OnlyFerns: Tasmanian Logging Meets Adult Content to Save Old Growth

Twelve forest-themed adult videos, sold through OnlyFans, now form the revenue engine behind an attempt to stop logging in Tasmania's old-growth coupes. Artist Kirsha Kaechele announced OnlyFerns on Instagram in April, framing it as a working answer to a question conservationists have long avoided: who pays the workers when the chainsaws stop?

The premise is direct. Viewers pay to watch kink content filmed in Tasmanian sawmills and private forests — OnlyFans prohibits shooting adult material in public places. The revenue compensates forestry workers for not felling trees. Instead of logging, Kaechele says, they will be paid to build boardwalks and create artwork inside the coupes.

What does this change for the forestry industry?

Mona and Kaechele covered all production costs, including creator and crew fees, plus a documentary and a book. Sawmills will manufacture the artwork. Worker income sits at the centre of the model. "Ensuring that there are no hours lost is critical to the success of the project," Kaechele said. "Most environmental campaigns have set up an us-them scenario, where workers are excluded from protection. That is not pragmatic, it ruffles feathers. And it is inelegant."

The production itself blurred the usual lines. Around twenty OnlyFans creators flew into Burnie, accommodated by a local near the sawmills. Forestry workers hired as crew carried furries — people in animal suits costing thousands of dollars — through the undergrowth before a closed-set group scene. "They were just adorable. Even when they're doing adult acts, it still just looks really cute and kind of innocuous," Kaechele said.

The project grew out of the Forest Congress, a body Kaechele formed in 2023 to unite conservationists, scientists, Palawa elders and forestry representatives. Official engagement exists: Sustainable Timber Tasmania confirmed it is "having discussions with Mona about their ambitions in relation to forest management", while noting its charter limits as a Government Business Enterprise. It called the project "an amazing initiative that has brought stakeholders together".

How much forest would actually be protected?

Environmental groups contest the scope. The Bob Brown Foundation, which boycotted the congress from the start, labelled the project a "pro-logging plan". It said protecting "3 or 4%, labelled 'old growth' by the industry, leaves 96% of the forests to be clear-felled and incinerated along with their wildlife". Its statement added: "Ending this tragedy is not performance art."

The Wilderness Society withdrew from the congress in July, stating the logging industry had taken "zero steps … to correct their poor commercial and industrial practices". Kaechele defends the selection of coupes with no dispute on either side: "This is in the interest of building consensus, and of protecting the most precious irreplaceable and ancient ecosystems."

Revenue remains untested. No one can predict how many viewers the videos will attract. "The scale of what we build will depend on our success (and the generosity of my husband and other philanthropists who may or may not support it by subscribing)," Kaechele said.

A feature-length cut, styled after Twin Peaks with Kaechele as a sawmill sex-line receptionist, premiered last week in Melbourne at an 18+, invitation-only screening. Whether subscriptions can scale into a durable economic model for standing forests will determine whether OnlyFerns becomes a template or a one-off provocation.