Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for February 23, 2006

How Much Forest Should Be Saved?

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Tasmanians will go to the polls on 18th March. Of course with an election in Australia or Tasmania comes the usual bagging of the forest industry and timber company Gunns Ltd. This time a proposed pulp mill is developing as the point of contention, but really it is all about the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of cutting down tall trees.

Stephen Mayne from Crikey.com was rather vicious yesterday, writing that:

“John Gay [Gunns Chairman] knows how to slaughter trees and export woodchips, but building a huge pulp mill is in another league and some in the market think this simple but aggressive man doesn’t have the ability to deliver.”

Interestingly according to the Wilderness Society website:

“Gunns is the biggest native-forest logging company in Australia and the biggest hardwood-chip company in the world.

Gunns receives the overwhelming majority of logs destined for sawmills and woodchip mills from Tasmania. It owns all four export-woodchip mills in Tasmania. It exports more woodchips from Tasmania than are exported from all mainland states combined. Gunns exports over four million tonnes of native-forest woodchips each year.”

Gunns and Gay are survivors.

And with all the hype it is worth considering some statistics – like how much of Tasmania is logged? Barry Chipman from Timber Communities Australia sent me the following spreadsheet yesterday.

forest stats ver 2.JPG

With 45 percent of Tasmanian forests not available for wood supply because this area is reserved, it could be concluded that relative to European countries, John Gay operates in an environment that affords a very high level of protection to its forests.

How does Europe compare to the rest of the world? What percentage of a country should be available for logging? What percentage of Tasmanian forests should be available for logging?

I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk and I use paper everyday.

Environmental Priorities Wrong & Reef Not at Risk: Peter Ridd

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Dr Peter Ridd from James Cook University gave a lecture in Townsville yesterday and it was reported in The Age. Not bad given that he wasn’t pushing a doom and gloom message and doesn’t believe the reef is at risk from global warming. He’s some of what The Age reported:

Risks to the Great Barrier Reef have been overstated and Australians should be more worried about population growth and noxious weeds, a physicist says.

Dr Peter Ridd from Townsvilles James Cook University (JCU) today challenged the widely held view that one of the world’s most important natural assets is in serious decline.

He said the reef, which other scientists predict could be wiped out within 30 years due to global climate change, was in “first rate condition”.

“It’s probably one of the best preserved ecosystems in the whole world,” Dr Ridd, of JCU’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Information Technology, said.

“I think the only place that’s probably better is Antarctica, and that is because it’s a long way away from any significant population centre.”

His comments came only weeks after scientists warned of a new coral bleaching threat following the discovery of blanched corals off the central Queensland coast.

Dr Ridd said although the reef suffered extensive bleaching in 1998 and 2002, most of it was unaffected and the parts that were damaged “completely recovered”.

“I think some of it is a beat-up and I think we’ve got our priorities wrong,” he said.

“We have around the country some serious environmental issues associated with weeds and indeed with things like population and the growing of our cities.

“We’re not worried about all these other things which are potentially far more important and definitely there, whereas you can argue about the Great Barrier Reef being in jeopardy.”

Dr Ridd, who formerly worked with the Australian Institute of Marine Science – a body which has long sounded warnings about threats to the reef – said coral bleaching was an “adaptation to changing environmental temperature”.

Additionally, pollution from sediment and agricultural run-off was negligible given the reef’s size and how rapidly it was flushed by tides, he said.

In a draft policy paper for new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), Peter Ridd outlines and discusses the various environmental issues he sees confronting Australia. The paper can be accessed from the home page of the AEF, click here.

I have listed nine reasons why Peter Ridd doesn’t consider the reef is at risk from global warming at an earlier blog post, click here.