M&M Timbers

09/06/2026

Myth Buster No. 4: Harvesting causes large emissions of carbon, so forests are better managed without harvesting as carbon stores and for creation of carbon credits

Keith et al. (2014, 2015, 2022) concluded that harvesting and removal of biomass from native forests results in high net carbon emissions. These conclusions have been used to promote anti-forestry activism by organisations in Tasmania, NSW and WA (e.g. Cross et al. 2023), in Victoria (Sanger 2022) and by sections of the media. The Victorian State Government decision to close the native forest timber industry was partially based on the belief that this closure would deliver a large reduction in carbon emissions (D’Ambrosio 2019).

Recently, the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation (ACBF 2025) and subsequent several media statements by it have advocated that total cessation of native forest harvesting will create large amounts of monetised carbon credits, and to promote this business case they levelled harsh and unjustifiable criticisms at current native forest management.

A review of scientific literature on the effects of forest management on carbon balance in Australian native forests (Raison 2024) concluded that a systematic and reliable assessment of the carbon flows associated with harvesting requires the application of a full Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) framework that accounts for: temporal changes in carbon stock at the harvested site; emissions associated with managing and harvesting, transporting logs and processing wood products; storage of carbon in products in service and after disposal in landfill; emissions saved by using residues to generate energy otherwise produced by the combustion of fossil fuels; benefits of substituting wood for more emissions-intensive materials such as steel, aluminium or concrete in construction; and the often higher (Ximenes et al. 2016; Venn 2023) carbon footprint of imported wood products.

The only study in an Australian native forest (Ximenes et al. 2016) using a complete LCA concluded that sustainable harvest and use of biomass for conversion to products or energy can reduce net emissions.

The review by Raison (2024) also concluded that the studies by Keith et al. (2014, 2015) have either been incomplete (did not use a full LCA), used inappropriate parameters (e.g. low figures for the proportion of felled biomass removed) to estimate components of the total carbon balance, or overestimated the rate of carbon gain in older forests (based on limited field sampling, inappropriate extrapolations and dubious assumptions) and the capacity of unharvested forests to store carbon over the long-term given the recurrent wildfires in our environment.

Consequently, Keith et al. overestimated the net carbon gain by unharvested forests and underestimated the carbon benefits achievable from wood harvest and use and reached the erroneous conclusion that cessation of harvests would provide better carbon outcomes than sustainable management including for wood production.

As an example of the impacts of harvesting on carbon balance at the State level, a brief analysis is provided below for NSW where 9.1% of the forest estate is State Forest and only a small part of this is harvested annually using selection silviculture. In 2022–23 about 650 000 cubic metres of log was harvested (public + private) (ABARES 2024c). One cubic metre of wood contains approximately 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e); and on average, approximately 70% of felled biomass is removed offsite in logs (Raison and Squire 2010; Ximenes et al. 2016; Raison 2024).

Thus, the total carbon in all the felled trees to provide 650 000 m3 of logs annually is approximately 0.93 Mt CO2-e (i.e. 650 000/0.7) and only about 0.8% of the annual anthropogenic GHG emissions in NSW. This figure sets an upper limit for carbon emissions caused by harvesting if we assume that all that carbon was immediately released to the atmosphere (this does not occur in practice). When a full lifecycle analysis is conducted, as discussed above, sustainable harvesting generally does not cause net carbon emissions – instead, it contributes to emission mitigation (Ximenes et al. 2016; Ximenes 2023).

Nationally, logs harvested annually from all Australian native forests contain only about 2.5 Mt CO2-e, or about 0.6% of Australia’s total net anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Raison 2024). Additional emissions of carbon from the decomposition or combustion of slash produced during harvest are about a third of this amount.

In contrast, in very severe fire seasons such as the summer of 2019–20, carbon emissions were about twice Australia’s total annual anthropogenic (i.e. excluding wildfire emissions) GHG emissions and about 200 times greater than annual carbon removals in wood plus emissions from harvesting slash (Raison 2024).

Considering the detailed research studies in NSW (Ximenes et al. 2016) and the upper limits for harvesting emissions presented above, the strong advocacy by the ACBF 2025 that ceasing native forest harvesting in NSW could generate abatement (emissions reductions) of more than 1 million tonnes of CO2-e annually with a value of approximately $100 million is flawed. It is an illogical conclusion given that sustainable harvesting which is always followed by forest regeneration and use of wood products which stores carbon does not lead to net carbon emissions.

