The federal government will ask UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to strip the Tasmanian World Heritage Wilderness Area of 74,000 hectares of highly contentious forest.

The area, believed to be up to 117 parcels, was part of a 170,000 hectare extension to the World Heritage Area by the committee last June.

The government is winding back World Heritage Protection in Tasmania's forests agreed to under the Labor government. Credit:Peter Mathew

It was nominated through an exhaustively argued Tasmanian forest peace deal.