Many of Australia's most iconic marsupials will lose protection from logging bulldozers, under a radical overhaul proposed in secret Forestry Corporation documents.

The documents, obtained by the ABC, propose the elimination of long-standing threatened species protections, such as site-survey rules, in many NSW state forests.

Intense clearing in northern regions, and increased access to protected stream-banks across the state are other major changes.

Environmentalists say if current rules are trashed, protected marsupials including koalas, wombats, quolls, and gliders will be stealthily eliminated.

"If you don't look, you don't find and if you don't find you don't protect," said conservationist Dailan Pugh, from the North-East Forest Alliance.

The conditions are part of new forestry agreements — known as Integrated Forestry Operations Approvals (IOFA) — and cover four major operational areas across the state. Final details are expected to be announced later this year.

Wombats, quolls, koalas face loss of exclusion zones

Wombats could be "buried alive" as their burrows are crushed by machinery, Mr Pugh says. ( Supplied )

Many iconic marsupials face additional changes in the draft proposals.

The highly endangered spotted-tail quoll faces a 70 per cent reduction of no-logging zones around breeding dens — reduced from 12 hectares to 3.5 hectares.

Wombats, another protected species, are geographically protected by a line north of the Oxley Highway, requiring a 20 metre logging exclusion zone around burrows.

But Forestry Corporation negotiators want to redraw that protective line further north to Waterfall Way — eliminating the 20 metre exclusion in a vast logging zone between Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie.

Mr Pugh said that would lead to "more wombats being buried alive, as their burrows are collapsed by machinery and falling trees".

He said environmental regulators, such as the EPA, should address declining wombat numbers by expanding current protections state-wide.

For koalas in north-east NSW, Forestry Corporation proposes a "reduced survey effort" and the dropping of a longstanding rule applying 20 metre buffers to "high-use" areas.

It says future protections are "to be developed" utilising new models to retain habitat.

Cost savings if animal surveys dropped

Currently, prior to harvest, logging companies must survey for 87 vulnerable animals, many already facing threat of extinction.

Where an animal habitat is found, operators then implement site protections such as exclusion zones before logging is approved.

Relaxing rules around the surveying of habitats could harm up to 49 anima species, including the squirrel glider, environmentalists say. ( Supplied: David Milledge )

For example, under current rules a survey which finds a feed-tree used by squirrel gliders would instantly trigger the mapping of a site-specific protection zone.

Other survey targets include breeding sites such as owl roosts, raptor nests or the protective hollows inside tall trees favoured by black cockatoos and small marsupials.



While the documents suggest historic sites will be retained for some endangered animals, it recommends that in the future a "flexible protection approach" should be applied to groups of species across large habitat types.

For instance, in hardwood forests a proposed option is to "no longer survey or use site management".

Animal surveys normally trigger the protection of trees that may be favoured by red-tailed black cockatoos. ( Supplied: Western Australian Museum )

The author cites "significant cost saving" as a benefit of making the change.

But former Forestry scientist Robert Kooyman worried relaxing the rules around surveys would harm up to 49 animal species.

"Forest management requires that you know what it is you are managing," he said.

"While historic records provide an indication of habitat use, they are inevitably incomplete, do not reflect the dynamics of forests, and many animal species are highly mobile within their range and habitats, and follow resources."

Extinction warning for frogs

The Loveridge's Frog may become extinct if the buffer zones are reduced. ( Supplied: David Milledge )

Another rule change, which would allow thousands of protected streamlets to be logged with heavy cables and bulldozers, has alarmed Michael Mahoney, a leading expert on amphibians.

A "cabinet-in-confidence" document suggests reducing the existing setbacks (called riparian buffer zones) on streamlets.

The setbacks are slashed in half, from 10 metres to just five metres, along either side of protected banks.

Professor Mahoney said those long strips of habitat were "moist, protected highways" for frog populations, and critically endangered species, such as Fleay's Barred Frog and Loveridge's Frog, would go extinct in the handful of places where they spawned and bred.

He said the frogs faced a "double-whammy", with site-survey rules eliminated and their watery habitats disrupted.

The Fleay's Barred Frog could lose its "moist protected highway". ( Supplied: Dailan Pugh )

Intensive harvesting for north coast forests

The documents also propose a new "intensive harvesting" zone of 35,000 hectares of high-productivity Blackbutt Forest between Grafton and Taree.

Current rules permit just 0.8 hectares within a small coupe to be intensively harvested, but the proposed rules would allow clearing in 60 hectare zones, with just five hollow trees per hectare retained.

Conservation groups believe up to 90 per cent of the new zone would be clear-felled under this approach.

Mr Pugh said he believed it would create "quasi-plantations", and argued the new approach would not prevent damage to the viable habitat that remained.

"With each logging, the dwindling numbers of remnant old trees required to be retained as fauna habitat are being recklessly damaged during logging and are progressively being eliminated," he said.

Government won't rule out changes to conditions

The Frogmouth could lose breeding sites if logging rules are loosened. ( Supplied: David Milledge )

An EPA spokesperson confirmed the documents were from late 2015, but declined to answer written questions provided by the ABC.

The spokesperson said more detail was expected soon.

"The Natural Resources Commission has reviewed and provided advice to the Government on the proposed IFOA and the Government will then consult with the community on the draft IFOA later this year," they said.

Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton said her Government needed to balance timber-workers' jobs and "preserving the environment", and she had full confidence that new regulations would continue to protect flora and fauna.

"I'm confident as the NSW Minister for the Environment, that the EPA, an independent regulator which the Government set up in 2012, is well equipped to bring their knowledge, their expertise to the table in reworking those licenses," she said.

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