World Heritage forest site on Tasmania saved from logging

The Australian government ended its push to log World Heritage-listed forests on the southern island state of Tasmania on Sunday, after the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO issued a report calling for the area to remain protected from logging. Australia’s government in 2014 sought unsuccessfully to have parts of the Tasmanian wilderness, some one million hectares (2.47 million acres) or a fifth of the island, removed from UNESCO’s World Heritage listing to enable logging. However, UNESCO argued even opening up a small area to “experimental logging” would be the start of a slippery slope.

We accept the recommendation … that special species timber harvesting should not be allowed anywhere in the world heritage area.

Tasmania’s environment minister Matthew Groom

On Sunday, both Australia’s national and Tasmanian state governments adhered to the UNESCO request. The Tasmanian forest, added to the World Heritage list in 1982, “constitutes one of the last expanses of temperate rainforest in the world”, according to UNESCO. Conservation groups welcomed the UNESCO report and government commitment not to log the Tasmanian wilderness. The announcement came days after Australia’s parliamentary upper house said it would hold an inquiry into bushfires in the forest to investigate the impact of global warming on fire frequency, and on measures to protect the area.

Tasmania logging