The Wilderness Society Media Release

6 June 2019

State-sponsored logging of old-growth forests continues...

A few weeks after the IPBES global assessment into the collapse of biodiversity, today's Estimates hearings
confirmed that Sustainable Timber Tasmania is still logging, including clearfelling, Tasmania's public High
Conservation Value forests across the State. This includes the continued logging of old-growth forests - some
many hundreds of years old.

The IPBES report includes this about old-growth forests:

"Particularly sensitive ecosystems include old-growth forests... and only around 25% of land is
sufficiently unimpacted that ecological and evolutionary processes still operate with minimal human
intervention. The global forest area is now approximately 68 per cent of the estimated pre-industrial
level. Forests and natural mosaics sufficiently undamaged to be classed as “intact” were reduced by 7
per cent (919, 000 km2) between 2000 and 2013, shrinking in both developed and developing
countries."

"The IPBES global biodiversity assessment made clear that old-growth forests are declining world-wide and
we should be protecting and restoring them, but in Tasmania we are still going in the wrong direction with their
state-sponsored, taxpayer-subsidised logging," said Tom Allen, spokesperson for the Wilderness Society
Tasmania.

"If you're upset about the plight of orangutans, the disappearing Amazon and human-led destruction of
rainforests, it's still happening right here in Tasmania, and you can expect it to increase under the Liberal
government, with their plans to open up the 350,000 hectares of high-conservation-value old growth forests
temporarily protected by the Tasmanian Forests Agreement to commercial logging."

Forests minister, Sarah Courtney MP, claimed she was unable to confirm or deny today if the government has
had conversations with notorious Malaysian logging company Shin Yang about accessing these reserves, also
known at the Future Potential Production Forest land.

"The prospect of giving Shin Yang access to these critically important wild forests should send a shiver down
the spine of every Tasmanian with a passion for our island."

"If STT manages to secure FSC certification, it will have no choice but to end the logging of old-growth and
other HCV forests. If it fails to secure it, it should still do the right thing and end the destructive, unethical and
ecocidal practice immediately."

Tom Allen, Wilderness Society Tasmania spokesperson, 0434 614 323