A WWF report, released this week, found that new deforestation hotspots were emerging in Tasmania.

Eastern Australia was identified in the report as a so-called deforestation front - making Australia the only developed nation in the world to be included in the list of 24 fronts, which are defined by a significant concentration of deforestation hotspots.

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The WWF concluded that in the 13 years from 2004 to 2017, an area of forest six times the size of Tasmania (more than 43 million hectares) was lost across the globe.

"Tasmania's forest industry is the ultimate renewable," Tasmanian Forest Products Association chief executive Nick Steel said. "It replants for the future according to a long-term plan, it helps tackle climate change by taking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it ... ; and it supports more than 5,700 direct and indirect jobs in our state."

Institute of Foresters of Australia president Bob Gordon said timber production involved harvesting and then regenerating areas of forest, so it didn't cause permanent removal of tree cover. "Therefore it cannot be classed as deforestation as per the internationally accepted definition of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations," he said.

WWF conservation scientist Martin Taylor said "knee-high regrowth doesn't a forest make" and "you've got to let about 300 years go by and then you might get forest".

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