Forestry Corporation NSW (FC NSW) is supposed to manage the two million hectares of State forests for tourism, conservation, and renewable timber. Yet what brings it into the news again and again is the significant cost to the public purse of its native forest logging which currently stands at a $90m loss since 2020.
The first half of 2025 appears to see no improvement in their management of the logging division with NSW FC’s hardwood division has posted a $15 million half year loss for 2025.
The FY2025 Half Year results, tabled in the NSW Parliament last week, show the $15 million loss was $9 million worse than expected, with Forestry Corporation blaming weather impacts, falling demand and higher than expected land management costs including the delivery of enforceable undertakings stemming from historical illegal logging.
‘It’s long past time Premier Chris Minns and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey stepped in to stem the losses and re-orientate the timber industry in NSW to a sustainable plantation based future,’ said Justin Field from the Forest Alliance NSW.
North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh said, ‘Logging public native forests is an economic basket case as the NSW FC does not even recover the costs of cutting down the trees and transporting them to the mills, without any consideration of repairing environmental damage or the massive impacts on wildlife.’
Illegal activities
Part of the ongoing losses incurred by NSW FC are coming from ongoing regulatory failures. Since 2020, the corporation has copped over $1.7m in fines and legal costs as a result of successful prosecutions and penalty notices due to breaches of environmental laws and logging rules.
In 2024 the Land and Environment Court judgement by Justice Rachel Pepper found that, ‘…FCNSW’s offending conduct was not trivial and occasioned substantial actual and potential environmental harm. FCNSW will continue to undertake forestry harvesting activities and has not sufficiently demonstrated genuine contrition and remorse for its commission of the offences.’
Justice Pepper also accepted submissions from the state’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) that FC NSW was likely to reoffend and did not have good prospects of rehabilitation according to The Guardian.
‘Native forest logging in NSW clearly does not have a viable future,’ said Jacqui Mumford from the Nature Conservation Council.
‘In stark contrast, the plantation-based forestry industry remains profitable and provides around 90 per cent of our timber products from just 1.3 per cent of the forest estate. It makes no sense that taxpayers are subsidising a loss-making business that destroys precious habitat when we should be supporting local communities and viable industries that do have a future.’
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