Australia’s buildings are made largely from plantation timber, not native forest wood. That simple fact is missing from a claim now circulating that logging native forests is good for the climate.
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Native forests store vast amounts of carbon, and protecting them is recognised as being crucial for tackling climate change, along with the deep cuts needed in fossil fuel emissions. Yet, some native forest logging industry lobbyists have claimed that logging native forests is good for the climate and a superior climate solution to forest protection. Is this true? Should we be logging more native forests to stop climate change? The science is clear that the answer to this question is no.
The recent approval by the Clean Energy Regulator of a methodology on forest management under the Carbon Farming Initiative is based on, and highlights, the scientific fact that native forest logging is a highly emissive industry. That is, logging releases large amounts of carbon emissions that would not occur if native forests were not logged. One way for people to understand this is through equivalence to the emissions from motor vehicles. For example, native forest logging in Victoria before it was supposedly halted in 2024 has been estimated to generate gross emissions equivalent to that from 1.2 million motor vehicles each year.
Why does native forest logging generate large amounts of carbon emissions? There are several key reasons. First, cutting down native trees requires an extensive road network to transport heavy machinery to cut blocks or coupes where trees are logged. Building roads, using heavy machinery for harvesting, and trucks for transporting logs create greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, a very large amount of the total biomass in a native forest – typically about 60 per cent actually is left in a logged area and not carted to a sawmill or pulp mill (to make paper or packaging). This biomass can be up to 450 tonnes per hectare of logged forest and includes tree crowns, lateral branches, understorey plants, bark, stumps and roots, dead trees and logs on the forest floor, and other material that is not used by the forest industry. Approximately half of this biomass remaining on-site is either burnt in a fire deliberately lit to create a bed of ashes to promote the regeneration of a new stand of trees, or it remains on the ground and undergoes accelerated decomposition. Both the regeneration burn and the decomposition of logging debris create greenhouse gas emissions that would not have occurred if the forest had not been logged.
Third, about 40 per cent of the biomass of a native forest is removed to create wood products. But the vast majority of that material is used to manufacture products like paper and packaging, and these have a short lifetime before they go to landfill to decompose and begin emitting greenhouse gases. There is a large amount of waste (sawdust, offcuts, etc) in those manufacturing processes which also quickly become greenhouse gas emissions. A small amount of the biomass of a native forest – roughly 4 per cent – goes to make high quality wood products like floorboards, roof trusses and furniture that store carbon for a long time.
Indeed, in Australia, very little native forest timber actually goes into housing and construction. The reality is that 90 per cent of all sawn timber in Australia is from plantations, especially exotic softwood dominated by pines. Our wood supply is dependent on plantations, not native forests. This matters for the building industry in particular. Ending native forest logging would take almost nothing from the timber that goes into housing and construction, because that timber already comes from plantations – including the engineered wood products, such as glulam and cross-laminated timber, that are now common in modern buildings.
The bottom line is that logging native forests is not good for the climate because it generates large amounts of emissions. By contrast, most carbon is stored in the woody biomass and soil of old native forests. And contrary to statements from some forestry lobbyists, the large old trees in old growth native forests continue to grow throughout their lives and add extra girth and therefore store increasing amounts of carbon. For example, our long term studies in the giant Mountain Ash forests of south-eastern Australia – the world’s tallest flowering plants – show that the largest and most carbon dense trees are still growing at 2 cm in girth every year over an age of over 200 years. The only way a native forest can become old is for it to grow through from being a younger forest. This can happen only if a forest is not logged.
A significant amount of carbon emissions nationally can be avoided each year, plus allowing ongoing carbon sequestration, by properly protecting native forests, including through National Parks and other conservation reserves. Protecting native forests, not logging them, is best for the climate – and the timber the building sector relies on would be all but unaffected.
Forest carbon accounting must look beyond the forest boundary
The recent Spinifex article, Is native forest logging good for the climate?, argues that the science overwhelmingly supports ending native forest harvesting as a climate measure.
There is an important truth at the centre of that argument: if the objective is simply to maximise carbon standing within a particular forest, an unharvested forest will generally contain more carbon than the same forest immediately following harvesting.
But that is not the climate-policy question Australia actually faces.
The relevant question is: what happens to global atmospheric emissions when Australia stops producing timber from sustainably managed native forests, but Australians continue consuming the timber and building products those forests previously supplied?
That requires looking beyond the forest boundary.
