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Two arrests made at logging protest in NSW forest

NSW activists tried to block forest logging and environmentalists want to make it an election issue.

NSW activists tried to block forest logging and environmentalists want to make it an election issue. Photo: AAP

Two environmental activists have been arrested after dozens tried to block logging in a New South Wales state forest.

Up to 50 activists on Monday attended the protest at the Bulga State Forest in the state’s Mid North Coast region, Greens MP Sue Higginson told AAP.

The activists, who are determined to turn native forest logging into an election issue in the NSW state poll in March, had been camping nearby before blocking a road in the forest.

Images show about two dozen activists dressed as koalas and owls blocking the forest road, with Ms Higginson also present.

One female activist sat in a hammock suspended across the road on a large bamboo tripod, before she was brought down by police rescue crews and taken to the Taree police station.

Another protester was arrested, and charged at the scene.

Ms Higginson said the area of forest is serving as a refuge after being surrounded by two fires, and evidence clearly shows native forest logging is having a detrimental effect on NSW native flora and fauna.

“The reason the community is standing here is because report after report is showing that we need an intervention in the way we’re managing these public native forests,” she said.

A Forestry Corporation spokesperson said Bulga State Forest has been subject to native forest logging and logging of hardwood plantations for the past 100 years.

The protest did not stop logging activities, and felling continued on Monday in a plantation within the forest, the spokesperson told AAP.

“Timber from both the native regrowth and plantation operations is supplied to local mills for processing into products like flooring, decking and power poles,” they said.

The corporation has stressed it harvests lumber under strict regulations to protect wildlife and native flora.

Forestry Corporation manages more than 20,000 square kilometres of the state’s native and plantation forests, and was fined more than $500,000 in recent months for illegal logging in the Land and Environment Court.

The corporation’s CEO Anshul Chaudhary told budget estimates last year many of the illegal activities were due to “human error”.

AAP has contacted NSW Police for comment.

-AAP

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