Australia’s commercial timber plantation estate is fundamental to the sustainability and competitiveness of the Australian forestry sector and growing the estate has been a key Australian Government policy objective for some time (National Forestry Policy Statement (1992) and Plantations for Australia: The 2020 Vision (1997).
However, after decades of substantial growth in Australia’s commercial timber plantation estate, the area of plantations declined from 2.02 million hectares in 2011–12 to 1.97 million hectares in 2015–16. This raises questions about the future availability of plantation logs and consequent impacts on the forestry sector.
