Letter to the Editor: We can’t transition to plantations overnight

DEAR News Of The Area,

ASHLEY Love’s Letter to the Editor in the Nambucca and Coffs NOTA of 27/2/26 relates to several comments I made in an unpublished Forest & Wood Communities press release that accused anti-forestry activists, like Mr Love, of hypocrisy when it came to their claims that the native timber industry can just transition to hardwood plantations overnight.

Perhaps the best way to answer Mr Love’s claims is to summarise the current situation:

● With the loss of 176,000 hectares of native forest within the Great Kolala National Park from production already, NSW now needs at least an additional 20,000 hectares of new hardwood plantations to meet current demand. Those plantations will take 50-60 years to reach maturity and be capable of replacing some of the products currently sourced from our regrowth native forests. Despite Mr Love’s deep understanding of the world’s market for timber, I can assure your readers there are solid markets for all the products currently produced from the 16,000 hectares of plantations within the GKNP footprint.

● There is already 16,000 hectares of established hardwood plantation within the GKNP footprint, but the Government has excluded it from being included in the park. This is half the State’s hardwood plantation. Mr Love belittles their significance by claiming these plantations are of small size and fragmented.

● Despite claiming that ALL native timber harvesting in NSW should stop AND the industry transition to plantations, Mr Love and Co. want the plantations within the GKNP included in the park because koalas like to eat young juicy leaves. I call that hypocrisy or having your cake and eating it too.

● Just prior to Christmas 2025, Environment Minister Sharpe’s department quietly released the results of its koala baseline survey, which found there are 274,000 koalas in NSW (95 percent confidence level). Much more than the expert guesstimate of 36,350 koalas when koalas north of Victoria were declared Endangered nor depleted as claimed by Mr Love.

● (Pine) plantations DO NOT supply 90 percent of Australia’s construction. One third of the timber used in your average apartment and one or two storey house is hardwood, not softwood.
The softwood industry is in a world of pain following the impact of fires in 2019/20 and recent fires in Victoria, the area of plantation burnt is huge. Add to that LVL is being landed from China and South America cheaper than can be manufactured in Australia. Following the closure of the native timber industry in WA and Victoria in 2024, Australia had to import 46 percent of our solid timber needs, despite being the 7th most forested country in the world.

● Locking up plantations intended for harvest will deepen the housing crisis, increase emissions, and weaken domestic industry.

Mr Love’s letter in support of activists’ hypocrisy on plantations and their significance to the current and future hardwood timber industry is a further example of his lifetime ambition of getting as much State forest into National Parks as he can.

Kind regards,
Steve DOBBYNS,
Chair and Director,
Forest and Wood Communities Australia.