12 good reasons to stop logging our native forests

1. Ecosystem services
WA forest ecosystems provide more important benefits than wood - clean air, fresh water, healthy soils and homes for plants and animals as well as carbon storage.

2. Carbon storage
Forests store very large amounts of carbon in the vegetation and the soil, and healthy forests continually increase the amount of carbon stored. This carbon is released into the atmosphere by logging and burning and not recaptured for decades, even centuries.

3. Carbon accounting
If a reasonable dollar value was placed on the carbon released by logging and burning native forests, it would be much more than the financial return from the logs.

4. Climate change
With decreasing rainfall, some of the forests are not regrowing after they are logged, and forest streams are drying up. Increasing temperatures bring more pests and diseases.

5. Environmental harm
Logging and burning spread weeds, feral animals and serious diseases like Phytophthora dieback, which threatens many native plant species. They also cause soil damage like erosion and can increase salinity.

6. Biodiversity protection
WA’s forests lie within an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot. They contain hundreds of species of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Without healthy native forests, some of our unique native animals are likely to become extinct.

7. Community appreciation
Western Australians value the forests because they are beautiful places to live in and visit, and they are a major attraction for tourists.

8. Unsustainable forest management
WA’s forests have long been logged much faster than they can regrow. The Forest Management Plan 2004-2013 is intended to make sure that logging is sustainable but continues to allow unsustainable logging levels and practices like clearfelling. Biodiversity protection is largely ignored.

9. Misuse of native forest wood
About 80% of the wood taken from our forests ends up as low value products like railway sleepers, charcoal, woodchips, firewood and garden mulch. Only about 20% is used for something of real value, like furniture. Large numbers of trees are ringbarked or poisoned, or cut down and left on the ground to rot and burn. None of these are included in the allowable cut.

10.Waste of taxpayers’ money
The prices charged by the Government for native forest logs don’t even cover all the State’s costs of producing them. The State could save money by ending native forest logging.

11. Alternative wood sources
Recycled timber and logs from unavoidable clearing should be used wherever possible. Federal government figures show that WA already produces enough wood from plantations to supply the community’s needs. It’s time to move all logging into plantations and tree crops grown on farms.

12. Right timing for alternative employment
Current low unemployment in WA means that people working in the native forest logging industry would be able to find alternative employment. The Government could put in place a scheme to help these people transfer to new jobs.