31/10/2025
Forestry: A Small Footprint with a Big Role in Our Climate Future
By Nick Steel.
The The Mercury Newspaper - 31 October 2025.
Professor David Lindenmayer’s recent article (The Mercury, 30 October) paints yet another false narrative of forestry by implying that Tasmania’s responsible, science-based forestry industry remains a threat to the climate, when in reality, it’s an essential part of the solution.
What is missing from his narrative is recognition of how far Tasmania’s forestry practices have evolved. The industry has long since moved beyond the imagery of chainsaws in untouched forests. Today’s operations are guided by sustainability, science, and long-term stewardship, a managed cycle of renewal, not destruction.
In Tasmania, our forestry sector already works hand-in-hand with farmers to establish plantations on farmland. Across the state, thousands of hectares of marginal or under-utilised land now support productive plantations that store carbon, provide local jobs, and contribute to regional economies. These plantations, a mix of hardwood and softwood species, supply a large portion of our timber needs, as well as native forests.
At the same time, a small, carefully managed proportion of Tasmania’s native forests are regenerated after selective harvesting to provide high-quality hardwood. These regrown forests are not “cleared” or “lost” as critics often claim, they are harvested on a cycle and regrown naturally or replanted to ensure their health and continuity for future generations.
The numbers tell the real story. In the 2023–24 financial year, just 5,855 hectares of state-owned forest were harvested from Tasmania’s total land area of 6.81 million hectares. That’s a mere 0.086 per cent, less than one-tenth of one per cent. In other words, for every thousand hectares of Tasmanian land, less than one is harvested annually. It’s a footprint smaller than almost any other land use in the state, and one that’s tightly controlled under the Regional Forest Agreement, which sets strict environmental safeguards to protect biodiversity, waterways, and soil health.
That agreement is not a token gesture. It ensures that forestry in Tasmania is conducted with transparency, scientific oversight, and genuine environmental accountability. Every coupe is regenerated, every sensitive habitat is buffered, and every hectare is part of a larger mosaic of managed regrowth and protected forest.
Forestry’s role in reducing emissions and supporting a circular economy cannot be overstated. Timber stores carbon for the life of the product, in homes, furniture, paper, and countless materials that replace carbon-intensive alternatives like steel, aluminium, and concrete. The more sustainably we produce and use timber, the more we can decarbonise our built environment.
Australia’s path to net zero depends on replacing fossil-fuel-based and high-emission materials with renewable alternatives. That means more wood, not less. It means more managed forests, more plantations on farms, and more support for the industries that turn those renewable resources into the products we rely on every day.
Critics like Professor Lindenmayer often dismiss this balanced, science-driven model in favour of an ideological push to “end native forestry” altogether. But such a move would not stop demand for timber, it would simply shift the burden offshore. The timber we use in our homes, offices, and public buildings would instead come from countries with lower environmental standards, higher transport emissions, and fewer protections for biodiversity and workers.
Tasmania’s forestry industry is already doing what many environmental advocates claim to want: producing renewable materials within a sustainable framework, protecting special areas, and regenerating the forests it uses. Ending that system would not save forests, it would outsource the demand.
Forestry’s contribution to Tasmania’s identity and economy runs deep, but its greatest contribution today is environmental. Managed regrowth forests are living carbon stores. Plantations on farmland provide both carbon sequestration and economic diversification for rural communities. The sector’s innovations in bioenergy and timber-based building materials are helping to reduce emissions across multiple industries.
Tasmanians can be proud that their state leads the nation in responsible forest management. This isn’t the industry of 50 years ago, it’s a modern, science-based model of renewable resource management. It supports local jobs, rural communities, and the national effort to decarbonise our economy.
It’s time we stopped allowing outdated rhetoric to cloud public understanding. The truth is simple: forests can be used and preserved at the same time. Managed regrowth, plantation forestry, and active stewardship deliver both environmental and economic outcomes, something that endless protest slogans never will.
Mixed-species, local forestry that produces the products we all value, and too often take for granted, is the path forward. We can have both thriving forests and sustainable industries, but only if we base the debate on facts, not ideology.
The real environmental leadership lies not in stopping forestry, but in doing it right. Tasmania already is.
Nick Steel is the CEO of the Tasmanian Forest Products Association.
