MANY native forests are being chopped down faster than they can grow back, the NSW Auditor-General said yesterday in a scathing report.
Yet Forests NSW still lost $14 million from its native forest operations last year.
The report from Peter Achterstraat says logging on the state's North Coast and South Coast was felling trees faster than they could be replaced.
Forests NSW was unable to say how many trees had been felled because estimates of the timber yield were not complete.
"Forests NSW needs to revisit its estimates of future supply," the report says.
The state "should" have timber to meet contracts until 2023, but any new agreements would have to take into account the dwindling amount of suitable trees, the report says.
Forests NSW is a public trading enterprise within the Department of Primary Industries and manages 2.2 million hectares of native forest and 48,140 hectares of hardwood plantations.
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