The government has been accused of misleading the UN in its bid to strip world heritage protection from tracts of Tasmanian forest, after the release of pictures purportedly showing that ecologically pristine areas will be delisted.

Bob Brown, the former Greens leader, has released a tranche of photos from the Weld Valley, one of several areas where the government wants to remove a total of 74,000 hectares of the world heritage protection.

Brown said the images were evidence that 90% of the 74,000 hectares are “pristine, magnificent forests”. The government has argued a world heritage boundary extension last year include areas of logged, degraded forest that is being unnecessarily “locked up” from the timber industry.

The government has formally requested the world heritage committee reduce the protected Tasmanian forest area by 4.7%, claiming that the Tasmanian economy will benefit and that landholders were not properly consulted over the extension.

Brown told Guardian Australia: “The boundary has not been drawn by any environmental consistency, it’s for pure commercial expedience. I think their hidden agenda is to privatise the forests.

“I’ve spent many days and nights in the forests on the hit list. They are a tourism drawcard and far more valuable as carbon storage than woodchips.”

A Senate inquiry into the delisting has so far received more than 6,000 submissions, mostly against the plan.

Legal group the Australian Network of Environmental Defender’s Offices (ANEDO) said the government has incorrectly suggested that threatened species such as the Tasmanian devil will be protected if the world heritage listing is removed.

The ANEDO said the government’s submission to the UN is “misleading” and that the removal of world heritage protection will also exempt forestry operations from the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the key Australian legislation used to protect threatened species.

‘The presence of ‘disturbed and previously logged forest’ and ‘pine and exotic eucalypt plantations’ within the world heritage area is not a sound basis upon which to seek to modify its boundary,” the legal group’s submission said.

“It is clear that a significant portion of the forest area proposed for removal has not been disturbed or previously logged.”

Bob Brown says the forest under threat is ‘a tourism drawcard and far more valuable as carbon storage than woodchips’. Photograph: Bill Hatcher Photograph: The Bob Brown Foundation

The submission adds: “Modifying properties on the basis of domestic political whim is a bad precedent to set and something the Australian government should not encourage.

“The precedent could open the floodgates for signatories to the convention to seek modification or removal of properties to satisfy domestic political demands.”

In its submission to the world heritage committee, the Department of Environment said it is seeking a “minor boundary modification” to remove plots of land which diminish the overall quality of the protected area. It also highlights that many nearby landholders aren’t happy about the new boundary.

The submission references 117 patches of “disturbed and previously logged forest”. Environment minister Greg Hunt has previously referenced photos of these disturbed areas, although the government has so far declined to release these pictures. It has, however, detailed where the new boundary will lie compared to its current incarnation.