Police have dismantled a Sydney blockade staged by protesters fighting for an end to logging in native forests.
Medical doctor Lisa Searle has been arrested after officers were called to the headquarters of the state-owned Forestry Corporation on Tuesday.
The group had gathered before dawn to block an access road leading to the site at West Pennant Hills, with Dr Searle locking herself to a metal gate.
The blockade follows a run of stop-work orders imposed on the Forestry Corporation over its alleged incompetent conduct in state forests home to endangered species, including Australia's largest gliding possum.
Dr Searle believes many Australians don't understand the destruction being done in native forests by a corporation owned by the NSW government.
"People are not aware of how absolutely disgraceful the behaviour of the Forestry Corporation is in these areas," she told AAP before her arrest.
AAP has sought comment from the Forestry Corporation.
The Environment Protection Authority has stopped harvesting in two state forests in recent weeks, amid allegations of incompetent conduct.
The watchdog has raised serious concerns about pre-harvest surveys that are meant to identify and protect habitat trees for at-risk species in the Tallaganda and Flat Rock state forests.
In both cases, concerned citizens went into those forests and found hollow-bearing den trees the Forestry Corporation did not.
The corporation has admitted it went looking for Southern Greater Glider den trees in Tallaganda during the day, when the nocturnal greater gliders would have been asleep inside their tree hollows.
The EPA is revising protocols to ensure the forestry industry does searches in a competent way.
But the watchdog is refusing to release a photo its officers took of a dead, endangered Southern Greater Glider found about 50 metres from where trees were being felled in the Tallaganda State Forest.
Under rules designed to protect important habitat, the Forestry Corporation must identify den trees and enforce a 50m exclusion zone to safeguard bush that surrounds them.
NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson says the public needs to see the photo and the results of an autopsy.
"As upsetting as these images may be to some people, they are fundamental in the public being informed about what's happening to nature on the public forest estate," she said.
Late last week, the EPA said: "We do not intend to release the post-mortem or images of the dead glider to avoid the risk of prejudicing any legal investigation processes".
At budget estimates hearings earlier this month, EPA chief executive Tony Chappel said investigations had identified a number of potentially serious breaches by the Forestry Corporation in Tallaganda.
Mr Chappel said he had preliminary advice about the glider's cause of death, but wouldn't release it to avoid prejudicing any legal process that may eventuate.
Asked if that information would eventually be shared with the public, he said: "At the relevant point in time, absolutely."
Australian Associated Press