This is also the conclusion of the IPCC, the FAO and many international studies (see Raison 2024).

It is also important to note that, in 2021, native forests where harvests occurred previously provided a net sink of 35.7 million tonnes CO2-e, equivalent to 8% of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions that year, and the net sink in wood products was 4.9 million tonnes CO2-e (MPIGA and NFISC 2024). Thus, claims that ceasing native forest harvesting per se can create reliable and saleable carbon credits suffer from several flaws and are highly questionable.

Source: R. J. Raison, E. K. S. Nambiar, G. A. Kile & L. J. Bren (27 May 2026): Australia’s native forests can be sustainably managed for wood production together with other important forest values, Australian Forestry, DOI: 10.1080/00049158.2026.2663997

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/udeiimzwk2jyban3y8ynu/Australia-s-native-forests-can-be-sustainably-managed-for-wood-production-together-with-other-important-forest-values.-Raison-Nambiar-Kile-and-Bren.-May-2026..pdf?rlkey=jokeryyy8dyroevfg7hdt3sff&dl=0

04/06/2026

Review questions bushfire risk harvesting claims

Public claims that timber harvesting increases bushfire risk are based on narrow and contested evidence and should not be generalised across Australia's diverse forests.

A new review, Contested Evidence About Timber Harvesting and Bushfire Risk in Australian Landscapes, examines claims that timber harvesting increases forest flammability and bushfire risk. It finds that many public claims rely on evidence from one particular forest type and management system - tall wet eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia that have been previously clear-felled - and that these findings are often presented as though they apply universally across all Australian forests.

Forestry Australia President Dr Michelle Freeman said the review was developed to help clarify a complex and often misunderstood area of forest science.

"Public discussion about timber harvesting and bushfire risk is often highly contested, and at times, confusing," Dr Freeman said.

"The purpose of this evidence review is to unpack the science. It looks carefully at what the evidence does and does not show, where research findings are contested, and why terminology matters when discussing bushfire risk, fire severity, flammability and fire intensity."

"Australia's forests are highly diverse. Evidence from one forest type, management system or landscape context should not be generalised across the country without careful qualification," she
said.

"The review highlights that different forms of forest management can have very different outcomes, and that it is inappropriate to reduce complex forest and fire dynamics to a simple claim that timber harvesting always increases fire risk."

The review also highlights the importance of using fire terminology
accurately.

"Terms such as fire risk, fire severity, fire intensity and flammability have different meanings," Dr Freeman said. "When these terms are used interchangeably, public understanding suffers. Sound policy depends on precise language and careful interpretation of evidence."

The review notes that landscape-scale analyses of major bushfires, including the 2019-20 bushfires, have found that extreme fire weather and topography are dominant drivers of fire severity, while
timber harvesting, stand age and land tenure have comparatively minor effects at landscape scales. It also notes that while young regrowth forests may experience higher site-level fire severity under some conditions, large areas of mature and old growth forests, including forests in conservation reserves where timber harvesting is excluded, have also burnt at high severity.

Dr Freeman said Forestry Australia hoped the review would support a more informed and constructive public conversation.

"Forestry Australia represents a large cohort of professionals with deep scientific and practical expertise in Australian forests," Dr Freeman said. "Our role is not to prosecute simplistic arguments. Our role is to support evidence-based discussion, grounded in forest science, so that policy makers, media and the broader community can better understand what the research is actually saying."

"Forests are central to some of the most important challenges facing Australia, including climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, bushfire resilience, regional livelihoods and sustainable resource use," she said. "These issues deserve careful, evidence-based discussion."

To view the evidence review, click here:https://www.forestry.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Evidence-Review-Contested-Evidence-Timber-Harvesting-Bushfire-Risk.pdf

Source: Timber & Forestry Enews
https://www.timberandforestryenews.com/issue-901/

03/06/2026

02/06/2026

Myth Buster No. 2 - "Harvesting native forests threatens biodiversity, especially endangered fauna"

Flowing from the implementation of the National Forest Policy Statement (NFPS 1992) through Regional Forest Agreements, progressively signed between 1997 and 2001 there were major increases in the size of the conservation estate. This included the development of a Comprehensive Adequate and Representative (CAR) reserve system to protect wilderness, old growth forests and rare and endangered species. The CAR system is supplemented by ‘off reserve’ contributions to biodiversity in native forests managed for multiple uses including wood production and by some privately owned forests.

