Forestry

The following letter was published in one of Australia’s broadsheet newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald on June 17, 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald could claim to have a more educated and influential readership than any other newspaper in Australia.

“Fellers not fellows

During my long and interesting life, and my travels around the world, I have observed that there are only two kinds of people: civilised people who plant and look after trees, and uncivilised humans who chop them down.

Moray MacDonald
Franz, Lane Cove”

The letter is perhaps indicative of the extent to which our elite is being swept along by environmental fundamentalism.

And I can’t help but wonder whether Moray MacDonald knows where his toilet paper comes from:

“Here’s to a logger

Who fills a need

From houses to paper
From one little seed

For those of you who
Wish to disagree

Try wiping your arse
without felling a tree.”

The poem was on my stubbie holder at the TCA Conference last year.

Michael Duffy interviewed James Smith from the BBC, on ABC radio earlier this week, about his documentary ‘Battle for the Amazon’, which will be will be screen on SBS TV tomorrow, Sunday 23 April at 8.30pm.

Duffy remarks at his website:

“In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental campaigners sounded the alarm about deforestation in the Amazon and the impact it would have on the planet’s ecoystem and climate. We were told an area of the rainforest the size of Belgium was being destroyed every year. By now you might expect there’d be no trees left.

But the documentary … reveals that 87 percent of the rainforest remains untouched. Deforested areas have not turned to desert, but productive farm land. So, has the scale of environmental threat caused by the logging of the rainforest been overstated?”

I’ll be watching the documentary tomorrow night.

You can hear the interview by clicking here.

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Update Monday. The doucumentary referred to 83 percent, not 87 percent, of the rainforest being intact.

Some months ago I received a note from a forester about dieback in native Australian forests, following is an edited version:

“There is a very large and growing forest health issue particularly in the dryer forest types. Die back known by a variety of names from Bell Bird Dieback to Mundulla yellows is affecting thousands of hectares of native forest and appears to have the potential to affect thousands more.

It is a little talked about issue but it covers all land tenures public forest and national park and private property.

Based on observation by forest managers an hypothesis has been put forward that dieback is the result of changed fire regimes. In particular reduced incidence of low intensity burns has promoted changes in soil chemistry and moisture levels that have promoted antagonistic conditions to over storey eucalypts resulting in dieback and ecological change. Parallels can be drawn with the US Pacific North West and the forest health problems being documented there after 70 years of fire exclusion as a result of the overly successful ‘Smokey the bear’ campaign.”

This morning I received a note from David Ward. The following has been edited slightly:

“There is an article (Jay Withgott ‘Fighting Sudden Oak Death with Fire?’, Science Aug 2004 Vol.305 p.1101) which decribes how California oaks are dying from Phytophthora ramorum.

Two researchers (Moritz & Odion,’Prescribed Fire & Natural Disturbance’, Science Dec 2004, Vol. 306, p.1680) have found that there is some association between this pathogen and long fire exclusion. The researchers caution that there is not yet a demonstrated causal relationship, and that prescribed fire may have a different effect from natural fire. However, the article may be of interest to Australian researchers, and land owners.

… Some local WA Nyoongar Elders have said that, in their view, traditional summer burning, on dry soil, prevented the fungal diseases which we see now. At the same time, summer burning promoted other fungi, some of which were good tucker.”

This afternoon, Vic Jurskis send me a copy of his recent paper titled ‘Eucalypt decline in Australia, and general concept of tree decline and dieback’, Forest Ecology and Management, Volume 215 (205) pages 1-20 (available online at www.sciencedirect.com for $30).

The paper includes the following comments under a heading ‘Implications for Management’:

“Considerable resources are being devoted to research of contributing factors in tree decline but
few corrective actions are being applied in eucalypt forests other than quarantine and hygiene measures to restrict the spread of Phytophthora .

… Prescribed burning appears to be the only silvicultural practice that can have widespread application in conservation reserves and
timber producing forests. Passive management of nature reserves in Australia has failed to maintain healthy ecosystems, especially in the case of the grassy forests that were most depleted by clearing for
agriculture and are now mostly declining in health and changing in structure.

To conserve healthy dry and moist eucalypt forests it will be necessary to restore more natural outputs of nitrogen and moisture by using frequent low intensity fire and/or grazing. Ecological burning
regimes should be integrated with hazard reduction burning to protect forest health as well as social and economic values.”

David Ward also commented that it would be “valuable to get views from other parts of Australia on this topic”.

There were elections in Tasmania and South Australia yesterday.

Despite help from a San Francisco based environmental group, and an expectation that they would win more seats at the election, the Tasmanian Greens look like they have lost one of their four seats and suffered a 3 percent swing against them.

Green’s leader Peg Putt claims they didn’t do so well because the whole world was against them, at least,

“We have had the might of big business, union bosses, Labor, Liberals and more directed against us,” she said to a chorus of boos in the tally room.”

It is not often you have both big business and union bosses against the one party?

According to The Age,

“Big environmental issues failed to bite with the electorate. In Bass, home of the state’s controversial $1.5 billion pulp mill, the Green MP Kim Booth looked like losing his seat, and an independent anti-mill campaigner, Les Rochester, polled dismally. The re-appearance of the former federal MP for Bass, Michelle O’Byrne, in Lyons, proved a trump card for Labor.”

I recieved the following note from David Vernon just before the election. His family recently sold a property at Recherche Bay which had been the focus of campaigning by The Tasmanian Greens and Wilderness Society,

“Following the recent sale of my family’s property at Recherche Bay, I wish to make some aspects of the sale clear for all people of Tasmania.

* My brother and I did not wish to sell our property. I feel that we had been forced into making that decision by what I regarded as constant threats of protest action.

