Roadside clearing in Glenbog State Forest following work carried out by Forestry Corporation of NSW in January. Photo: Wilderness Australia.
Timber removed during roadworks in a southeast NSW forest, already at the centre of a dispute over proposed logging, was sold to help pay for the work, the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) has confirmed.
Glenbog State Forest, about 45 minutes north-west of Bega, has been the focus of a community campaign over the potential effects of logging on threatened wildlife, including greater gliders and koalas.
When FCNSW undertook what it described as road maintenance in January, conservationists monitoring the work recorded timber being trucked from the forest.
They say at least 26 loads were removed from a 2.7-km stretch of Bemboka River and Fraxinoides roads.
FCNSW maintains the work was road maintenance, but the removal and sale of the timber prompted questions about how the operation had been classified and regulated.
Those concerns led Wilderness Australia and South East Forest Rescue to lodge a report titled Illegal Logging in Glenbog State Forest with the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) in early July.
The report alleges the FCNSW operation was commercial logging disguised as road maintenance and may have bypassed environmental protections required under forestry or planning laws.
The conservation groups say the roadside work was carried out between 13 and 22 January and involved the removal of more than 1000 trees with trunks wider than 20 centimetres.
They allege clearing generally extended five to 10 metres beyond the road edge and reached between 15 and 20 metres in two places.
Wilderness Australia executive director Andrew Wong said paperwork photographed at the site recorded at least 26 loads of timber.
The report cited 21 truckloads, but Mr Wong said a later count of the photographed paperwork identified at least 26.
FCNSW did not confirm the number of trees or truckloads involved.
A spokesperson said the operation formed part of an ongoing program to grade, gravel and maintain roads across Glenbog for recreation, firefighting and forest management.
“The work in January included some tree removal to enable machinery to access the road and safely carry out works, as well as removal of vegetation that had regrown on the road edge to maintain the road at a suitable width,” the spokesperson said.
“Rather than mulching the removed trees onsite, as residents would often see on local roads and highways, some timber was recovered and sold to local mills.”
The spokesperson said revenue from the timber helped fund road maintenance, but FCNSW did not disclose how much was raised.
Mr Wong said selling the timber raised broader questions about whether the operation remained road maintenance or had become commercial forestry.
“We believe it is the first case of potentially illegal logging that could be termed ‘for-profit management’,” he said.
The distinction matters because commercial forestry operations must comply with the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (CIFOA), including its threatened-species protections.
A truck loaded with timber removed during the disputed Glenbog State Forest roadworks. Photo: Wilderness Australia.
FCNSW said the Glenbog roadworks were completed under a roading plan approved through a Review of Environmental Factors and were confined to the previously disturbed road corridor.
However, the conservation groups allege the approval was more than three years out of date, restricted the work to the road’s existing disturbance footprint and did not permit the clearing they say occurred beyond it.
The report says the timber-removal operation appeared to end after 2.7 km amid strong community opposition, although the wider roading plan covered more than 90 km of roads and trails.
It argues that if the same approach were applied across the roughly 51,000 km of roads within NSW state forests, it could expose about 102,000 hectares of forest to clearing outside CIFOA oversight – equivalent, it says, to around five years of all native forest logging currently conducted in NSW state forests.
FCNSW said maintenance had since been completed on most of the roads and trails covered by the plan, but did not say whether any further timber had been removed or sold.
The corporation said work would continue as required to maintain access for recreation, fire management and other uses.
Mr Wong said documents obtained through a government information access request indicated the machinery used for the roadwork had been brought into Glenbog for the separately proposed logging operation known as 2312A–2315A.
FCNSW did not say whether the roadwork prepared access for that operation or provide its current status.
Mr Wong said paperwork accompanying the timber described the operation as “thinning”, which the report identifies as a harvesting activity normally regulated under the CIFOA.
The report also summarises legal advice obtained from the Environmental Defenders Office that the operation should have been regulated under forestry law.
The advice says that even under the planning framework used by FCNSW, planning law was likely breached and biodiversity legislation may also have been breached.
Those legal arguments have not been tested or accepted by the EPA.
The report further alleges that the clearing reached the boundary of South East Forest National Park and included a white ash forest, recently listed as a nationally endangered ecological community.
It also raises concerns about the operation’s potential effects on surrounding wildlife habitat.
A search by the conservation groups of the NSW Government’s BioNet database identified records of 25 threatened species in Glenbog, including greater gliders and koalas.
The report identifies 12 greater glider den trees within about 85 metres of the clearing, including nine within 50 metres.
One was recorded in BioNet a year before the operation and was about 13 metres from the clearing.
Mr Wong said a greater glider search and broader habitat search would have been required had the work been treated as forestry, but alleged neither was conducted.
FCNSW did not respond to questions about which threatened-species surveys were required or completed, or whether trees were removed within 50 metres of known greater glider dens.
The EPA confirmed it was aware of community concerns and was assessing information relating to the January operation. It has not said whether it inspected the site or when its assessment is expected to be completed.
“As this assessment is ongoing, it is inappropriate to comment further,” an EPA spokesperson said.
