The trope that ending native forest logging in Australia would be ‘a very bad day for orangutans’ does not stack up.

The Nationals Federal Member for Gippsland, Darren Chester, claimed in the Australian Parliament last year that an end to native forest logging in Australia would be ‘a very bad day for orangutans, because we just import more timber from developing nations’. This is a trope.

And the lobby group, Australian Forest Products Association, claimed the closure of native forest logging on public land in Victoria and Western Australia will: ‘only increase our reliance on imported hardwood products, sourced from Indonesia and Brazil that don’t operate under Australia’s world-class forest management systems’.

We hear a lot of these claims by the logging industry to justify the continued logging of Australia’s native forests and to wedge critics of Australian forestry practices as ‘hypocrites’ who appear to be willing to allow for the decline of orangutans just to save their own forested backyards.

Is this true? Where do timber imports come from and what is the timber used for?

The best way to answer these questions is to examine the data on timber imports and exports gathered by the Australian Government’s Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences. ABARES data do not support the claim that the decline of native forest logging in Australia has led to a decline in orangutans or more rainforest timbers being imported into Australia.

Sawn hardwood production has declined over the past 25 years across Australia. In 2001–02, sawn hardwood production was around 1.3 million cubic metres, dropping now to 389,000 cubic metres: a 70 per cent decline. There are many drivers behind this decline. Increased environmental protection of significant biodiversity and cultural........

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