* I understand and appreciate that the site is a very precious piece of land, however the advice we received, and my understanding from our ownership and use of the land, was that it was not pristine.

* We were attempting to manage it appropriately after taking advice, taking into consideration the many aspects of its historical significance so that it could continue to be valued by ourselves and all Australians.

* Our Forest Practices Plan was scrupulously developed to enable sustainable use and proper, sensitive management into the future.

* Many people worked tirelessly to ensure that our rights, wishes and goals could be achieved. To Darren, Greg, Wilkie, Brett, Denise, Gloria, Handy, Barry, Alan, Katy and Terry and many others our heartfelt thanks for your professionalism, guidance, support and friendship during this most stressful time.

* My family has been attacked for the past 4 years, all the while for complying with Local, State and Federal requirements.

* We met, and we are advised in many cases we exceeded, every requirement of Local, State and National legislation, yet we believe that we were the subject of adverse media comment, from State and Federal Green politicians, members of the Wilderness Society and Recherche Bay Protection Group; who have acted, in my view, on the basis that it was ok to extinguish our rights as landowners and our family’s future business opportunity without just compensation.

* Our land was subjected to trespass. We had to endure public comments misrepresenting the truth as known to us, and our families being publicly vilified by protesters, with the threat of public demonstration against us with what I saw as untruthful propaganda.

* In the end I saw a future that I didn’t wish to subject my family to. I saw a future of possible physical disruption and damage to machinery and our business to the point that it would be impossible for us to continue. Therefore, I believe under duress, we reluctantly agreed to sell our private property at the best available price.

* The Greens and the Wilderness Society have developed a process that has, in our case worn down the strongest of landowners.

* Those protesting do not, in my view sufficiently or appropriately respect the rights of Tasmanian landowners, or allow diversity of thought or beliefs in relation to the use and appropriate management of forests of Tasmania.”

And yet again they have not done so well at the ballot box.

So there is not a lot of outrage in Australia, so the protest against the timber industry in Tasmania moves to San Fransciso and the rest of the world…

Yesterday Paul West from the Rainforest Action Network put out the following media release. Before or after you read this nasty work of propaganda, you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.

The media release is titled ‘Global outcry over falling forests and failing democracy on Australia’s island state of Tasmania’ and begins:

“Outraged world citizens today protested at Australian embassies and consulates in America, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom to decry the destruction of old-growth forests and the undermining of democracy in the country’s island state of Tasmania by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, Ltd., a rogue billion-dollar logging giant whose practices rank among the world’s worst according to recent reports.

The IUCN compares Gunns’ operations to rampant illegal logging in the Third World.

Demonstrators delivered a letter signed by leading international sustainability groups to Prime Minister John Howard demanding that the government act in accordance with scientific recommendations to protect Tasmania’s virgin forests from a well-documented arsenal of logging tactics deployed by Gunns and industry-controlled Forestry Tasmania. In the wake of massive clearcuts by Gunns, the industry routinely scorches the Earth with Napalm firebombs to eradicate all remaining life.

Gunns has also killed hundreds of thousands of native mammals using carrots poisoned with Compound 1080, a lethal super-toxin listed as a biological weapon by both the Canadian and US governments. Gunns CEO John Gay has publicly stated that it is okay that his company kills endangered animals because “there’s too many of them.” Tasmania’s forests are currently being clear-cut at an unprecedented rate equivalent to approximately 44 football fields per day. The vast majority of Tasmania’s priceless ancient trees are being processed into woodchips by Gunns to make disposable paper products destined for landfills in America and Asia.

The worldwide call for action today echoed a dozen of Australia’s leading scientists who signed a 2004 statement of support for the protection of Tasmania’s forests calling for the “urgent need for Australian government intervention.” The effort to protect Tasmania’s forests is one of the largest environmental issues in Australian history, and according to a 2004 opinion poll by Newspoll, over 85 percent of Australian citizens favor full protection for Tasmania’s pristine forests.

Carrying signs reading “Stop Gunns” and “Save Tassie’s Trees,” forest defenders around the world protested with “GUNNS” taped over the mouths in solidarity with 20 silenced citizens in Australia who are currently being sued by Gunns for speaking out against the company’s attacks on environmental treasures and public health. Likened to McDonald’s “McLibel” lawsuit, websites like Gunns20.org and McGunns.com are evidence of a growing global grassroots movement to protect free speech, reassert democracy and save old-growth forests. The Gunns 20 lawsuit has also been condemned by leading human rights lawyers in the UK. For the Tasmania Forest Campaign, Rainforest Action Network and its allies today launched TreesNotGunns.org to organize future worldwide action.

At the Australian High Commission in London today, British MP and Deputy Environmental Minister Norman Baker met with the Deputy High Commissioner to deliver the NGO letter and spoke about the atrocities he witnessed on his visit to Tasmania last month. Over 100 members of the British Parliament recently signed a motion condemning Gunns’ actions and calling for an international boycott of woodchips and paper sourced from Tasmania’s old-growth forests.

… Spearheaded by San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, the worldwide day of protest expands one of the largest environmental protection campaigns in Australian history to global economic centers including Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. The letter to Prime Minister Howard was signed by coalition of US and European-based groups including Forest Ethics (ForestEthics.org), Friends of the Earth International (FOE.org), Global Exchange (GlobalExchange.org), Global Response (GlobalResponse.org), International Forum on Globalization (IFG.org), Native Forest Network (NativeForest.org), Pacific Environment (PacificEnvironment.org), Rainforest Action Network (RAN.org), Ruckus Society (Ruckus.org) and the Sierra Club (SierraClub.org).”

Now you may want to find out some facts and figures on the Tasmanian forestry industry, click here, here and here.