Opinion

Following my recent post titled ‘More Tall Tales from Jared Diamond’ there was comment that it would be useful to know the area of old growth forest remaining in Australia. I put the challenge to Ian Mott and here is his guest post:

“Professor Jared Diamond has an elliptical orbit of the truth that includes regular intersection with comet Aunty (ABC), usually when both are at their apogee. And Diamond’s appearance on Robyn Williams program, In Conversation, 23/02/06, is no exception.

He said, “Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest.” And he went on to state that Japan has a much larger percentage of its land mass as old growth forest.

Apparently this sort of pronunciamento is regarded as information to the ever decreasing proportion of ABC listeners, eager for any skerrick that will reinforce their national self loathing or entrench the party line of, humanity as original sin.

So how far from planet Veracity is this guy? I will first examine the statistics for Japan and then Australia.

Japan

A quick Google search revealed that popular Japanese magazine KATEIGAHO, in a feature on forests, reported that only 1 percent of the Japanese forest estate is virgin, what we would call old-growth.

But the best site for comparing both Japanese and Australian forests is the World Forestry Centre which tells us that:

“Japan is very heavily forested at 70 percent [67.5 pc actually] of its total land area, or 25 million hectares of its 37 m ha total. This 25 m ha can be broken down into 23 m ha of closed forest area, with 10 m ha of planted forests and 14 m ha of natural forests. Japan has one of the highest percentages of forest cover of the developed countries. However, because of the very high population density in this small country, the forest area per capita is only about 0.2 hectares, which is one quarter of the world figure.

About 40 pc of Japan’s forest area, more than 10 million hectares, consists of plantations. These man-made forests consist mostly of softwood species like Sugi (Japanese cedar) or Hinoki (Japanese cypress), and were planted during the 1950’s and 1960s.”

In summary, only 1 pc of this 25 million hectares is what we would call ‘old growth’, that is, only 250,000ha or 0.67 of 1 pc of total land area.

So even after the blatantly cheap shot of comparing a wide desert country with a thin mountainous maritime one, the real ‘old growth’ figure has come hurtling back through the asteroid belt.

The 14 million hectares of “natural forests” are what we would call “native regrowth forests” that have been continually harvested for timber production for centuries, in a cycle of harvest and regeneration. And that 1 pc of old growth works out at 20 square metres of old growth for each Japanese citizen.

Of the original 37 million hectares of Japan that was once covered in forest, a total of 23 million hectares (62pc) was cleared for agriculture etcetera while 98 pc of the remaining 14 million hectares was regularly harvested for timber over many centuries. But since the 1950’s another 10 million hectares (27pc) has been replanted, most probably to recover from excessive harvesting during and after the war years when all of Tokyo and other cities were rebuilt after allied firebombing.

Australia

It is a nonsense to compare Australian desert with Japanese forest. The only effective means of comparison is to compare what each country has done with those natural resource elements that they have in common. So we need to assess what we have done with our stock of similar forest.

The World Forestry Centre site, mentioned above, tells us that Australia’s total land area is 768 million hectares and that forests cover 20 percent of the landmass including woodlands*:

“There are about 43.7 million hectares of native forest in Australia, and four main land tenures relating to these forests. This is 5.7pc of the total area and 57pc of the original forested area. There is another 119 million hectares of woodland.”

The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI), gives more accurate figures showing that 5.7pc of the country is forest, of a type comparable to those of Japan, while 15.5pc are woodlands.

So for all the hand wringing about Australia’s supposed land clearing Armageddon, it is a fact that only 10pc (77 million hectares) of the country actually had forest on it to begin with and only 43pc of this (4.3pc of total area) has been cleared.

But to determine how much of this forest is “old growth” we need to go back to the Resource Assessment Commission’s 1990 data sets**.

These used slightly different categories but still posted a total forest area of 43.185 million hectares of native forest of which 17.4 million hectares (40.3pc) had never been logged.

This needs to be adjusted slightly as the Japanese ‘old growth’ figure is expressed as a percentage of total forest, including plantations. So the 17.4 million hectares of old growth amounts to 38.3pc of the combined total Australian forest area of 45.4 million hectares.

In Summary

Japan started with 37 million hectares of forest but cleared this back to 38pc before returning another 27pc for native species plantations to produce a current forest area of 67pc of the original. Only 1pc of total forest area is considered “old growth” and all of the remainder is available for on-going timber production in perpetuity.

Australia started with 77 million hectares of forest but has cleared this back to a point below 57pc before returning an undetermined but significant portion of regrowth, and 2pc as plantations to produce a current forested area of 59pc of the original. More than 38pc of total forest area could be described as ‘old growth’ which is not available for timber production, being in either National Park or reserved portions of State Forests. And even when our vast area of desert and grassland is considered, the 17.4 million hectares of ‘old growth’ forest still amounts to 2.2pc of our total area compared to 1pc for Japan.

When considering native forest alone, Japan has retained 38pc of its original area while Australia has retained 57pc of its original forested are. The addition of the 119 million hectares of Australian woodland to this analysis would produce an even higher retention figure for Australia.

Professor Jared Diamond’s statement that, “Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest”, and his comparisons between Japanese and Australian forests amount to a very serious misrepresentation of the facts by a person who has held himself out to the Australian public as an expert in these matters. And media entities that have reported Mr Diamond’s misrepresentations have duty to publish equally weighted corrections.

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* Woodlands are defined as forests where crown cover as viewed from above is between 20 and 50pc. Typically such forests are 10 to 20 metres in height though they may reach 30 metres. Some are managed commercially for timber production, but the primary land use for most is grazing.

** A Survey of Australia’s Forest Resource, March 1992, Resource Assessment Commission, AGPS, ISBN 0 644 24486 0 (hard copy only)”

Thanks Ian.