Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Saving Australian Forests and It’s Implications: A New Book by Mark Poynter

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A new book was launched at the recent Australian Environment Foundation Conference. ‘Saving Australian Forests and It’s Implications’ by Mark Poynter is an important book for anyone wishing to make up their mind about the native forests question free from the emotional rhetoric that invariably accompanies its elevation onto the political stage prior to each state or federal election.

In particular, the book raises concerns that considerable and lasting environmental damage is resulting from the refusal of a fanatical core of activists to view the future of Australia’s forests from a holistic perspective.

For decades, the major focus of the Australian environmental movement has been ‘saving’ public native forests from timber harvesting. This continues to be a high priority for environmental activism despite Australia now having one of the world’s highest rates of forest reservation, while wood production in our public forests is sustainable and is acknowledged as having very low environmental impact.

Today’s campaigns to ‘save’ Australia’s forests have far less to do with genuine environmental need than with serving an ideological ‘lock-it-up-and-leave-it’ approach to forest and woodland management. This rejects the need to obtain any wood products, is at best ambivalent about active bushfire management and views government and business as impediments to environmental preservation.

This book charts the recent history of uncompromising and largely unprincipled ‘save-theforest’ activism, and examines the complicity of the media in shaping an ill-founded community view that is at odds with the reality of contemporary forest management. Written from the perspective of a long career caring for and managing forests, it challenges the conventional wisdom that ceasing local wood production and placing huge swathes of forest in national parks is the best way to protect the environment. It examines the implications of this in terms of climate
change, bushfire management, biodiversity conservation, water production and the rising level of rainforest timber imports.

Copies are available at $29.95 (including GST) from selected booksellers in Victoria and Tasmania, or can be obtained through the Institute of Foresters website, www.forestry.org.au, for $39.95 (including gst and postage and handling).

Mark Poynter has been a professional forester for 30 years and has extensive experience in all aspects of native forest management, fire management, plantation development and management, and farm forestry. Like most foresters, he has been frustrated by the public misrepresentations of forest management associated with the enduring conflict over wood production and forest fire management, particularly in southern Australia. He is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the Association of Consulting Foresters of Australia.

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Victorian Environment Assessment Council Set to Flood Murray River Communities: AEF Media Release

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“Proposals for 4,000GL ‘overbank’ floods of the Murray River by the Victorian Environment Assessment Council beggar belief” said the chairman of the Australian Environment Foundation, Don Burke.

Mr Burke’s comments came at the conclusion of the foundation’s annual conference in Melbourne where a taskforce of scientists experienced in water, forestry and land management issues was appointed to investigate the VEAC recommendations.

“These draft proposals make recommendations that will see many Murray River communities under floodwaters if they were adopted by the Victorian government”, he said.

The Australian Environment Foundation will investigate the scientific robustness of these recommendations that underpin widespread and radical changes to land and water use along the Murray River.

Mr Burke commented that “Proposals such as these must address the needs of the people as well as the environment to be effective.

“The Australian Environment Foundation is focused on ensuring outcomes for the environment based on science and evidence. It is evident that obtaining 500GL for the Living Murray proposals for environmental flows have not eventuated as planned so we have real concerns about recommendations for either 2,000GL or 4,000GL to underpin these current proposals” concluded Mr Burke.

The Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) is a not-for-profit, membership-based environment organisation having no political affiliation. The AEF is a different kind of environment group, caring for both Australia & Australians. Many of our members are practical environmentalists – people who actively use and also care for the environment. We accept that environmental protection and sustainable resource use are generally compatible. For more information about the AEF visit www.aefweb.info

What Peer Review? A note from John McLean on the IPCC

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Hi Jennifer,

Bob Ferguson of the Science and Public Policy Institute has just asked me to draw your attention to the fact that he’s published my analysis of the IPCC review.

It’s titled “Peer Review, What Peer Review” and can be found at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/peerreview.html

A key finding in the document is that the WG I chapter that attributed warming to human activities had 62 reviewers but many had a vested interest (chapter authors, IPCC editors, researchers whose work was cited). Just FOUR reviewers without any vested interest explicitly endorsed the principal claim. Not thousands of researchers, not even hundreds, just 4.

Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters has picked up on the article and written about it at length (and with lots of quotes) at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/what-media-won-t-tell-you-about-u-n-climate-panel

You might also be interested in another of my documents that Bob Ferguson has just published. It’s titled “Fallacies about Global Warming” and can be found at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/fallacies_about_global_warming.html.

Cheers,
John McLean

The Sydney Climate Change Declaration: Who Cares?

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Paul Kelly writing in today’s The Australian has suggested that

“The Sydney climate change declaration is a success for John Howard, a good outcome for APEC and an incremental step on the long journey to find global agreement on a post-2012 emissions policy.

“The leaders’ declaration is exactly what the APEC forum was established to do – confront the big issues and strike a regional position to influence global outcomes…

“It is the first time so many nations from the developed and developing worlds have backed this concept [a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal]. It is also the first time the APEC region has embraced aspirational targets for energy efficiency and forest expansion.

“This is the first such agreement involving the major polluters, the US, China and the Russian Federation,” Howard said at APEC’s conclusion.

A friend of mine in Washington emailed this morning:

“APEC and the ‘Sydney Declaration’ got ten sentences at the bottom of page 14 in today’s New York Times. There was a story above it by a staff reporter that commented that the Australian media were more interested in what the President ate than his policies – it made us look like complete hicks – unfortunately it’s true. And then the article went on to explain that ‘Bums for Bush’ was not a campaign by hobos – but rather a nude protest.”

The Cumulative Impact of Rainforest Research

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Pig-exclosure.jpg

In the late 1990’s, a scientific ‘pig-exclosure’ project was established in the Cape Tribulation section of the Daintree National Park. The project involved the construction of an 80 metre square fence, anchored aggressively to the ground with steel trimmer bar and pegs. The site selection encompassed much of the very restricted, endangered and previously studied laurel, Endiandra cooperana.

The purpose of the project was to collect comparative data, inside and outside the exclosure, to quantify the adverse impacts of feral pigs upon seedling recruitment rates of an endangered plant species.

Criticisms of the project at the time included the accessibility by piglets into the exclosure through the mesh squares, the obstruction to cassowaries in a known corridor, proximity to two roads and the contention that even blind Freddy could see that pigs were damaging to seedling recruitment rates.

Despite these concerns the project proceeded and there it remained for many years. Eventually, the land manager agreed to remove the construction, but was so under-resourced it dismantled only one corner section and middle panel on each side, leaving around eight 30-metres sections of fence in the rainforest, where they remain to this day.

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In around the year 2000, another scientific study was carried out in the vicinity of the pig-exclosure project. This one sought to capture the primitive rainforest macropod, Musky-rat Kangaroo Hypsiprymnodon moschatus. The methodology required the placement of several hundred metres of plastic barrier through known habitat, stretched to form walls with strategic openings every thirty or so metres. The animals would familiarise themselves with the openings and after a period of adjustment, cages would be placed at the openings into which the animals would be herded by the research scientist. Once caged, they would be analysed and genetic material collected from hole-punched tissue from the ears of specimens.

Mammal-chute(2006).jpg

More recently, another similar project was transferred to the same locality from rainforest in the Cyclone Larry affected areas. Different plastic barriers were constructed, for the same purpose, but this time the project sought to map the liberation of captured animals by gluing a cotton reel to the released subjects so that the thread would leave a variety of passages that could be compared relative to the adjacent roadway, to determine whether roads had a quantifiable impact on evasive mammal behaviour.

All very interesting projects, but why are the researchers abandoning their materials in the forest?

Prue’s Unidentified Anomoly

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In the year 2000 I posted an image on wikipedia of a growth that I found on a Ryparosa javanica hoping to get it identified.

Seven years older, but no wiser, I thought it worth giving it another shot.

I think it’s part of the growth of the tree. The stem looks similar, but it is not the normal fruiting body and with hundreds of trees to look at daily, I have not seen it again.

I am asking Neil, most humbly, if he will post my image on the blog, since I remain unempowered in the blogging process.

Ryparosa Growth.jpg