Conservationists are concerned that a majority of trees cleared under a new plan in Tasmania will be wasted.

The Tasmanian Government has released a draft plan on future access to ‘special species’ timber, which seeks to simplify the application process to harvest specialty timbers.

The Wilderness Society's Vica Bayley said previous reports suggested more than half of the trees cut down under the proposal would be wasted.

“We have digested this report and it demonstrates that there is a log product recovery of 0.4 applied and that is because it is impossible to detect internal defects in some of these trees,” he told the ABC.

“What this means is that six out of every 10 trees that are cut down under this plan would be wasted, woodchipped or otherwise of very low value.”

The plan uses a ‘log product recovery factor’ to account for trees with undetected internal defects.

“A log product recovery factor of 0.4 was applied for all species in this report,” the report states.

Mr Bayley said it allowed for huge numbers of old-growth rainforest trees to be woodchipped and wasted.

“This plan talks about 420,000 hectares of old growth and rainforests within Tasmania's Reserve Estate,” he said.

The Tasmanian Government says it is about trying to balance environmental and business concerns.

“The draft management plan, which was developed by members of the Ministerial Advisory Council, makes clear that there are a range of challenges for the special species timber sector in accessing the volumes of timber it needs in order to sustain the industry,” a government spokesperson told reporters.

“The plan is currently out for public consultation and we look forward to receiving feedback.”

The Tasmanian Government has suffered some setbacks in its attempts to open up more forestry, with the failure of its contentious Forestry (Unlocking Production Forests) Bill 2017 earlier this year.

When the Special Species Management Plan was released, Resources Minister Guy Barnett appeared keen to get harvesting happening.

“Unfortunately, while the plan sets out a way forward for the sector, a large proportion of the resource identified will not be able to be accessed in practice until our legislation to unlock production forests and fix up the unworkable application process for special species harvesting is passed,” he said.

“The Liberal Government is continuing to back the special species sector by seeking a fresh mandate from the Tasmanian people for this legislation at the next election.

“By releasing a draft plan for public consultation now, we are ensuring that we will have an approved Special Species Management Plan in place so that harvesting can commence as soon as possible after our legislation passes.”