between 1% and 2% of the available area is harvested each year.
