I grew up in a forestry town (Wingham, NSW mid north coast), back then the place supported 2 sawmills and some of the smaller towns also had mills that fed rough sawn material to the big mill in town. All sawn timber, no chipping.
State Forests had quite a few workers employed maintaining picnic areas, maintaining roads/tracks, weed control and doing actual research on how the forest recovered after logging. The roads were that well looked after that we used to explore in a XC Fairmont what are now 4x4 only tracks.
Those forests were logged for around 150 years with bullock teams and rail lines to bring the timber out before trucks became available. It was found that they did such a good job managing the parcels of forest that over time they became adsorbed into the NP. So the available logging areas became fewer and the quality of the available timber dropped off the big mill and the feeder mills closed.
With fewer state forests in the area, the State Forest employees were laid off, but NP doesn't have a budget or manpower to do much, so does bugger all in maintenance. I'm all for forest management, log a bit, preserve a bit and allow access to a bit. It keeps the fire access tracks open and keeps the clowns that want to rip the shite out of it in check because someone cares. I don't think putting an orange steel gate across is the answer.
One mill still is running, but he saw the writing on the wall 40 years ago and bought up big on bush blocks near the Cells River, put in a couple of plantations and does deals with farmers to take select logs.
I agree that it all seems to be getting done so a small number of inner city people that have no intention of ever visiting the area can have a warm and fuzzy just knowing its there.