August 11, 2008

A Critical Review of ‘Green Carbon: The Role of Natural Forests in Carbon Storage’

Last week the Australian National University released a report** on “Green Carbon” claiming that un-logged native forests store three times more carbon than previously reported and this prompted a demand by The Wilderness Society for an urgent end to logging of the carbon dense native forests in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

Alan Ashbarry, a Tasmanian with an interest in the social and economic benefit of value adding native forest timber from sustainable forestry and a member of Timber Communities Australia, has sent me his critique of the report.

It begins:

The report was funded by the Wilderness Society as part of its campaigns against the harvesting of native forest of high political value. This campaign includes opposing Tasmania’s approved pulp mill as it will use pulp wood from native forests at a time when the Wilderness society claims that their “carbon storage is critically important to combat climate change”.

So is it not surprising that the report recommends the banning of all industrial logging in Australia’s south eastern native forests.

This means closing down the native forest timber industry in Tasmania, Victoria and Southern New South Wales and stopping the pulp mill.

In the ultimate irony, if the industry is shut down, it is likely that Australia will import timber and paper products from tropical forests in developing counties as alternatives for the wood products created by sustainable forestry in these areas.

It is these tropical forests that are most at risk and are the target of the United Nation’s REDD program. This program aims to reduce emissions from deforestation or degradation of forests in the developing world.

According to data from the United Nations the REDD program does not target sustainable forestry in Australia.

All official statistics and reports show that deforestation has virtually stopped in Australia and all forest harvesting/ management is undertaken and measured against international criteria for sustainable management.

Unlike the Wilderness Society, the UN’s Intergovernmental panel of Climate Change (IPCC) recognises the value of our forest sector explaining:

“In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit”

But what about the new report published by the ANU and funded by the Wilderness Society? How robust is the claim that un-logged native forests store three times more carbon than previously stated in Australian government reports and by internal climate change experts?

The report itself states: "A technical paper that details the source data, the methods used and the full results is being prepared for a scientific journal."

In the absence of this data, I checked their maths and found the report also failed the common sense test.

The ANU report has used a new model to estimate the carbon in our forests, a model that is completely at odds with studies undertaken by the Australian Greenhouse Office, Professor Peter Attiwill, Forestry Tasmania, MBAC, and the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse accounting and they have significantly higher results than modelling by the Australian National University in 2003 and 2006.

The report’s lead author, Professor Brendan Mackey, who is a Wilderness Society volunteer on their Wild Country panel, last year in The Age demanded logging must be stopped to solve the global warming problem.

In The Age article he claimed “One hectare of mature, tall, wet forest can store the equivalent of 5500 tonnes of carbon dioxide” this is the equivalent of the large figure of total 1500 tonnes Carbon per hectare stored in the biomass and the soil [The conversion factor used for C/CO2 is 12/44 (0.273)].

Now this new ANU report in which he is lead author claims that forests “can store three times more carbon than scientists previously thought.”

The model used in the ANU report somewhat quaintly colour codes the carbon throughout the World: black is for charcoal, grey from fossil fuel, green is carbon stored in the biosphere, brown is carbon in “industrialised forests” and blue is carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. As green carbon is defined by the report as carbon sequestered through photosynthesis and stored in natural forests, the report can then ignore all that carbon that is stored in timber products from managed forests. This is extraordinary given that the carbon in managed forests is also manufactured through photosynthesis, yes even the carbon stored in the “brown” trees!

The ANU report selects only 14.5 million hectares from Australia’s forest estate of over 147 million hectares.
The new model created for this report relies on data of the ‘gross primary productivity’ and the report states: “The value of GPP used was the maximum annual value for the period from 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2005 (the maximum was used in order to exclude periods of major disturbance such as the 2003 bushfires).” This statement begs the question of why would you want to exclude bush fires surely this is “green” carbon.

Thus the model is all about potential not reality, and states on page 7:

"The difference in carbon stocks between our estimates and the IPCC default values is the result of us using local data collected from natural forests not disturbed by logging. Our estimates therefore reflect the carbon carrying capacity of the natural forests.”

The ANU report argues that "If logging in native eucalypt forests was halted, the carbon stored in the intact forests would be protected and the degraded forests would be able to regrow their carbon stocks to their natural carbon carrying capacity.”

Until this report it has mostly just been the forest sector that has stated the forest re-grows after harvest and can maintain both biological diversity and carbon carrying capacity.

The report authors then make a series of assumptions to determine the carbon sequestration potential of the logged forest area.

The report claims that an average carbon carrying potential of 360 t C ha-1 of biomass carbon (living plus dead biomass above the ground). It also claims the highest biomass carbon stocks, with an average of more than 1200 t C ha-1 and maximum of over 2,000 t C ha-1 are in the mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria and Tasmania.

These are the areas of highest political value and have constantly been in the middle of the debate about forest management for the last decade or two.

