Following publication of photographic evidence of giant trees being felled by Forestry Corp in DoubleDuke State Forest in April, 2023 the NSW Environment Protection Authority was forced to act and suspend tree harvesting.
“Meanwhile, today in DoubleDuke SF NSW, ForestryCorp have felled a giant tree and a huge koala corridor. Koala scats on ground, koala scratches on felled trees & all around was the stench of dead animals under the carnage of carbon which could be dead koalas.” – Eddie Lloyd @worldzonfire, 8 April 2023
Parts Doubleduke and Tabbimoble State Forest are closed between 9:00 am Friday 17th February 2023 & 6:00 pm Friday 30th June 2023.
Protecting giant trees in Doubleduke State Forest
16 April 2023 – The EPA acted on community concerns about giant trees in Doubleduke State Forest on Bundjalung Country near Grafton, leading the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) to voluntarily suspend tree harvesting there.
20 April 2023 – FCNSW completed a remap of active harvest areas as requested by the EPA on 14 April 2023.
“The additional mapping provides assurance to the EPA and the community that all retained trees in active harvest areas have been identified and mapped.
Having regard to remapping works undertaken by FCNSW, a voluntarily suspension of operations is no longer requested by the EPA.
The EPA will continue to monitor and enforce compliance with the CIFOA at the Forest.
The decision and timing to recommence operations in the Forest is a matter for FCNSW.”
NSW Environment Protection Authority
EPA’s Director Regulatory Operations, Steve Orr said:
“A giant tree is defined as one whose diameter is greater than 140cm when measured at 30cm above ground height. Under the forestry laws all giant trees must be retained.
“While these two giant trees have not been harvested, they were not mapped.”
“We’re extremely concerned that there is a risk that other giant trees may not have been mapped in accordance with the CIFOA.”
EPA’s Director Regulatory Operations, Steve Orr
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Doubleduke Trouble for Native Forest Loggers
6 Feb 2023 – Native forest logging was halted by protests in Doubleduke state forest, between Grafton and Casino. A protester at Doubleduke was suspended in a tree-sit 25 m above three industrial logging machines. Protests also stopped logging in the Manning and in the mid North coast.
Tree sitter Andrew George, an engineer from Lismore says:
“The appropriate response to people trying to chop down our forests is to stop them. Our forests are essential to climate resilience and biodiversity yet their destruction in NSW is being actively subsidised by the taxpayer.
“As an engineer I have seen the consequences for our community of the destruction of our natural ecosystems. I have been professionally engaged in the expensive and disruptive process of rebuilding our communities after a climate cataclysm.
Caring for our community means caring for our forests. We cannot afford to allow our carbon sinks to continue to be destroyed at taxpayer expense.”
Andrew George, an engineer from Lismore
The Bungawalbin catchment is known as a stronghold for endangered population of coastal emu and other endangered species including Koalas, the Barking Owl, the Little Lorikeet and Brushed Tailed Phascogale
Spokesperson for the Save Banyabba Koalas group, Sean O’Shannessy said:
“Over the past several years the NSW State Government has invested in research on the Barking Owls of the Bungawalbin Catchment to determine the status and map habitat nest trees.
The research started pre 2019 Black Summer fires. After the devastating fires it became a recovery mission with many organisations raising funds to install nest boxes for native marsupials the barking owl is reliant on for food.
It beggars belief that the NSW State Government would be logging critical habitat for our threatened species that are trying to recover from the fires and 2022 floods.”
“Last week loggers were felling trees adjacent to wetlands of national significance and it is not known if prescriptions meant to protect these wetlands were adhered to.”
“We need our forests to help mitigate climate change. These forests were cooked in the 2019 Black Summer fires. There are hardly any big trees left, the trees they are logging are so small there is hardly any timber in them. So much better to leave them in the ground to store carbon and improve habitat and drought resilience”
“Forestry Corporation are locking up our public native forests, operating at an ongoing loss subsidised by taxpayers. Locals reliant on Glencoe Rd for emergency purposes and people who use the forests for recreation have not been allowed into the forest for months now. It is far more appropriate for our public native forest to be open to the public to use for recreational and cultural activities than locked up and destroyed for the profit of an elite few.”
said Mr Sean O’Shannessy.
