FORESTRY was a black mark against Tasmania's world-class tourism industry, an ecotourism conference was told yesterday.

The findings of a team from the annual National Geographic stewardship survey were outlined to 250 delegates at the week-long Ecotourism Australia conference in Hobart.

Jonathon Tourtellot, director of National Geographic's Centre for Sustainable Destinations and geotourism editor of Traveler magazine, said the survey team was concerned about elements of Tasmania's forestry practices.

Mr Tourtellot, who is based in Washington DC, said Tasmania was in the top five of 115 destinations rated for their "stewardship" of values -- with a score of 77 -- in last year's Traveler.

"That's a pretty good score," said Mr Tourtellot, who leads the now-annual project involving 200 to 400 panellists in tourism, conservation and heritage.
He read panellists' comments about Tasmania including "logging out of control", "all aspects positive except for logging", and citing the "atrocious" exemption of forestry from threatened species laws.

But he said Tasmania also had a large amount of forest protection on a world basis.

"Many of the arguments about logging are exactly the same as in the US, Alaska, for example," he said. Mr Tourtellot said the issues addressed by the survey appealed to well-educated and well-heeled travellers.

"Tasmania is lucky because it's one of the last under-populated areas on earth, so that openness and lack of crowds is ... an important thing to protect," he said.

"That said, there's a lot of room for additional sustainable tourism."

He also warned that "the scorecard can go down".

Conference convenor and Ecotourism Australia chairwoman Claire McFarlane said Forestry Tasmania, which hosted a conference tour to Tahune AirWalk and is an event sponsor, was a tourism operator as well as a logging company.

She said debate on conservation issues could have a positive effect on tourism.

"Last year's conservation issue can be this year's tourism destination," she said.

Tourism Minister Paula Wriedt said the forestry comments might have been made without knowledge of the Community Forest Agreement brokered between the state and federal governments.

She said the deal had resolved many of the issues raised by Mr Tourtellot.