The Forestry Corporation of NSW manages around 2.15 million hectares of State Forests, balancing commercial timber production with tourism, recreation, conservation, and cultural values. These forests provide significant environmental, economic, social, and cultural benefits to the state, but the full range of these values had not previously been quantified or incorporated into decision-making. This information gap has mande it challenging to allocate resources efficiently between these diverse values and activities.

Forestry Corporation engaged NCC to explore and quantify the value of the State Forest estate to NSW communities. NCC applied an ecosystem services framework to systematically assess the full suite of values — beyond just timber production — and used both market and non-market valuation techniques to quantify them, based on available data. The results revealed that the ecosystem services provided by State Forests far exceed the commercial revenues captured by Forestry Corporation, with an annual value 6-10 times greater than its timber harvesting revenue model suggests.

The results are able to be used to inform future management of state forests, particularly where revenues are expected to decline through the phasing out of commercial logging. The consideration of ongoing, Community Service Obligation-type funding is warranted to ensure the significant public benefits from these forests do not get impacted through decreased management actions.