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Restoring Bribie Island’s Native Woodlands
About this issue
Leading the transition away from Pine Plantations
As urban development continues to pave its way across South East Queensland, restoring Bribie Island’s woodlands offers the opportunity to create a vital safe-haven for coastal biodiversity, and a living legacy for future generations.
Significant tracts of Bribie Island’s native woodlands have been cleared and planted with exotic pine trees since the 1960s. Today, 2,700 hectares of these plantations—around 20% of the island—remain under a long-term license issued to forestry company HQ Plantations. The Bribie plantations represent 1% of HQP’s forestry estate across Queensland.
Bribie’s pine plantations were first established in the ‘60s to supply pulp for the paper industry. Today, most of the timber crop is destined for low-value landscape products, plywood, and softwood furniture, with only a small portion suitable for structural-grade timber.
As the first round of harvesting in 25 years begins this July, BIEPA sees a once-in-a-generation opportunity to embark on a landmark restoration project, transforming the land back to high conservation value native woodland.
How it impacts our mission
Flora – Healthy native habitat is the foundation of biodiversity. The clearing of woodlands to establish pine plantations saw the loss of vast tracts of Bribie’s thriving woodland. Areas where plant communities once thrived became monoculture of pines. Restoring these areas would see endemic coastal plant species recolonise, re-establish ecological processes—and once more support rich coastal biodiversity.
Wildlife – Plantation establishment destroyed the homes of many native animal species. These losses in turn led to local extinctions, most iconic of these being the loss of the island’s coastal emu population. The return of large tracts of vibrant coastal woodland would see Bribie Island host increased diversity of coastal wildlife.
Environment – The Bribie Island plantations contribute to the spread of invasive species such as feral pigs and pine wildings, which threaten the surrounding national park, and wetland ecosystems. Chemical use—including fertilisers and herbicides—poses risks to water quality, particularly in sensitive areas adjoining Ramsar-listed wetlands. As a uniform monoculture, pine plantations store less carbon and support fewer ecological functions than do diverse native habitats.
Community – Replanting pine now would lock the island’s land into decades-long industrial use, and would miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the community to be part of a world-leading restoration project. A restored Bribie Island would offer lasting recreational, cultural, educational, and wellbeing benefits—strengthening the island’s identity as a true sanctuary for nature.
Sustainability – The long-term resilience of Bribie Island depends on forward-thinking planning. Continued plantation operations will place chronic pressure on infrastructure, most significantly the ageing Bribie Bridge—costs borne by the community and not repaid by the timber industry.
Bribie’s transformation would enhance the island’s potential as a nature-based tourism destination and serve as a model for ecological repair—creating opportunities to return lost species and provide high-quality, conservation-focused visitor experiences on Brisbane’s doorstep.
What we are doing about it
BIEPA calls on the Queensland Government to lead a coordinated transition away from plantations, through engagment with HQ Plantations’ institutional owners, its US-based asset managers, the island's Traditional Owners, Nature Repair Market practitioners, and the community. Together, stakeholders can design a strategy that shifts Bribie Island from plantation forestry toward ecological restoration and conservation leadership.
This would be one of the first and most iconic coastal biodiversity projects in Australia’s newly created Nature Repair Market—turning ecological repair into a recognised and tradable environmental asset.
Each harvested plantation block should be progressively restored to native woodland. These restored areas would then be incorporated into Queensland’s Protected Area Estate to ensure their enduring conservation benefit.
To support HQP’s ongoing forestry operations, land offering equivalent productivity could be secured in exchange, enabling both ecological restoration on Bribie, and continued timber production in a location closer to HQP’s main forestry operations, providing improved profitability by reducing the operational costs associated with managing the island's plantations.
In the meantime, BIEPA will continue to raise concerns with HQP about plantation management practices affecting conservation values of the Bribie Island National Park and the Ramsar-listed wetlands. These practices need urgent improvement to protect the island’s fragile ecosystems, and include: inadequate feral animal control; pine “wildings” invading the national park and left uncontrolled; herbicide drift and fertiliser runoff flowing into the adjacent National Park wetlands; and numerous biosecurity threats, including the introduction of fire ants.
Restoration of the woodlands supports BIEPA’s vision for a future Bribie that is a safe-haven for coastal biodiversity—an island sanctuary where life flourishes.
First published 22 June 2025
