Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Forestry

After the ‘Top Island’ Fire in the Barmah Red Gum Forest

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Aborigines managed much of the Australian landscape with fire. This management strategy favoured fire tolerant and fire resistant species – perhaps why gum trees dominate so much of the Australian landscape. But river red gums, Eucalyptus camaldulensis ssp., unlike most gum trees, are not particularly fire tolerant.

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A boat on the Murray River in the Barmah Forest. Photograph taken last Tuesday.*

The timber cutters and cattlemen who live and work along the middle Murray (river) have gone to great lengths to keep fuel-loads in red gum forests low through controlled grazing and the collection of firewood. This, combined with a network of rural fire fighting brigades, has made it possible to stomp out fires started from lightening strikes or camp fires.

This may explain why some foresters and aboriginal elders call river red gums ‘white fellas’ weed’ and why areas which were once open woodland are now covered in dense red gum forests including at Barmah.

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This area in Barmah Forest was once known as Duck Hole Plains

But the situation is changing. The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) wants more wood and grass on the forest floor apparently to increase biodiversity. This means higher fuel loads and according to some white fellas** the forests will ultimately be severely degraded by uncontrolled and uncontrollable feral fires.

A wildfire in the Barmah Forest, in an area known as Top Island, burnt out 800 hectares last October.

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Burnt forest at Top Island in October 2006, photograph taken Tuesday November 6, 2007.

Old habitat trees are apparently the first to go when a hot wildfire burns through red gum forest. Last week the Barmah woodcutters showed me how the old trees ‘burnt like chimneys’ from the inside – out.

Parts of ‘Top Island’ look like they are regenerating. But I’m told that the green coppice growth will eventually fall off – that these fire-damaged trees will never develop as habitat trees. Habitat trees have hollows for wildlife.

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Coppice and a burnt-out old habitat tree.

Where the forest has been completely burnt, for example after the sand-spit fire of the late 1960s, and where there has been no management, the red gum regrowth can be very dense.

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Regrowth from the 1968 Sand-spit fire, Photograph taken November 6, 2007.

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* All the photographs in this blog post were taken in Barmah forest last Tuesday – on Melbourne cup day.
** I use the term ‘white fellas’ to refer to the guardians of traditional European knowledge in the Barmah forest.

Pulp Mill Gets Australian Government Approval with More Conditions: A Note from Malcolm Turnbull

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Dear Jennifer,

Last week I imposed the world’s most stringent environmental conditions on the Tamar Valley pulp mill project [in Tasmania]. My decision was based solely on science and implemented the recommendations of the Chief Scientist of Australia, Dr Jim Peacock who had reported on all of the scientific issues which fell under my jurisdiction.

Critics of the mill have claimed that I should have investigated and imposed conditions on matters outside the Commonwealth’s environmental jurisdiction.

They overlook the fact that I have to act within the law and as I have set at greater length on my website the Commonwealth’s environmental jurisdiction is limited to categories detailed in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

See below for a summary of the decision. Click here for the media release and links to the complete documentation.

Given the extraordinary degree of misinformation about this matter, I would like to set down a few facts about the mill.

The mill will not process any timber from old growth forests. The timber sources will come exclusively from plantation timber and regrowth forests, ie areas which have previously been logged and have regenerated. Within five years it is expected the mill will be using 80% timber from plantations. All timber sourced is covered by the Tasmanian Regional Forestry Agreement which mandates sustainable forestry practices.

There will be no additional logging needed to support the mill. The economics of the mill are based on adding value to woodchips which would otherwise be exported to overseas pulp mills (all of which would have less stringent environmental conditions than those I have imposed on the Tamar Valley pulp mill.)

The site of the pulp mill is not in a pristine wilderness, but in a precinct zoned “heavy industrial” which includes the Comalco aluminium smelter that has been operating there since 1955 as well as a power station and other industrial operations. Check it out on Google Earth if you don’t have time to visit.

The pulp mill will not add 2% to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian Greenhouse Office advises that because the mill will use renewable wood waste for energy it is likely to be either carbon neutral or have a low emission profile compared with the “business as usual” base case of woodchip production and export to pulp mills overseas. Remember power stations fuelled with renewable fuels (biomass) qualify under the MRET scheme in many circumstances. That is why ethanol and bio-diesel are regarded as green fuels.

As you know, I resolved back in August that I would refer the scientific issues central to my assessment of the proposal to the Chief Scientist of Australia, Dr Jim Peacock, who assembled a panel of scientists toadvise him, each of them an expert in the relevant fields.

The Chief Scientist presented me with his report last week and I have made a decision to approve the mill which, consistent with the recommendations of Dr Peacock, imposes the world’s toughest environmental safeguards.

In August, the draft recommendations of my Department proposed 24 conditions be imposed on the proposed pulp mill. The number of conditions has now doubled to 48. The conditions I have imposed are the toughest to be placed on any mill of this type in the world. My decision was based on a rigorous, accountable and transparent assessment process under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

My decision, consistent with Dr Peacock’s recommendations, includes:

1. 16 conditions relating to the management of effluent from the pulp mill, including stringent levels which if exceeded will mean the mill must close until such time as an advanced (tertiary) effluent treatment process that produces high quality water is put in place.