The article’s authors have publicly advocated ending native forest harvesting for some years. That does not invalidate their research, but readers should recognise that this is an opinion advocating an established policy position, not a neutral review of the competing forest-carbon literature.
Australian research has produced markedly different results when a wider lifecycle boundary is applied. A peer-reviewed study by Ximenes and colleagues modelled NSW North and South Coast forests over 200 years and concluded that managed production forests could provide greater overall greenhouse mitigation once forest regrowth, carbon stored in harvested wood products and substitution of more emissions-intensive products were included.
That does not prove every harvesting operation is climate-positive. It demonstrates that the answer depends heavily on what is counted.
This distinction is particularly important because Australia’s native forestry is not synonymous with Victorian Mountain Ash clearfelling. ABARES reports that 86% of the area harvested in Australia’s multiple-use public native forests in 2020–21 was selectively harvested, while only around 0.05% of Australia’s total native forest area was harvested from those forests.
Nor does the fact that plantations provide most Australian log volume mean plantation timber can simply replace native hardwood.
ABARES reports that native forests supplied 72% of Australia’s hardwood sawlogs in 2020–21. Most hardwood plantation production is pulpwood, and ABARES specifically notes that plantation-grown hardwood generally cannot produce the same feature-grade products as native hardwood sawlogs. Softwood, plantation hardwood and native hardwood are complementary resources, not interchangeable commodities.
This brings us to the issue largely missing from simplistic “stop logging, save carbon” arguments: leakage.
Recent research presented by University of Queensland forest economist Dr Tyron Venn provides the first multi-decade ex-post assessment of what actually happened as Australia’s public native forest harvest contracted between 1996 and 2023.
Venn’s analysis estimated an international timber-harvest leakage rate of 81.3%. In other words, for every 1,000 cubic metres removed from Australian native forest supply, about 813 cubic metres was historically replaced through additional imports. More concerningly, 86.8% of displaced demand was supplied by countries with elevated illegal-logging risk profiles.
That evidence fundamentally challenges claims that lost native hardwood production will simply be absorbed by Australia’s plantation estate.
It also raises uncomfortable questions about the new Improved Native Forest Management, or INFM, carbon method.
Following approval of the final method, Forestry Australia’s forest-carbon experts concluded that its accounting and modelling could potentially over-credit projects by 40–100% before the full effects of leakage and harvested wood products are considered.
Forestry Australia identifies three central problems.
First, the INFM uses a 15-year crediting period, capturing the initial carbon loss from a hypothetical harvest while excluding much of the subsequent regrowth of that baseline forest. Forestry Australia’s testing found correcting this issue alone could reduce estimated abatement by more than 40%.
Second, it argues the method front-loads credits and then relies on later deductions as the hypothetical harvested forest regrows.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, Forestry Australia says the prescribed FullCAM settings model baseline harvesting using clearfall assumptions despite the overwhelming majority of Australian native forest harvesting being selective or partial. Correcting that modelling could reduce estimated abatement by more than 50%.
Then there is leakage.
The final INFM legislation requires an independent assessor to estimate indirect leakage, but legally restricts that deduction to between 0% and 40%. It even excludes emissions associated with harvesting and hauling substitute logs and producing substitute non-wood products from that calculation.
Venn’s 81.3% timber-volume leakage rate is not mathematically the same thing as the INFM carbon-leakage deduction. But it raises an obvious question: why impose a 40% ceiling before the evidence has determined the actual indirect carbon consequence?
The science therefore supports a more nuanced conclusion than the original article suggests.
Protecting some forests will undoubtedly be the right environmental decision. Sustainable timber production will be appropriate in others.
But climate accounting cannot stop at the edge of an Australian State forest.
It must count forest regrowth, carbon stored in wood products, replacement materials, imports and displaced overseas harvesting.
Protecting a tree in NSW while causing another tree to be harvested overseas is not necessarily climate mitigation. Nor is replacing renewable Australian hardwood with a more emissions-intensive material.
The atmosphere sees the whole system.
Our carbon policy should too.
Key references
Ximenes et al. (2012), Greenhouse Gas Balance of Native Forests in New South Wales, Australia.
ABARES, Australia’s native forests and wood production.
Venn (2026), The Conservation Paradox: Reduced Native Forest Harvest Policy in Australia Drives Leakage to Illegal Harvesting Hotspots.
Forestry Australia (2026), The maths does not add up: forest carbon method risks millions of low-integrity credits.