In 2013 the controversial Tasmanian Forest Agreement (TFA) was signed between government, the logging industry and select environment groups. This agreement provided very generous taxpayer funded payouts to loggers to exit the industry for a minimum of 3 years. While putting almost 350,000 hectares of forests into temporary reserve, known as Future Potential Production Forests (FPPF). The Tasmanian Liberal government refers to these vast ancient forests however as a 'wood bank'. 

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In 2014 the newly elected Tasmanian Liberal government set about to pull apart all the elements of the TFA aimed at forest protection. Ensuring that the FPPF forests would be available for logging for specialty timbers immediately, and from April 2020, open to logging by the state government logging agency Forestry Tasmania (re-branded Sustainable Timber Tasmania). 

 

These areas reopened for logging include large areas of forests in north east Tasmania, and forests around the Blue Derby, Bay Of Fires and St Helens MTB linking trails, Maydena and the Takayna/Tarkine.

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In recent months Tasmanian Liberal government has been vocal about putting all the current FPPF forests back into logging coupes by the end of 2023!

 

This flies in the face of all biodiversity and climate knowledge showing these ancient forests are out most important assets for protecting Tasmania's unique wildlife, and storing carbon. These forests are worth more standing as tourism destinations, carbon banks, water sheds and biodiversity arks. 

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See the maps below showing the threatened forests and MTB trails that are part of making north east Tasmania one of the best MTB tourism draw cards in Australia.