Forestry

The Wilderness Society is no doubt celebrating the recent decision by Japanese paper mill Mitsubishi to only source woodchip from plantation forests. The end result, however, is likely to be fewer tall trees in Tasmania’s native forests.

The tall wet sclerophyll forests that make Tasmania so special are not able to regenerate without some form of severe disturbance and fire.

The annual three month window for burning has just ended in Tassie.

Where there is no logging and no wildfires, the mature eucalypt overstorey will stagnate and continue to decline, eventually to be replaced by (shorter) rainforest.

Clear felling to quote an old foresters, “bares the mineral soil to produce an adequate seedbed, and provides a brief respite for the new (Eucalyptus) forest to assert itself over its shrub competitors. The seed drop on the bared seedbed may be a serendipitous natural event, or else a man-made contrived additive. All our current “Old Growth Forests” were the result of major fire occurrences from lightning or indigenous firing.”

I was in Tassie in May.

And here are some pictures from that visit:

View image of stream in forest (about 50kb).

View image of swamp gum (about 50kbs).

View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees (about 130 kbs).

COMMENT from reader inserted at 3.20pm on 4th July:
Jennifer,
Your “View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees” requires explanation:
1.The background slope (R.H.S.& centre)is an area of very old forest burnt, without doubt by wildfire maybe 50 years ago with regrowth(same species)to 50-60 metres & many dead remnant “stags” of the original dominant Euc. species still standing –most have fallen over. To the left is remnant old growth, damaged but only some killed. Regrowth here will be patchy.
2. The mid-slope almost certainly is regrowth(same Euc. species) to ca. 40 metres following logging & regeneration burning & aerial seeding (same species).Note very few stags, they have long since been converted to furniture & high quality papers etc.etc.
3. The foreground could be another species but has apparently not been logged or catastrophically burnt c.f.1&2.
Regards, Bill.

View image of clear felled patch (about 130 kbs).

and
View closeup of recently burnt patch (about 50 kbs).

This is my first trip to Tassie. I have sat through speeches from the Prime Minister and Premier Paul Lennon and today watched a helicopter carrying Kim Beazley rise above the Tahune Forest Reserve.

What I will probably remember most though,is the sheer size of the trees.

I am still coming to grips with the size of what I have always called black wattle but what is know here as blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon). The Tassie blackwoods are so straight and tall but at around 30m, not tall by Tassie tree standards.

Tasmania has a tallest tree registry with more than 50 individual trees registered.

I was fascinated by the height and girth of the stringybarks (Eucalyptus obliqua) in the wet Eucaptus forests of the Huon valley. I saw perhaps the tallest stringybark in Australia at 87 metres – and shrinking. The tree is dying from the top and predicted to lose about 3 metres in height over the next 5 years.

And Premier Lennon probably included this tree in the 100 million trees that he proudly declared on Saturday would be “protected forever”!

The tallest Tassie trees are the swamp gums (E. regnans) and apparently even taller in Victoria. The world’s tallest ever tree was perhaps a swamp gum felled at Watt’s River Victoria in 1872, however, the height of 133 metres is disputed.

But none of these trees can apparently ever qualify as the tallest Christmas tree – irrespecive of how well they might be decorated.

Anyway, the forests I saw today were extensive, magnificent and very tall.

Yesterday the front page of Tasmania’s Examiner read “End of war in Tassie’s forests?”. Today it is “Policy cut down: Environment groups attack forestry plan.”

The war was meant to end in 1997 with the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA). But the campaigning never stopped.

In the deal signed on Friday between Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon and the PM something like 90 per cent of the forest in the northwest know as the Tarkine will now be ‘protected’ from logging.

The campaigners, however, are complaining because the area won’t be World Heritage listed – not even given National Park status. I understand that while logging is now banned there is still potential for cattle grazing and mining.

The timber industry gets money for restructuring etcetera. In fact the $250 million package promised by the PM on Friday is a lot more than the $110 million which came with the 1997 RFA.

