Removal of dead wood and dead trees was listed as a KEY THREATENING PROCESS on Schedule 3 of the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 [12 December 2003].
The “removal of dead wood and dead trees” includes: the removal of forest and woodland waste left after timber harvesting, collecting fallen timber for firewood, burning on site, mulching on site, the removal of fallen branches and litter as general tidying up, and the removal of standing dead trees.
Dead wood and dead trees provide essential habitat for a wide variety of native animals and are important to the functioning of many ecosystems. The removal of dead wood can have a range of environmental consequences, including the loss of habitat (as they often contain hollows used for shelter by animals), disruption of ecosystem process and soil erosion.
Removal of dead old trees (either standing or on the ground) results in the loss of important habitat such as hollows and decaying wood (Gibbons & Lindenmayer 2002) for a wide variety of vertebrates, invertebrates and microbial species and may adversely affect the following threatened species: Broad-headed Snake, Orange-bellied Parrot, Regent Parrot (eastern subspecies), Five-clawed Worm-skink, Nurus atlas, Nurus brevis, Meridolum corneovirens, Pale-headed Snake, Stephens' Banded Snake, Rosenberg's Goanna, Pink Cockatoo, Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, Glossy Black-cockatoo, Turquoise Parrot, Scarlet-chested Parrot, Barking Owl, Superb Parrot, Masked Owl, Hoary Wattled Bat, Spotted-tailed Quoll, Eastern False Pipistrelle, Eastern Freetail-bat, Squirrel Glider, Brush-tailed Phascogale, Glandular Frog, Red-crowned Toadlet, Brown Treecreeper (eastern subspecies).
The forests and woodlands of the Western Slopes and Tablelands are the ecological communities most threatened by dead wood removal because they contain popular firewood species. This region of NSW has been extensively cleared for agriculture and remnant patches of woodland are severely impacted by dead wood removal (Wall & Reid 1993). Removal of dead wood may also affect other forest communities, including wet sclerophyll forests and rainforests, particularly in small and easily accessible areas.