Revelations Sustainable Timber Tasmania, or Suss Timber, have failed to pass their FSC audit – yet again – is another reminder that native forest logging in Tasmania is not sustainable.
The Liberal Party’s forest policy relies on logging of oldgrowth forest and threatened species habitat, but it is those very issues that have led to STT failing yet another FSC audit.
In a time of climate emergency and biodiversity crisis, we must protect our native forests – a critical carbon bank.
If Will Hodgman’s government was serious about climate or sustainability they wouldn’t be chasing unattainable accreditation – they would be phasing out native forest logging.
But the truth is, the Liberals’ forest policy is about politics first, and everything else second.
Nothing has changed on the ground since Suss Timber’s last failed audit – in fact they have got worse.
Oldgrowth logging has ramped up under the Liberals, and along with it, the destruction of critical habitat.
The fires earlier this year destroyed a large section of swift parrot habitat – not yet assessed in its entirety – in the southern forests. It has only become more critical to protect this precious species’ habitat.
Native forest logging is not sustainable. It has no social or environmental licence and the destruction of Tasmania’s high conservation value, carbon bank forests can never be certified as such.
