Turned into toilet paper – woodchipping our native forests
- The Beagle
- Jul 16, 2021
- 2 min read
by Nature NSW
Every two months, massive woodchip carriers arrive at the Eden Chip Mill docks to be loaded with over 40,000 tonnes of our mulched forests.
It often takes days of continuous loading via conveyor belt to load the nearly 10 storey high piles of woodchips onto this ship.
Logging is now the leading cause of deforestation in NSW. Our stunning forests are being decimated at the rate of 65 hectares a day to mostly be turned into woodchips, shipped overseas and used to make paper and carboard.
This is one of the lowest-value uses of our forests and is incredibly wasteful, pulling in only 20 cents of profit per tree cut down and chipped!
Our forests are worth more standing.
On the NSW Far South Coast, up to 97% of trees logged are sent to the Eden Chip Mill.
The science is clear - logging is incredibly damaging to the forest and its wildlife, causing massive habitat destruction and ecosystem disruption. Native forest logging is also loss-making, it only survives because it is heavily subsidised by taxpayers.
Our native forests have evolved over time to provide habitat for Australia’s unique plants and animals. Logging these forests not only immediately destroys the forest, but the re-growth is a much poorer environment. It takes hundreds of years for the complex ecology of a native forest to re-establish.
Sustainable alternatives exist. Expanding our plantation estate will ensure that no jobs in the industry are lost and that demand for hardwood products can be met into the future.
State native forests also provide huge benefits for local communities for recreation, amenity and tourism. Public forests are an asset that should be managed in the interest of the whole community and nature. To mulch them and ship them overseas is wasteful and destructive.