Tasmania's Forest Practices Authority releases 2023 state of the forests report

The report, released last week showed native forest areas had decreased by 9600 hectares while plantations had decreased by 19,900 hectares.

The state of the forests report stated Tasmania had 3 million hectares of native forest in June 2021, 202,000 hectares of hardwood plantation and 79,000 hectares of softwood plantation.

Of the total native forest area, 1.2 million hectares were in conservation and public reserves and 957,000 hectares were on permanent timber production zone.

Of the 2.27 million hectares of native forest of known growth stage, 71 per cent was categorised as mature and 23 per cent was categorised as regrowth.

The FPA reported eight native forest communities listed as threatened under the Nature Conservation Act had decreased in area since 2015.

Three of these were wet eucalypt forests and five were dry eucalypt forests.

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Eighty-eight per cent of Tasmania's old-growth forests are in reserves, comprised of 1 million hectares.

The amount of old-growth forests in reserves has increased by 33 per cent since 1996.

The FPA report estimated that there were 3346 full-time equivalent workers were directly employed in the state's forest industry in 2021.

This is a slight increase of the 3212 people estimated to be employed within the industry in 2016.

There are 5 per cent fewer people employed within the industry compared to a decade ago.

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