She was a WIRES volunteer attending to wildlife after the fires. She saw so many animals displaced, their habitats destroyed.

"No sooner than three weeks after the fires I could see logging trucks taking partially burnt timer out of Mogo State Forest even though we had just lost so much forest," she said.

"In a time when the forest was so stressed and so much had been lost, animal habitat was being carted away."

That was the moment she became interested in the future of the logging industry, and its profitability.

Ms Taylor-Mills is moderator on a panel at the An Alternative Vision for South Coast Forests event the Nature Conservation Council is hosting in Moruya on April 4.

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Professor David Lindenmayer from the Australian National University is leading the panel - an authority on biodiversity and logging, particularly in post-fire landscapes.

Former editor of the magazine Australian Birdlife Sean Dooley, Fiona McCuaig from Bodalla Dairy and Pub, Walbanga Elder Uncle Bunja Smith and Coastwatchers Association Forest Working Group Joslyn Van Der Moolen form the rest of the panel.

The main question posed on the night, according to Ms Taylor-Mills is "why is it that we are still logging our native forests in an era when almost no income is sourced from hard-wood state forests?"

"The income derived from logging in the state forests is very, very small compared to the income derived from soft-wood pine plantation.

"The event is for anyone in the Eurobodalla who is interested in, or wants to know more about, whether it makes sense to be devoting so much of our public forest to forestry."

The panel event is at Moruya Golf Course on April 4 from 6 to 7:30pm.

Tickets are free, but required to reserve a seat. Tickets are available here.