The West Australian native forestry industry is bracing for more job losses as a historic decision by the state government to ban commercial logging takes hold, with contractors and saw millers still in the dark over key supply details on the first day of the new regime.
The WA government expects the logging ban to save close to 2 million hectares of native forest, but has also promised some workers in the state’s south-western timber towns a future supply of wood from a process known as ecological thinning.