Employment in the timber industry is small, and will decline with increasing automaition and mechanisation - tourism and conservation are not to blame. Tourism generates twice as much profit from the North East state forests than does logging.
Only 9 per cent of people surveyed for the comprehensive regional assessment report think logging native forest is the way of the future. Preferred developments were in tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and plantations.
Sixty per cent of Australia's timber already comes from plantations and Australia could meet all its timber needs from plantations without logging native forests, or importing timber.
Native forest logging is wasteful and destructive: 60 per cent of native forest ends up as residue. Logging threatens endangered species such as the tiger quoll. Wongungarra Wilderness and other areas that are recommended for protection in no way affects wood supply for the timber industry.
The native forest industry seem to believe that conservationists have
an insatiable appetite to preserve forest - but no more than the timber
industry has a desire to treat forests as an ever-expanding cash crop.