Many aspects of biodiversity in Australia are in a state of decline (State of the Environment Australia 2021), with primary threats being from land clearing for farming, urban development, feral pests and high-intensity wildfires. Forest management is ranked low amongst threats to forest dwelling flora and fauna (Davey 2018b; Ward et al. 2021; ABARES 2023c; Satyanti and Read 2025).

Despite this, organisations such as WWF, the Wilderness Society and the ACBF repeatedly allege that harvesting native forests destroys important biodiversity and that its continuation will lead to species decline and even extinction. Poor science has been used to back many such assertions. For example, Ward et al. (2024) assumed that if forests are harvested there will be negative impacts on threatened fauna. However, that analysis for northern NSW did not provide any map showing actual forest degradation after harvesting; they simply inferred major threats to fauna wherever there was an overlap between modelled species distributions and harvested areas. Further, no account was taken of the facts that only small areas of forest are harvested annually, that forests regrow, habitat is continually changing over time, and that harvesting practices are modified specifically to avoid or minimise any such impacts. Taylor, Evans, et al. (2025) used similar flawed logic, without direct evidence and concluded that certified harvesting operations were adversely impacting biodiversity in areas that they considered needed to be added to the protected area.

Extensive research (e.g. on koalas) provides reliable information to guide forest management. The iconic koala is listed as endangered in the Australian Capital Territory, NSW and Queensland. Some conservationists claim that koalas are under further threat from timber harvesting, but robust research disproves this. Law et al. (2022, 2024) monitored koala populations at 224 sites over 7 years and concluded that well-regulated timber harvesting or low severity fire did not reduce koala occupancy rates, and harvesting prescriptions ‘provided sufficient habitat for koalas to maintain their density, both immediately after selective harvesting and within 5–10 years after heavy harvesting’.

Recent extensive aerial surveys (involving ~4000 km of drone flights) in northern NSW suggest that koala densities and occupancy are similar in National Parks and adjacent harvested forests, and the same type of results was found for southern greater gliders (NSW Department of CCEEW 2025a, 2025b). A synthesis based on further extensive surveys across forest types and tenures (NSW Department of CCEEW 2025) estimated that there are 274,000 koalas across NSW and confirmed large numbers, widely distributed on the north coast of NSW. A CSIRO study (2024) found that nationally koala numbers may be up to 10-fold greater than estimated by the Australian Koala Foundation in 2021. An update (CSIRO 2025) reported that population numbers had increased substantially in the previous year, partly due to improved detection techniques and more extensive surveys.

The above studies collectively show that koalas in NE NSW are not threatened by timber harvests, and they are relatively abundant in these forests. Extensive wildfire poses a threat to koala populations. The above findings raise questions about the likely benefit to koala conservation from the proposed Great Koala National Park (GKNP). This Park would further restrict sustainable harvesting of native forests and negatively impact timber-dependent rural communities in NE NSW.

A widely used argument for banning timber harvesting mountain ash forest in Victoria is that harvesting is a threat to Leadbeater’s possum (e.g. Lindenmayer et al. 1990), although this view has been vigorously challenged (e.g. Attiwill 1994, 1995; Poynter and Ryan 2018). The debate centres around the loss of key habitat, especially large old hollow-bearing trees required for nesting and breeding. But, during the last 3 decades there has been no harvest of old growth forests, and managers make special efforts to protect old trees within the harvested area of regrowth forests.

A recent report (DCCEEW 2024) provided a comprehensive coverage of the habitat requirements of the possum and reasons for the listing of the species as critically endangered. It concluded that the main threats to the species have been historical timber harvesting and a major wildfire in 2009 which has decreased the extent, quality and connectivity of suitable habitat. It needs to be emphasised that there will also be natural on-going loss of old trees over time irrespective of the impact of other disturbances. The possums require hollow bearing trees, but also younger regenerating forests to provide appropriate food source and movement pathways (Lindenmayer et al. 1990) – harvesting and effective regeneration facilitates this. The projected future decline in Leadbeater’s possum numbers is based on modelled decline in the number of hollow-bearing trees, not on empirical evidence of decline across the forest estate and does not account for new habitat developing elsewhere as forests regrow and age after disturbance.