2. maximum dioxin levels in the effluent discharged from the mill will be almost four times more stringent than world’s best practice and trigger levels (which will require immediate remedial action) will be more than six times more stringent.

3. the establishment of an Independent Expert Group, appointed by the Minister and drawn from leading national and international scientists to assist with the design, implementation, monitoring and approval of the pulp mill.

4. a requirement that Gunns prepare for the Minister’s approval an integrated Environmental Impact Management Plan, in consultation with the Independent Expert Group, to ensure no adverse impacts on Commonwealth environment matters. Some elements of the plan will be required to be approved before any construction begins and the final plan requires approval before the mill is commissioned.

5. the appointment by the Minister of an Independent Site Supervisor to monitor Gunns’ compliance with the conditions. The Independent Site Supervisor will have the full range of powers as an inspector under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to ensure there are no impediments in terms of access to information or locations to the performance as supervisor.

6. 17 conditions relating to the protection of both listed threatened and migratory species, including measures to protect the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Tasmanian Devil, fur seals, whales, dolphins and rare native vegetation.

7. requirements for around 400 hectares of protected reserve to be set aside for protected plants and animals.

8. a requirement for transparent and regular reporting by Gunns of compliance with the conditions, to be independently audited by an auditor agreed to by the Department. This report must be also be made available to the public.

My decision was based on the advice of the Chief Scientist, comprehensive advice from my Department, and over 36,000 public submissions received during the assessment process. To ensure as much transparency and accountability as possible in the decision-making process, I included three periods of public comment over the five month since the assessment commenced in April 2007.

The Australian Government’s assessment of the mill was restricted to a set of defined environmental matters, namely the marine environment under Commonwealth jurisdiction, and threatened and migratory species.

As has consistently been the case throughout this assessment, the majority of public concerns relate to issues beyond the Australian Government’s legal powers. The Tasmanian Government is responsible for many of the issues surrounding the pulp mill. These include emissions of odours, local air quality and impacts on Tasmanian waters. I should note the stringent conditions on effluent composition that I have imposed (in order to protect Commonwealth waters) will confer added protection to the marine environment within Tasmanian jurisdiction. .

Wood supply issues are not subject to assessment under the EPBC Act so long as the wood supply, as is the case here, is covered by a Regional Forestry Agreement.

I have been very critical of the Tasmanian assessment process. The decision of the Lennon Government to abandon the assessment by the RPDC unfortunately undermined the trust of the people of Tasmania. The RPDC was, as is the usual practice, considering both State and Commonwealth environmental issues in a bilateral process. When Mr Lennon abandoned that process, I had no choice but to consider the Commonwealth issues myself and I have run a transparent and consultative Commonwealth assessment. The outcome of that process ensures that the pulp mill meets world’s best practice in those areas protected under Commonwealth environment law.

Please visit my Department’s website for more information on my decision, the conditions and a copy of the Chief Scientist’s report.

Yours sincerely
Malcolm Turnbull
Minister for the Environment and Water Resources

Global Warming and The Karri Forest: A Note from Roger Underwood

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Articles in The West Australian newspaper on 15th and 17th September 2007 suggested that global warming will lead to the virtual disappearance of Western Australia’s iconic karri forest. The articles quote Dr Ray Wills, a research scientist at the University of Western Australia’s Geography Department, who asserts that karri forests could be reduced to small pockets and marginal remnants in the years to come. He bases this view on projections that the southwest of Western Australia (WA) will become warmer by 2 to 3 degrees in the years ahead, and on the assumption that this warming will in turn lead to a decline in rainfall to the extent that karri will basically die out.

Karri forests are part of the so-called “southern forests” of Australia’s southwest corner. They comprise about 1.3 million hectares of pure karri and karri mixed with jarrah, marri and red and yellow tingle. Apart from several outliers, such as at Boranup (near Margaret River) and Porongorup (east of Mt Barker), all of the present karri forest is found in areas with a long-term annual rainfall of >1100 mm.

However, the present karri forest is also a remnant. Analysis of pollen in geological strata has demonstrated that karri once occupied a very much wider area; indeed it is still possible to find typical karri forest understorey in moist gullies in the northern jarrah forest. The shrinkage of the karri forest appears to have resulted mainly from a decline in rainfall many thousands of years ago.

Karri is well able to survive much higher temperatures than those predicted. The species is adapted to a present-day climate which every summer experiences well above the average temperature, including days over 40 degrees. I have successfully grown karri in Perth and the Darling Ranges, regions with much warmer average temperatures than the lower southwest, and I even succeeded in establishing karri in my arboretum in the Avon Valley where the temperature exceeds 40 degrees day after day from January through to March. Karri was unaffected by these high temperatures. What killed them was winter frosts not summer heat. A feature of the current natural distribution of karri is that frost is very rare and when it does occur it is relatively mild and short-lived.

