Victoria’s state-owned logging business is on the verge of being dismantled and absorbed into other areas of the bureaucracy after the state government reclassified it and announced a review of its operations. VicForests has been under financial pressure after recording a $52.4 million loss in the 2021-22 financial year, blaming legal battles that had stopped it from logging and forced it to pay compensation to clients for missed orders.

Environmental groups are calling on VicForests to abandon logging plans in the state's alpine region after endangered native plants were found near the earmarked sites. Five threatened plant species were seen at several coupes near Mount Stirling by surveyors from the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) and the Victorian Forest Alliance.

VicForests hired a private investigator to spy on environmental campaigners and an academic, an investigation by the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) has found. The investigation was sparked by an ABC report in 2021, in which a private investigator blew the whistle on his alleged spying work for the state government-owned logging agency.

Just as research has shown the health benefits of being in nature, the Victorian government has allowed its parks to fall into disrepair. A Cranbourne family arrives at a Rubicon campsite to find a thicket of blackberry weeds adjoining a power station. A park ranger’s job is reduced to cleaning toilets. A Preston couple can’t find a parking spot at Warburton, where traffic to Mount Donna Buang is choked, and a bike trail plan divides the community. 

Victorian authorities are investigating allegations critically endangered trees were illegally cleared in the state's Central Highlands. One specimen photographed buried under a pile of bulldozed flora is believed to be hundreds of years old.

By the end of this year, native forest logging will cease in Victoria. Now begins a long and difficult process to recover vast areas of forest after more than 50 years of clearfelling and other destructive logging practices. The supply of sawlogs in Victoria was close to being exhausted, and the state’s logging industry had long been financially unviable. Restoring the forest offers the opportunity to put something better in its place.

By the end of the year, Victoria’s trouble-plagued native forest industry will end – six years ahead of schedule. The state’s mountain ash forests and endangered wildlife will at last be safe from chainsaws. And there will be no shortage of wood – there’s more than enough plantation timber to fill the gap.

Native forest logging in Victoria will end in December, six years earlier than previously planned, after the state government decided severe bushfires and legal campaigns had made it economically and environmentally unviable. The announcement by the Andrews Labor government in Tuesday’s state budget follows a landmark supreme court judgment last November that the state-owned logging agency, VicForests, had broken the law by failing to protect endangered species.

The Andrews Labor Government has legal grounds to suspend its controversial wood pulp contract, according to new legal advice from top silk Perry Herzfeld SC and barrister Daye Gang. The barristers, who specialise in public law, have advised The Wilderness Society that the Andrews Government could suspend its wood pulp supply contract before 2030 without paying contractual penalties.

Victoria could end native forest logging before its 2030 deadline without paying contractual penalties, according to fresh legal advice commissioned by environmental groups. The Andrews government is contractually obliged to supply pulpwood, a by-product of harvesting for sawlogs, to Maryvale pulp and paper mill.