Nature Conservation Council
3rd December 2025
Forestry Corporation has posted another multi-million-dollar loss in its native forest division, continuing a decade-long trend of unprofitable operations.
Forestry Corporation's annual report outlines a loss of $32 million for the 2024-25 financial year. This follows losses of 29 million dollars in 2023-24, 15 million dollars in 2022-23, 9 million dollars in 2021-22 and 20 million dollars in 2020-21.
"Today's release exposes the growing cost to taxpayers of a financially and ecologically unsustainable industry," Clancy Barnard, Senior Forest Campaigner with the Nature Conservation Council, said today.
"Forestry Corporation has not recorded a profit from native forest logging in more than ten years - despite receiving over 246.9 million dollars in grants since 2019.
"Last year it cost $4,330 a hectare to log 7,390 ha of public native forests. Forestry Corp continues to spend more to log each tree than it earns from selling them. Rising harvesting costs, shrinking markets and long-term declines in timber volumes have made native forest logging financially impossible."
"Why is Forestry Corporation allowed to sell timber for less than the cost of cutting it down and transporting it? Why don't they have to pay a fair resource rent to taxpayers for the destruction they cause to our public native forests?"
These financial losses come less than 24 hours after the Senate passed the rewritten Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, removing the long-standing exemption that kept native forest logging outside federal nature laws. When the new national environmental standards commence, logging operations will have to comply with federal threatened-species protections for the first time in 25 years.
Victoria Jack, NSW Campaigns Manager at The Wilderness Society, said the EPBC reforms add further pressure to an already unviable industry.
"With logging now required to meet national threatened-species protections, Forestry Corporation's business model will face even greater scrutiny. If the new environmental standards are robust, much of the remaining native forest estate simply won't meet the test."
The financial losses coincide with a continued collapse in timber supply, with major shortfalls in legally binding Wood Supply Agreements exposing the Government to rapidly escalating compensation payments.
Analysis by NEFA found that since the 2019 Black summer bushfires the Forestry Corporation have been able to supply less than half the timber they claim to be available on a sustainable yield basis from north east NSW's native forests, NEFA spokesperson Dailan Pugh said the figures confirm long-standing concerns about over-logging.
"Forestry Corporation keeps claiming timber that simply does not exist which Governments commit to sawmillers and then have to pay compensation for their failure to supply . The forests cannot supply the volumes currently committed to loggers, they are being grossly over-logged."
Justin Field, former Independent MP and Forest Alliance NSW spokesperson, said the inflated figures create serious financial risk for NSW taxpayers.
"Under the Wood Supply Agreements the NSW Government is liable to compensate mills for under-supply. By failing to accurately reflect the true impact of the fires and hold forestry corporation to account for long-term unsustainable logging, the Government is exposing taxpayers to even greater liability."
WWF-Australia conservation scientist Dr Stuart Blanch said Forestry Corporation NSW was losing taxpayer money logging native forests while it should be making money expanding sustainable certified plantations.
"Forestry Corp demolished the homes of koalas, greater gliders and other threatened species and lost a fortune of taxpayers' money in the process. The $32 million in losses from native forest logging should have been invested in a just transition to expanding sustainable timber plantations."
The Forest Alliance NSW is calling on the Minns Government to answer three simple questions:
1. Will the Government rule out any extension of Wood Supply Agreements, given Forestry Corporation's continued financial losses and its clear inability to supply anything close to the contracted volumes?
2. Will the Government be transparent about the financial risks created by ongoing under-supply - including the total volume of timber committed in Wood Supply Agreements that has not been supplied since 2019, taxpayer's compensation liability, and how much has actually been given to mills for under-delivered timber?
3. Will the Government commit to ensuring that Forestry Corporation is both fiscally responsible and legally compliant, including addressing the chronic losses and ongoing instances of legal non-compliance in the hardwood division?
"Given Forestry Corporation's continued financial losses and collapsing timber volume, it's time to end native forest logging in NSW", Doro Babek from the Bob Brown Foundation concluded.
Forest Alliance NSW Member groups
- The Nature Conservation Council of NSW
- WWF-Australia
- Wilderness Australia
- North East Forest Alliance
- Brooman State Forest Conservation Group
- The Wilderness Society
- National Parks Association of NSW
- South East Forest Rescue
- Bob Brown Foundation
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