Forest Protector Andy was arrested around 11am on 6th February 2023.
He wrote this about his experience defending Doubleduke public native forest.
“Taxpayer funded annihilation of public forests must stop.
This is an absolute obscenity in our world of climate disruption. floods, fires and storms are devastating communities across the country and the world Now, and by keeping on destroying forests we destroy our ability to absorb carbon pollution.
Healthy communities need healthy forests.
These forests were torched in the apocalyptic black summer which burned one in five trees in Australian forests. We need to protect them to protect ourselves.”
Andrew George, an engineer from Lismore
Lorne Forest protests
At 5am on 12th January 2023, access to the logging machines that have been actively munching their way through Lorne State Forest, on the mid north coast, was blocked by a forest protector on a tree platform suspended over the road.
Barry, a Lorne local, doesn’t want to give his surname, but his neighbour, Jane McIntyre, was the spokesperson for the action. She said there was a growing concern among Lorne locals about the destruction happening in the forests, and that she could no longer stand by and see their local forest and water catchment security, heading down the road on trucks.
Jane McIntyre has lived in Lorne for 14 years. She has lived adjacent to state forests since 1980, and has witnessed the escalating industrialisation of the logging industry, and the simultaneous degradation of the forests to young regrowth without habitat trees to support wildlife.
Now retired, Jane has worked as a science educator and community development coordinator. This grandmother of 3 small children fears that they will grow up in a world without healthy forests that shelter wildlife such as quolls, gliders and koalas.
She is determined to do all she can to prevent that.
“Yes, of course we need wood “, she says, “but instead of clearfelling our remaining native forests, we should be leaving them alone and growing genuine plantation on marginal farmland.
These forests have been hit by unprecedented droughts, fires and floods- and now the survivors are being intensively logged. Trees are the best known way of drawing down carbon in our climate emergency.
Even the NSW Government’s own Natural Resources Commission states that native forest logging is uneconomical and unsustainable. It’s time to stop now, before we lose more species.”
“Inspired by the action of the Elands community standing up for the Bulga Forest, we reached out for some assistance to enable us to do the same, and make a public statement that we will no longer stand idly by and watch the daily destruction.
“We know that a majority of people in NSW, think that the ongoing logging of our publicly owned forests is sheer madness. The time is now. It has to stop”
Jane McIntyre
A Giant of Lorne
A Giant of Lorne 
by Sarah Parker
This ancient tree is one of the last of its kind on the Mid North Coast of NSW.
The valley where it stands was once designated a ‘teaching area’ and was saved from harvest decades ago. Unfortunately it is no longer maintained as a teaching area, or identified as a ‘flora reserve’ on the State Forest map. As such, under current Forestry timber agreements, it too could be harvested to fulfill our industrial dreams.
Ancient trees are not just biologically and ecologically important – their presence is essential to our humanity. They give us a sense of scale. Our lives are so small compared to theirs. When in the presence of a giant tree, we have the opportunity to connect with the ancient and timeless world they embody.
Logging is an important industry, but right now it is not happening sustainably. State Forests used to be managed in a way which included selective felling and replanting. Unfortunately this has not been the case for many decades.
Kilometres away from our house, industrial-level logging is happening in a section of native forest which did not burn in the 2019 bushfires. How can this be ok?
Brave parents and grandparents are sleeping in tree-tents, high up in the canopy, to save this compartment – in the hopes that precious habitat will be saved for future generations.
I am not sure what the broader solution is to save our forests and still be able to use timber sustainably, but surely it must involve the protection of undisturbed native forests as the highest and most urgent priority??
Time is running short for us.
Our forests need inter-generational protection.
Every remaining ancient tree needs to be identified and given ‘heritage status’, not just for their protection, but also for ours.
See the hashtag on facebook for more: #savebulgaforest
