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Australian Government: Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry

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Type and extent of Australia's Forests

Map of Australia showing the extent of forest type across Australia

Australia has 149 million hectares of forest. Of this, 147 million hectares is native forest, dominated by eucalypt (79%) and acacia (7%) forest types, and 1.82 million hectares is plantations.

The increasing availability of high-resolution, remote sensing data and better methods for determining forest continue to improve estimates of Australia's forest cover. This largely explains the change in estimated total forest area from 164 million hectares in 2003 to 149 million hectares reported here; little of the change is due to real forest loss.

Seventy percent of the total forest estate is privately managed, including on private freehold, leasehold and Indigenous-managed lands. The area of Australia's native forest in formal nature conservation reserves increased from 13% to 16% over the reporting period, to 23 million hectares. The area of multiple-use public native forests (in which wood production is an objective) declined from 11.4 to 9.4 million hectares.

With an estimated 4% of the world's forests, Australia has the world's sixth-largest forest estate and the fourth-largest area of forest in nature conservation reserves.

The vast majority of Australia's native forest is evergreen broadleaf. With the notable exception of mallee, forest distribution is confined mainly to regions with an average rainfall exceeding 500 millimetres per year. Most forests occur in the northern, eastern and southwestern coastal zones, although woodland forests extend inland (see figure on page 1).

For national reporting purposes, forests are grouped into eight native forest types defined by dominant species (Table 1) and structure. The first seven are: acacia, callitris, casuarina, eucalypt (divided into 11 subtypes), mangrove, melaleuca and rainforest. The eighth group, 'other', comprises forest types with relatively small total areas. Queensland has the largest area of forest (35% of the total), about half of which is classified as eucalypt medium woodland. The Northern Territory has about 20% of the forest estate, mostly low and medium eucalypt woodland and medium open eucalypt forest. Queensland and the Northern Territory also contain almost all (98%) of the melaleuca forest. New South Wales has about 18% of the total forest area, including about 16 million hectares of tall and medium open forest. The area of forest as a percentage of the total land area ranges from 55% in the Australian Capital Territory to 7% in Western Australia (Table 2).

Table 1: Australia's forest area, by forest type
Forest type Total ('000 ha) % of total
Native forest Acacia 10,365 7
Callitris 2,597 2
Casuarina 2,229 1
Eucalypt 116,449 78
Eucalypt low closed 44 0.03
Eucalypt low open 2,648 2
Eucalypt low woodland 13,423 9
Eucalypt mallee open 376 0.3
Eucalypt mallee woodland 8,871 6
Eucalypt medium closed 254 0.2
Eucalypt medium open 28,145 19
Eucalypt medium woodland 56,187 38
Eucalypt tall closed 123 0.1
Eucalypt tall open 5,881 4
Eucalypt tall woodland 497 0.3
Mangrove 980 1
Melaleuca 7,556 5
Rainforest 3,280 2
Other 3,942 3
Native forest total 147,397 147,397
Plantationa 1,818 1
Australian forest total 149,215 100
a Comprises both hardwood and softwood plantations.
Note: Totals might not tally due to rounding.
Source: National Forest Inventory, National Plantation Inventory.

Table 2: Forest as a percentage of land area, by jurisdiction
  Native forest areaa ('000 ha) Plantation areab
('000 ha)		 Total land areac
('000 ha)		 Forest as % of
jurisdiction		 % of Australia's
forest
ACT 123 10 243 55 <1
NSW 26,208 345 80,064 33 18
NT 31,010 26 134,913 23 21
Qld 52,582 233 173,065 31 35
SA 8,855 172 98,348 9 6
Tas. 3,116 248 6,840 49 2
Vic. 7,838 396 22,742 36 5
WA 17,664 389 252,988 7 12
Total 147,397 1,818 769,202 19 100
Sources: a) NFI, b) Parsons and Garran (2007), c) ABS (2006a)
Note: Totals might not tally due to rounding.

Further reading

Davidson J, Davey S, Singh S, Parsons M, Stokes B and Gerrand A (2008). The Changing Face of Australia's Forests, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

MIG (2008). Australia's State of the Forests Report 2008, Montreal Process Implementation Group for Australia, Canberra.

NFI (2005). Report on the National Forest Inventory Workshop on Monitoring Forest Extent and Condition, Melbourne, 15-16 November 2005, National Forest Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

NFI (2007). Australia's Forests at a Glance, National Forest Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

Parsons M and Gavran M (2007). Australia's Plantations 2007: Inventory Update. National Plantation Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.