I believe that a predicted rise in average annual temperature of 2-3 degrees per se will not worry karri, especially if this occurs as a result of milder winters rather than hotter summers.

The problem of lower rainfall is another matter, and already forests all over the southwest of WA (especially wandoo and tuart) are observed declining in the face of below-average rainfall in recent years. The karri forest has also experienced a similar reduction in rainfall, but is not yet showing the same drought symptoms as wandoo and tuart. If there is another substantial decline in the current rainfall pattern, it probably will, unless some action is taken by forest managers.

Luckily something can be done to ameliorate the impact on the karri forest of lower rainfall. This is a well-planned and professionally conducted program of thinning of overstocked regrowth forests plus regular (7-9 year rotation) mild prescribed burning across the whole forest area. Such a program will lead to a higher proportion of rainfall getting through to recharge soil moisture, and will ensure less competition for water at the root zone. Prescribed burning will also reduce bushfire fuels and render old growth forests less susceptible to conversion to dense rainfall-gulping regrowth by high intensity summer fires.

Opponents of thinning and prescribed burning will immediately rise up and condemn this strategy, claiming that it will cause “a loss of biodiversity”. There is no scientific basis for this fear. But if no action is taken and Dr Wills’ doomsday predictions are correct, the biodiversity is going down the tube anyway. Even a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will not stop the 2-3 degree killer temperature rise according to Dr Wills.

It is my understanding that the jury is still out on the link between a projected higher temperature due to global warming and a projected lower rainfall. Never mind. Even if “normal” rainfall patterns return to south-western WA, the forests will be healthier and more biologically diverse if overstocked regrowth stands have been thinned and mild burning undertaken to reduce fuels and thus minimise high intensity wildfires. And if the predictions of Dr Wills and his colleagues are right, well-managed forests will be better able to cope if a still-drier climate eventuates. The other good thing is that both thinning and burning are standard forestry operations which have been conducted for generations and subject to a great deal of research and monitoring. We know how to do it and that it will work, with no environmental downside.

Incidentally, Dr Wills is by not the first distinguished scientist to predict the extinction of Australia’s southwest forests. In the 1970s geography Professor Arthur Connacher predicted that logging for woodchip-quality logs would result in the “desertification” of the karri forest. Thankfully this has not occurred. And in the 1980s ecologist Dr Wardell-Johnson warned of the imminent loss of the tingle forests on the south coast due to “continental drift”. Australia was at that time thought to be drifting towards the equator at a rate of a few millimetres per century. It has also been too early to detect any evidence of this calamity.

Roger Underwood worked as a forester in the karri forest in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pulp Mill Should Go Ahead Says AEF Chair, Don Burke

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“The proposed pulp mill at Bell Bay in Tasmania should go ahead if it meets environmental guidelines” said Don Burke, chairman of the Australian Environment Foundation [AEF].

Mr Burke was commenting after discussion at the AEF annual conference in Melbourne on the proposed pulp mill.

“This is best practice pulp production. We believe that it is essential to support best practice industries. Encouraging improvements in environmental behaviour of companies is the best way forward.

To refuse the mill a permit and continue to export wood chips to mills overseas that are not up to the standard of the Bell Bay mill is to show a breathtaking disregard for the environment” said Mr Burke.

“We have looked at Gunn’s operations in Tasmania, we have looked at the data and we have listened to the needs of the Tasmanian people. Based on the available science AEF supports this project as an example of best practice sustainable forestry.

Decisions on the environment must be based on science and evidence – not emotion – if we are to achieve the best possible result for the environment and the people that are part of that” concluded Mr Burke.

The AEF conference was addressed by Gunns Ltd Resource Manager, Calton Frame prior to discussion on the proposed mill.

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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 .

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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Greenwashing River Red Gums

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Ecotourism Australia has thrown its weight behind the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council’s River Red Gum Forest Draft Proposal, claiming that it will open up important new ecotourism opportunities for the region.

However, another NGO, Timber Communities Australia, argues that as many as 400 families, whose livelihoods are dependent on access to these forests, will be adversely affected by the proposals.

Ecotourism Australia’s foray into the debate represents an expression of its mission to contribute to conservation solutions and projects; involving and providing benefits to local communities, but will those 400 families be the targeted beneficiaries?

My dubiousness reflects the pre-existing capacity of genuine ecotourism to access an already existing superb environment. Change of tenure to National Park is not prerequisite. What is does provide though, is subsidisation of the full costs of conservation and commercial operator relief of the requirement to improve the well-being of local people.

Genuine ecotourism is internationally defined as:

Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.

Ecotourism Australia is a membership-based organisation that is strongly representative of protected area managers and holders of commercial activity permits. It has adopted a different definition to the international standard:

Ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.

The Oslo Statement on Ecotourism was recently produced at the Global Ecotourism Conference held in Norway 2007.

‘Ecotourism’ was recognized as being widely used, but also abused, as it is not sufficiently anchored to the definition. The ecotourism community, therefore, continues to face significant challenges in awareness building and education and actively working against greenwashing within the tourism industry.