"Unacceptable" tree-felling has been taking place in areas being assessed for the planned Great Koala National Park in northern NSW, according to the multiple conservation groups behind a report into logging in the region.
"Really important areas of the proposed new national park are being logged ... effectively destroyed forever," Wilderness Australia chair and former federal Labor minister Bob Debus said on Wednesday.
Greens MP Sue Higginson said the delay in the park's delivery amid continued logging had fuelled "white hot pain and anger".
"This will go down as one of the biggest environmental political failures of our time," she said.
"Never before have we been in this situation, where the very natural environment that is subject to a public pledge of protection is systematically destroyed, it's a disgrace."
But what some consider disappointing delays, others think are necessary to balance environmental protection with industry support.
"We appreciate the fact that the government is taking its time to get input from all the stakeholders," Australian Workers' Union secretary Tony Callinan told AAP.
"We can have sufficient forestry area for koalas to prosper and we can have a viable, responsible timber industry."
The NSW Labor government is halfway through its first term after promising before the March 2023 election to deliver the national park.
It would still be delivered, but the government was also committed to ensuring a sustainable timber industry, a spokeswoman said.
A Forestry Corporation of NSW spokeswoman said 12,000ha in the assessment area's most critical habitat hubs had been protected, but timber production was among the multiple uses for state forests.
"Forestry Corporation has an obligation to continue supplying critical timber resources ... and supplying an industry that employs thousands of people in regional NSW," she said.
WWF Australia conservation scientist Stuart Blanch called for the government to stop logging in the assessment area and pay timber workers to stand down until the national park was decided.
But Mr Callinan described that as a ludicrous suggestion, adding to the uncertainty for timber workers and wasting taxpayer money.
"No business would cop any group saying to them, just pay the workers to do nothing ... if a trade union came out and said workers should be paid for doing nothing, we'd be ridiculed, heckled and criticised," he said.
Advocates for the park want it to cover 176,000ha, while the timber industry has a preferred proposal for 37,000ha but would accept 58,000ha.
The government was yet to decide how big the park would be, Premier Chris Minns told a budget estimates hearing in February.
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