Keeping forests intact is essential to protect wildlife and tackle climate change

In response to the Prime Minister’s pledge of $220m for the forestry industry, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s national nature campaigner Jess Abrahams said:

“Anything that increases the demand for native forests to be cut down is bad news for Australian wildlife and bad news for climate action.

“Greater gliders, swift parrots and spot-tailed quolls are among many threatened Australian species that have had huge areas of habitat destroyed in the last 10 years.

“We’ve got to stop knocking over the homes of our unique wildlife.

ACF’s research shows the federal government approved the destruction of more than 200,000 hectares of threatened species habitat in the last decade – and this figure does not even include forests that were knocked down for timber, as native forest logging is exempt from Australia’s national environment law.

“Today’s announcement to expand the forestry industry comes despite Australia signing an international agreement at the UN climate summit in Glasgow to end deforestation by 2030.

“This international agreement will fail if Australia continues to approve broadscale land clearing and native forest logging.

“Living, breathing forests store carbon naturally in the landscape, so keeping forests intact is essential to the global effort to tackle climate change.

“We need strong environment laws that close the loophole that allows the logging industry to destroy wildlife habitat with impunity,” he said.

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