Tasmania will not phase out native forest logging, the government has confirmed, despite Western Australia announcing it would no longer carry out the practice from 2024 with Victoria to end old growth logging by 2030.
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WA Premier Mark McGowan made the announcement on Wednesday which also included $350 million to expand softwood timber plantations by 33,000 hectares with 50 million pine trees, and to preserve 400,000 hectares of native forest.
The move was celebrated by Tasmanian environmental groups and the Greens, but criticised by the forestry industry, and state and federal Liberal MPs.
A Tasmanian Government spokesperson said the state would not be following suit.
"The Tasmanian Government takes a balanced approach," the spokesperson said.
"We won't be decimating our sustainable native timber harvesting sector and returning to the dark days of the job destroying Labor/Green Tasmanian Forest Agreement when they were last in government in Tasmania."
In the announcement, Mr McGowan said protecting native forests was "critical in the fight against climate change". The statement also detailed how "harvest yield of native timbers" had "significantly" declined due to the influence of climate change, bringing volumes below predictions in the state's Forest Management Plan.
WA ended old growth logging in 2001 - a practice that continues in Tasmania.
But the Tasmanian Forest Products Association maintained that native forestry could assist in the fight against climate change.
Chief executive officer Nick Steel said "sustainably sourced tree fibre" was beneficial.
"The world needs more certified, environmentally sustainable forestry and not less," he said.
"Stopping sustainable forestry simply increases the sovereign risk of timber supply, such as we are currently seeing in construction, and drives our consumers, builders and manufacturers to imported products from often unregulated markets."
Tasmania's public forestry enterprise, Sustainable Timber Tasmania, failed to obtain Forest Stewardship Council certification at its most recent attempt due to failures to protect swift parrot habitat and improper old growth harvesting, among other reasons.
Bob Brown Foundation campaign manager Jenny Weber said the state was heading in the other direction.
"Instead of taking a leaf out of WA's book, it looks like the Gutwein Government is ramping up the future likelihood of jailing peaceful forest defenders," she said.
"Gutwein can follow McGowan's lead on recognising ending native forest logging is important in the fight against climate change."
Federal Assisting Forestries Minister, Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonno Duniam, said regrowing native forest post-harvest meant Australia's forestry sectors were sustainable.
"This decision, apparently guided by a 'community survey' instead of science shows that the WA Labor government is more interested in politics than about good environmental outcomes, economic prosperity and the livelihoods of their own people," he said.