Environmentalists in Australia warn of massive expansion of native forest logging at areas where a Great Koala National Park is planned about 300 miles north of Sydney, and fear the trees and habitats the endangered marsupials rely on could be gone by the time the protected area is implemented. - REUTERS
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00:00 Australia aims to create by 2025 a great koala national park by merging over 1,200 square
00:08 miles of national park and public forest land in New South Wales.
00:12 But environmentalists and local forest advocates warn the best koala feed trees and habitats
00:18 could be gone by then.
00:20 They say native forest logging has increased in the area.
00:25 There's been a massive expansion and intensification of logging in some of the most biodiverse
00:30 areas of the great koala national park.
00:34 Forest advocate Mark Graham believes the national park plans are driving that increase and the
00:39 forestry industry is trying to grab the resources before logging is banned.
00:44 That's quite sinister because the harm that's done here will take a long while to repair
00:50 and in some respects it might never repair.
00:54 Logging could roughly treble in the next six months inside the national park area from
00:58 levels seen in 2021 to 2022.
01:01 That's according to Reuters' calculations of data provided by the state's forestry corporation.
01:07 Stuart Blanche, an Australian conservation scientist for the World Wide Fund for Nature
01:11 Australia identifies koala feed trees from freshly felled logs.
01:17 This logging truck has got some big old trees on it, maybe 100 years old, including Tullowood,
01:22 which is a great tree for koalas and the state government is allowing them to be chopped
01:27 down while they're considering making a great koala national park.
01:31 It doesn't make sense.
01:32 They should create the great koala national park and while they do that, stop these koala
01:37 feed trees being logged.
01:40 Koalas are an endangered species in New South Wales and they're estimated to be extinct
01:44 in the wild in the state by 2050 if no action is taken.
01:49 In recent months, the state says it stopped logging in over a hundred koala hubs throughout
01:54 state forests in the proposed great koala national park.
01:58 But these hubs just cover under five percent of the forests being assessed for potential
02:03 protection.
02:04 The state's environment minister, Penny Sharp, said it would try to get details about the
02:08 koala park finalised as soon as possible, but cited a commitment to working with the
02:14 local communities and industries.
02:16 We weren't just going to press a stop altogether straight away and without any plan for what
02:22 happens with those communities and without a proper assessment of the forests.
02:26 The timber industry is left questioning its future too.
02:30 Logging in and around the proposed koala park area is estimated to be the largest in New
02:34 South Wales, with the timber industry employing almost 9,000 people statewide.
02:40 James Euster is CEO of Australian Forest Products Association New South Wales.
02:46 If we were to lose our native forestry industry in New South Wales, we're really just pushing
02:51 the supply of that timber overseas to other jurisdictions where they have much weaker
02:56 environmental standards.
02:59 For Graham, the local forest advocate, a ban on logging is essential.
03:03 He also hopes the government and community can commit to restoring harmed areas by replanting
03:08 trees and managing invasive weed species.
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