Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society, and the Australian Conservation Foundation have issued a “Policy Guidance” paper with their usual truth-stretching statements.
This paper is possibly published as a “policy influencer” for bureaucrats within Australia and overseas. Much in the same form as Wood Central’s recent report on Dr Tim Cadman’s paper published in the Land Use Policy journal. Both papers are not peer-reviewed as a solid scientific paper that purports to carry any weight is expected to do. This makes such works mere opinions. Nonetheless, they are published and are deserving of scrutiny.
The assertion in the Policy Guidance Paper is:
Beef production is the major driver of deforestation in Australia…
The problem these organisations confront is that for years, they have been stating native forestry has been the major driver of deforestation in Australia.
They have based both their assertions against the beef sector and the native forestry sector on government-issued land-clearing data. Federal data is aggregated data provided by the States and Territories.
If you just take the data issued by NSW, the State aggregates data on softwood plantation, hardwood plantation, woody vegetation clearing, and native selective forestry into one statistic. This is truly misleading as to what is occurring.
Look at the data:
In the Policy Guidance document, Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society, and the Australian Conservation Foundation write that “hundreds of threatened species (not named) are under pressure from deforestation for beef”.
Data these groups and other environmental activists will not acknowledge is that in NSW, as land has been placed into wilderness conditions, the number of listed threatened species has increased! Eighty-eight per cent (88%) of NSW’s State Forests are placed in a reserve system.
The data in Figures 3 and 4 was obtained from published reports of the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (NSW EPA). In 2024, Timber NSW issued a Freedom of Information Request to the NSW EPA to update the data series. The information in Figures 3 and 4 is unavailable for 2021 to 2023. The Department of the Environment and the NSW EPA have disaggregated the data, so it is not available.
Earlier this month, Greenpeace ran an “end of the financial year” Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) Meta advertisement. In simple language, a request for a tax-deductible donation. These organisations have cash flow structures over 60% attributable to direct employee costs and an unknown amount of associated expenses also attributable to employees. (Information is available on the Charites and Not-for-Profit Association websites for each DGR environmental entity.)
The Meta advertisement was titled “Help Save Our Forests.”
The animated bulldozers are utilising what is called ‘chain and ball’ clearing.
The headline reads:
“DID YOU KNOW!? Every second, a native Australian animal is killed by bulldozers. Tell Anthony Albanese to stop deforestation in Australia. Sign our urgent petition now! Every two minutes, an area of forest and bushland the size of the MCG is bulldozed, killing tens of millions of native animals each year!”
Greenpeace’s latest campaign
FACT CHECK
Where in Australia?
WA and Vic have closed native forestry!
In NSW, the industry is the most regulated in the world. Deforestation is prohibited. Harvesting is carried out selectively to encourage regrowth as quickly as possible, which means minimal disturbance.
Where do these statistics come from regarding what bulldozers are doing? The statement means there are bulldozers running all day – but where? Which forests?
Areas of forest the size of the MCG being cleared every two minutes would appear on satellite footage. Why have we now heard about this? Why has the Green movement been so quiet if this is occurring?
Maybe it is the sites being cleared for transmission lines for Australia’s new renewable wiring and sites for wind and solar farms.
If the Greenpeace Australia Pacific video on Facebook (META) is true, it has been stretched to within an inch of its life! But this appears to be acceptable! Nothing is done about this advertisement for funding.
Australia’s Crackdown on Greenwashing!
The Australia Senate Greenwashing Committee has an interesting submission amongst the 128 submitted: Submissions 124 Timber NSW.
Timber NSW tried to catalogue some of the manipulation of public opinion by Greens and Environmental Social media.
In Example 4, the Australia Conservation Foundation Incorporated, also known as the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), ran a Facebook campaign.
The FACEBOOK headline was:
“Every 20 minutes, more than 17 hectares of threatened species habitat…”
The Australian Conservation Foundation
There were just a few issues with this statement.
The comparative photographs provided of forest and cleared land were from different locations.
The statement “every 20 minutes …” had the same inherent issues as the similar statement in the Greenpeace Australia Pacific FACEBOOK entry.
Clearing exotic pine plantations is not a threatened species habitat, yet these figures must be included by looking at a simple calculation.
The mathematics of 17 hectares every 20 minutes would mean that in a calendar year, 446,760 hectares are cleared!
Let us look at NSW, New South Wales, which has 20 million hectares of forested area. The Government manages 8.3 million hectares, and the rest are privately managed.
Of the forested area managed by the Government, 67% is set aside for nature conservation with no timber harvesting, and Forestry Corporation manages 24%. Of the forested area managed by Forestry Corporation, 50% is unavailable for forestry activity.
Of the remaining 50%, up to 30,000 hectares are harvested a year on a 30-year rotation, which is 0.1% of this State’s total 20 million hectares of forested area.
To simplify these statistics, only 12% of the native forest land in NSW controlled by the NSW Government is available for rotational harvest. The remaining 88% of native forestry land is unavailable for harvest.
According to the ACF figures, it would take five years to harvest all the native forest lands controlled by the Forest Corporation of NSW. If one halved the harvesting time to 12 hours every seven days, then it would be ten years.
Another fact needs to be noted before further varying the temporal part of the Australian Conservations Foundation’s figures. It takes over 40 years, and sometimes 60 years, for a native forest tree to be replaced in a well-managed working hardwood forest.
The figures quoted by the Australia Conservation Foundation reveal something amiss because there should have been no working native forests in NSW recently. The same, therefore, applies to the Greenpeace Australia Pacific and their statement.
Please read the policy guidance for yourself and see how it lacks specifics and is self-serving.
