Australia is home to some of the world’s most ancient forests. The benefits of native forests are extensive—they are efficient carbon sinks, they are amongst the most biodiverse environments on the planet, and they provide vast quantities of water (and preserve the quality of the water table).

This paper offers policy-makers a blueprint for assessing the true value of native forests. Recognising the inherent preferencing of the quantitative (particularly when it comes to Expenditure Review Committee processes), the authors conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of conserving the native forests of the Upper and Lower North East Regional Forest Agreement areas of New South Wales, also known as the North Coast. This piece of work builds upon the previously published cost-benefit analysis of alternate land uses versus logging in Victoria’s Central Highlands.