Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I ran 37 kilometres through the forest in Takayna to experience firsthand its beauty, with massive trees spanning like sentinels of time. It made one thing very clear: some places are too important to gamble with, because once you fragment them you can't simply rebuild what took thousands of years to form. I call on the government to accelerate and support the World Heritage listing of the Takayna forest to ensure enduring protection of this incredible area. It's an ancient environment doing the quiet work for our planet, acting as a carbon sink that's absorbing the excesses of our modern economies.

It's a nationally significant Aboriginal cultural landscape with an exceptional concentration of cultural heritage sites. The old debate, jobs versus environment, is outdated when we have the choice of stewardship that supports biodiversity, cultural heritage, climate resilience and sustainable regional economies. Protecting the Takayna forest is a serious climate policy. Old forests and peat-rich soils lock away carbon built up over long timescales. Once disturbed, emissions are released and recovery takes decades to centuries. Credible analysis suggests that, in this forest, over 100 billion tonnes of carbon are sequestered, which equates to $15 billion in offsets. Rather than wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on carbon capture and storage, let's lock in high-integrity natural carbon stores by protecting the Takayna forest.