Fifteen species and three ecological communities from around the country were added to the federal threatened species list on October 4.
Three are threatened by native forest logging in New South Wales: the parma wallaby, the Ben Halls Gap Sphagnum Moss Cool Temperate Rainforest and the Subtropical Eucalypt Floodplain Forest and woodland of the NSW north coast and south east Queensland bioregions.
Nature Conservation Council CEO Jacqui Mumford said while the federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek’s promise to halt extinctions is an “encouraging step”, more needs to be done.
“The federal government’s commitment to conserving 30% of our land and sea area will put threatened wildlife on the road to recovery and protecting NSW’s state forests from logging is the obvious place to start.
“The addition of the parma wallaby and two types of forest to the threatened list adds weight to long and loud calls to end native forest logging,” Mumford said.
She added that it is “madness” that logging companies are able to drive the parma wallaby, koalas, the greater glider and “dozens of other forests species towards extinction to make toilet paper and other low-value products.
“Deforestation in NSW has been identified as a threat to our forest-dwelling wildlife for decades.
“Since the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, the impact of native forest logging has gone from damaging to disastrous.”
Many NSW government agency reports identify the urgent need to curb or totally prohibit logging in various regions across the state.
“The federal and state governments must work together to end native forest logging in NSW and protect dozens of threatened species threatened by Regional Forest Agreements (RFA)”. The RFA allow the Forestry Corporation to destroy threatened species habitat “with impunity”, Mumford said.