The theft of firewood from Victorian forests is growing with authorities pointing to the rising cost of living. There are concerns black market operators are preying on Victorians attempting to cut down on their power bills.
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00:00Under the cover of darkness, a centuries-old tree quickly turned into illegal firewood.
00:07These are really criminal elements.
00:09These are people who are taking advantage of a black market industry
00:13and seeing the opportunity to sell to unsuspecting consumers.
00:18It's a crime Victoria's conservation regulator says is becoming more common.
00:23Rates have doubled since 2021.
00:25We're seeing that up to 9,000 trees being taken per annum across Victoria.
00:31So this is not small quantities of timber, it's quite significant scale.
00:36To put that into perspective, conservation regulator calculations reveal the MCG
00:41could be covered nearly 180 times every year by the trees illegally chopped down from the state's forests.
00:49I think there's a number of drivers in illegal trade of firewood and theft.
00:54Cost of living is one of those, for sure.
00:58Brady Childs leads a team tasked with cracking down on environmental crime.
01:03Through a little 300-metre walk here we counted over 80 trees that have been felled in this area.
01:09This isn't an official track.
01:11It's been carved through the forest by illegal firewood harvesters, most likely working at night time.
01:17Authorities have come and blocked the track, but significant damage has already been done.
01:23A 2020 CSIRO report found a quarter of Melbourne households surveyed used firewood
01:28and more than a third of regional Victorian homes, mostly for heating.
01:33The Firewood Association of Australia has seen more people turn towards wood heating in recent years
01:39in response to living costs.
01:41The cost of electricity and gas has gone through the roof over the last five, ten years now.
01:46If they have the ability to do it, then people are choosing to go for it.
01:49But that's fuelling a lucrative black market.