The Draft Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program Strategy must be viewed against a background which acknowledges that:
- NSW forests are managed across a range tenures some of which are managed for conservation and ecological services, and others for extractive forestry;
- there is a history of poor compliance, lack of enforcement and inadequate monitoring of environmental outcomes in tenures managed for extractive forestry; and
- this history provides a poor baseline for setting and monitoring environmental outcomes in forest management, particularly extractive forestry, moving forward.
Our submission makes a number of recommendations for improving the draft NSW Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program Strategy.