The reputation of Australia's $2 billion timber export industry is in question after four Queensland workers were fined and sentenced to jail for illegally exporting timber. Three directors and an employee of a wholesale timber and flooring company in Brisbane pleaded guilty to falsifying Commonwealth documents to send timber to a number of countries between 2006 and 2009.

PEFC has cleared Forestry Tasmania of unsustainable harvesting practices and re-certified the company for another three years. The audit came after allegations that the company was logging native forest at twice the rate of sustainable yield. The outcome was met with criticism from Kim Booth of the Australian Green Party who said, “the PEFC auditing that's done on Australian forestry standard harvesting methods is not worth the paper it's written on because the market's rejected it and that's the essential problem that Forestry Tasmania has fallen into”.

An article covering a new report from the Centre for International Forest Research (CIFOR) on how REDD+ is facing major implementation challenges. One of the major issues is ‘who gets paid?’ It can create a perverse incentive for some actors to say ‘I intend to deforest; pay me not to’. Added to this, it is being supported by voluntary markets. To take off in earnest requires firm global targets to be set on reducing emissions; then an effective cap-and-trade system can be put in place which would see major investment in REDD+ projects. However, the authors still conclude that REDD+ has a future due to the realities of climate change and the role preventing deforestation has to play in mitigating climate change.

Allegations made against Tasmania’s state-owned forestry company of unsustainable harvesting of its native forests. PEFC is now investigating whether the company has breached its standards on managing its forests sustainably.