There are a whole lot of other components to the deal including banning the use of the poison 1080 in state forests from January. There is apparently no alternative effective control for ‘browsing’ animals who can destroy seedlings in new forest planting, but $4 million has been promised for research.

The NSW Government has finally made a decision on the Pilliga-Goonoo forests and the decision is likely to decimate local timber communities.

Click here (jpg 136kb) to see a picture of 24 Pilliga West State forest, one of the WCA so-called iconic areas.

The decision to ban logging over a further 350,000 hectares will have implications for biodiversity. While the government has described the decision as achieving ‘permanent conservation’ of the iconic forests, the reality is that without active management there can be no conservation.

150 years ago, areas now thick with cypress were grassland or open box woodland with cypress controlled by local aboriginals through the use of fire.

The forests that the government now wants to ‘conserve’ are a recent phenomenon and have developed with the local timber industry – koala and barking owls habitat enhanced through responsible forestry practices.

The Government has announced that workers who lose their jobs will be offered either new jobs or receive redundancy payments of $72,000.

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The picture at the above link is from Ted Haymen. He sent it to me with the following explaination, “This is compartment 24 Pilliga West State Forest, one of the WCA so called icon areas. It would have once been open box woodland but has been invaded by cypress and bull oak regrowth. Although they still look attractive, the large Box trees in this photo are at the end of their life, decaying, with many in a state of collapse. Competition from the dense regrowth has prevented the regeneration of replacements. There was a thinning operation in this block but it was stopped due to the moratorium. If left unmanaged, in perhaps fifty years few box trees will remain.”

Background information can be found at my blog post of April 21, 2005 titled ‘Timber Communities and National Parks (Part 1)‘ (scroll down to find it).

I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk. I know trees re-grow and that Australia has one of the most productive and sustainable timber industries in the world.

I know that I have more of an affinity with the timber communities that work native forests than with the companies that plant extensive pine plantations.

I also know that timber communities are under intense pressure because they are swimming against the tide. The Australian community has come under what seems like ‘the spell’ of environmental activists who campaign incessantly against logging.

I recently received several emails from Rod and Juleen Young who are part of the Pilliga-Goonoo timber community in north-west NSW. They are waiting for a decision from the Carr government that will determine the fate of their community including 240 remaining timber workers.

At issue is whether public land that until recently has supported a timber industry worth $38.4 million in gross output and generated employment for 420 people should be turned into National Park.

If the land has been logged for over 100 years and is still of such high conservation value why not keep it the way it is?

Rod and Juleen have written:

“The State Government has refused to accept the Brigalow Region United Stakeholders (BRUS) Option and after a protest in the Pilliga in February 2003 by the Greens the government placed a moratorium on 500 logging compartments of the best timber in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion (BBSB) demanded by the Greens.

This moratorium has restricted our timber industry to unsustainable logging areas, leading to a downgrading of log supplies and as a result a lot of the mills are almost bankrupt.

The Government promised a decision on the BBSB no later than November 2002. The local communities, dependant on the timber industry have been on a knife edge ever since and are still waiting.

We are now desperate for a decision.

The debate is all about active land management versus lock up. For years we have stressed the need for thinning the cypress pine forests, the long term sustainable forest management, the viability of the koala population and barking owls etc in logged areas, the need of the forest road network for fire control, the case of landowners living next door to a forest, the small towns that provide the necessary services and social base for the timber workers and the local farming and grazing families.”

At issue is whether these forests in the Pilliga-Goonoo region of north-west NSW should become National Parks or continue to be State Forests and usable by the local timber community.

The Pilliga-Goonoo community have identified 189,300 hectares of new conservation reserve (where logging will be excluded) while allowing for continued access to sustainable yields of white cypress sawlogs of 68,000m3 per year. The region has also produced valuable timber products from iron bark.

Why has the NSW government taken so long to say yes or no to the Pilliga-Goonoo community?

Is it that the government feels it can’t say no to the Greens because it risks losing Sydney votes at the next election? At the same time it would be so unfair to close down yet another productive and sustainable timber community that works a beautiful native forest?