Nelson et al. (2017) found a high occurrence of possums in regrowth forests regenerated after harvest. Surveys using better detection methods show that the number of sites with confirmed sightings has increased, suggesting that the species may be more widespread than previously recognised, more numerous than once thought, and not restricted to old growth forests. Recently, the species has been found in forests in southern New South Wales. Total numbers are likely to exceed 2500–10 000 with potential habitat increasing from 200 000 ha to 300 000 ha (DCCEEW 2024).

More systematic and comprehensive surveys across all relevant forest tenures are needed to better inform future forest management to protect this species – similar to the approaches outlined earlier that provided reliable evidence on the distribution of koalas and the impacts of harvesting and wildfire. The recent national recovery plan for Leadbeater’s possum (DCCEEW 2024) provides a review of new population detection methods that can be applied over extensive areas and key strategies for management.

Our overall conclusion is that the impact, if any, arising from contemporary forest management including timber harvesting on Leadbeater’s possum populations has not been clearly established. Thus, there is inadequate justification for using the alleged impacts of harvesting on the possum population as a reason for banning sustainable harvesting of very small areas of mountain ash forests in Victoria.

Grove (2026) showed, based on critical analysis of relevant science, that predation by sugar gliders and not (as widely claimed) sustainable harvesting of native forests is the critical factor driving a rapid decline in numbers of swift parrots in southeastern Australia. He concluded that ‘focusing outrage on forestry operations is a displacement activity which gives no material conservation benefits for swift parrots, while distracting from the pressing need to find means of curbing sugar glider predation’.

The State of the Forest Report (MPIGA and NFISC 2024) found that 1227 native forest-dwelling species (244 vertebrate fauna and 983 vascular flora are listed as threatened; the six most common threats are: landuse change and/or forest-loss, unsuitable fire regimes, predation by introduced fauna, competition from invasive fauna and flora, small or localised populations and presence of mortality agents. Forestry operations (long-term cycles of harvesting and regrowth) were the lowest ranked threat, and no extinction of fauna or flora has been attributed to multiple-use forest management including sustainable timber production.

Source: extract from R. J. Raison, E. K. S. Nambiar, G. A. Kile & L. J. Bren (27 May 2026): Australia’s native forests can be sustainably managed for wood production together with other important forest values, Australian Forestry, DOI: 10.1080/00049158.2026.2663997

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/udeiimzwk2jyban3y8ynu/Australia-s-native-forests-can-be-sustainably-managed-for-wood-production-together-with-other-important-forest-values.-Raison-Nambiar-Kile-and-Bren.-May-2026..pdf?rlkey=jokeryyy8dyroevfg7hdt3sff&dl=0

07/05/2026

Ordered a few parts from JJ over the last month, his sales and service was second to none, he went above and beyond to make sure everything was correct and exactly what we needed! Excellent service, a smooth process and fast! UKW Spares & Machinery Highly recommended!

15/02/2026

Introducing our Individual sponsors! Looking forward to the 2026 rugby season!!
Nutrien Ag Solutions - Dorrigo
Jade Gibson Property Jade Gibson
The Dorrigo Butcher
Beaumonts Hydraulics and Servicing Simon Wheelstood Beaumont
Ebor Hotel
M&M Timbers
Thank you for your ongoing support of the Dorrigo Rangers.

10/10/2025

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11/09/2025

Today was the end of an era for the Parker’s as we loaded out the remaining logs felled last week from the announced GKNP area. The date 11th sept even more significant and quite ironic because, today We pay tribute to Graham Parker, who passed 26 years ago on this day, father and grandfather of the crew. The man that inspired his son to work in the timber industry with his own boys. (5 generations) Yes there were tears shed as we say goodbye for now to State Forest native harvesting. We will continue to fight for, and support or fellow timber families throughout this process of uncertainty in the coming weeks.
But tonight we will take some deep breaths and be thankful for the opportunity and people we have met along the way xx

29/08/2025

Well done for your honesty Micheal Kemp! Thank you for your support.
Share away my friends! https://www.facebook.com/share/1CdTPYJ8Jh/?mibextid=wwXIfr

A Mid-North Coast MP claims research showing koalas may not be endangered and are little impacted by logging has been "gagged" for emotional, ideological and political reasons https://bit.ly/3JGrx97