Loggers cut down native forests in Tasmania

On the edge of a dense forest on the Australian island of Tasmania, a huge stump rises two metres above the ground. “It’s the stump of a 500-year-old eucalyptus tree” that has been felled, laments Jenny Weber of the Bob Brown environmental foundation.

In this island state south of Australia, the logging industry is allowed to exploit endemic species, often turning them into chips for export.

“The worst thing is that after it was felled, since this tree was too big to be cut down and loaded onto a truck, the trunk was left there and cut down for nothing. It’s really shocking,” laments Weber, director of the foundation’s forestry campaign.

Tasmania is a small oasis on this desert-dominated continent. Half of the island, about 3.4 million hectares, is covered by forests.

But it is also the state where proportionally more endemic trees are used for timber production: 18.5% of the total extracted between 2022 and 2023, according to data from the Australian government, compared to less than 10% in the country.

Logging of endemic species has been banned in South Australia since the late 19th century. Last year, this ban was extended to the states of Victoria and Western Australia.

The practice has increasingly sparked protests in Tasmania. At the end of March, more than 4,000 people demonstrated on the streets of the capital Hobart.

In 2024, more than 70% of the endemic trees felled were turned into wood chips, the vast majority of which were exported to China and Japan to be transformed into paper, cardboard or toilet paper.

– Risk of extinction –

The activity puts local animal species threatened with extinction at risk, such as the Tasmanian devil, the Australian owl and the migratory parakeet. The latter has been considered “critically endangered” since 2015 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“These birds need cavities formed in old trees to reproduce. If there are no cavities, there is no nest, there are no chicks and, in the end, the species disappears,” says French ecologist Charley Gros, scientific advisor to the Bob Brown Foundation.

The public body Sustainable Timber Tasmania is responsible for managing the 812,000 hectares of forest available for timber production on the island.

The aim is to extract timber “while balancing conservation and responsible land management,” one of its employees told AFP.

Suzette Weeding, head of the institution’s conservation department, runs a migratory parakeet protection program. She advocates for “adaptive forest management” to “minimize potential disruption to the species and its habitat.”

Last year, 149 million seeds were planted across around 5,000 hectares to “regenerate endemic forests,” he adds.

But Jenny Weber disagrees, citing a recent operation in an area that was completely razed.

“Before replanting, the area must first be cleared. Foresters spray the area by helicopter with a liquid that produces highly toxic fumes,” he says. And after the seeds are planted, “hunters are hired” to shoot wallabees and possums, which often devour the young seedlings.

Furthermore, “only eucalyptus trees are replanted” instead of reproducing the original ecosystem with a greater variety of species, in which many animals live and feed.

According to the Australian government, logging of Tasmania's endemic trees generated $80 million (R4 452 million) in 2022-2023 and employed less than 1,000 people, less than 1% of the island's working population.