It is these figures that clearly demonstrate that the model fails basic maths and common sense. If the carbon volumes are converted to the actual volume of trees, it means that there would be trees growing on trees!
Carbon density of eucalypt wood is about 0.325 t C/ m3, this means at 2,000 t C ha-1, this is 6,153.84 m3 of wood, say 6,150 m3 per ha. If only half of this could be considered the timber available to the forest sector(exclude branches, litter, rotting wood, stumps), then this wood equates to a volume of logs of about 3,000m3/ha.
Therefore in an average coupe of 50 ha this represents 150,000m3 of log, it means based on the model that two average size coupes will produce over 300,000 m3 of log.

To compare just how big a figure this is, Forestry Tasmania has a legislated requirement to supply the whole of Tasmania’s saw milling industry 300,000 m3 of saw logs each year from the 1.5 million hectares it sustainably manages!

In 2006-07 Forestry Tasmania harvested over 11,500 ha of native forest for a harvest of 301,526 m3 of sawlog, 283,880 m3 veneer and peeler hardwood and 2,136,687 tonnes of pulpwood. By approximating a tonne of pulp to 1.5 cubic metre this would be about 330 m3 per ha or 16,500 m3 per average coupe.

Even The Wilderness Society used a completely different figure of only 225 tonnes pulp wood per hectare, when calculating the impact of the approved pulp mill on Native forests. Even allowing for harvesting residues this is a tiny fraction of the new model’s figures.

The report fails the common sense test but it was published by a reputable university and has been given all the credibility of an independent scientific report by the mainstream media including the ABC.

The Wilderness Society and the ANU chose to release the report to the media rather than first publish it in a scientific journal subject to peer review. Now the report is likely to be used to lobby the United Nation committee that current forest practices degrade the forest. This lobbying attempt is just after their failure to convince UNESCO over wild allegations about the Tasmanian World Heritage Area.

Until the data and the calculations supporting this report have been subject to full independent scrutiny, the reports status must be considered just another claim in the ‘war of words’ on forestry.

Alan Ashbarry
Tasmania
www.tasmaniapulpmill.info

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** The report's title is rather long: Green Carbon: The role of natural forests in carbon storage
Part 1. A green carbon account of Australia’s south-eastern Eucalypt forests, and policy implications
Authors are: Brendan G. Mackey, Heather Keith, Sandra L. Berry and David B. Lindenmayer
Published by: The Fenner School of Environment & Society, The Australian National University
And you can download it from: http://epress.anu.edu.au/green_carbon/pdf_instructions.html

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July 08, 2008

No Extension of World Heritage Area into Tall Tassie Forests: Peter Garrett

In a media release Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, yesterday welcomed the World Heritage Committee’s consideration at its meeting in Quebec, Canada, of an expert report on Australia’s management of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The report, prepared by an expert mission sent by the World Heritage Committee to Tasmania in March, was based on extensive consultation, field research and rigorous examination of many long standing issues.

“It is pleasing the experts concluded that the outstanding universal values of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area are being satisfactorily managed, as are potential threats from production forestry outside the World Heritage boundary”, Mr Garrett said.

The mission also found that the Regional Forest Agreement and Tasmania’s forest practices system provide an appropriate framework for managing conservation values outside of the World Heritage Area.

The World Heritage Committee suggested a number of additional measures to enhance protection of possible values outside the existing World Heritage Area. These include possible adjustment of the World Heritage Area to include 21 areas of national parks and state reserves that are already covered by the World Heritage management plan but currently outside the boundary, and enhancing resources and capacity for the conservation of archaeological and Aboriginal sites.

Mr Garrett noted that both the Australian and Tasmanian Governments have responsibilities in relation to the World Heritage Area and would cooperate in carefully considering the implications of the World Heritage Committee recommendations.

The Australian Government agreed in-principle with the recommendations to extend the 1.3 million hectare Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to include the additional 21 formal reserves recommended by the expert mission.

Mr Garrett also noted that the expert mission found no extension of the World Heritage area into tall eucalypt forests was warranted as the World Heritage area already includes a good representation of tall eucalypts. This contrasted with the World Heritage Committee’s request to consider, at Australia’s discretion, a further extension of the World Heritage Area in these forests.

The Australian Government has no plans to extend the current boundary into production forests.

Mr Garrett said that the Australian Government agreed in principle with the recommendations of the five yearly review of the implementation of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement and is working with the Tasmanian Government towards this implementation.

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is one of 17 World Heritage properties in Australia. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1982, and extended in 1989, the Tasmanian Wilderness is one of the world’s largest World Heritage Areas and covers 20% of the entire Tasmanian landmass.

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May 27, 2008

New Premier, No Pulp Mill for Tasmania?

The new Tasmanian premier, David Bartlett, today said the future of the state's key project, the pulp mill, was in the hands of its proponents and their financiers.

His predecessor, Paul Lennon, tied his political fortunes closely to the mill, which appears to have failed to gain the backing of the ANZ bank.

Read more here: http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/article/777041.aspx

Of course there has been a sustained environmental campaign against the mill from the Tasmanian Greens and others.

Pulp mills are dotted across Europe but are to be excluded from Tasmania because of the prejudices of some.

I guess the same activists will soon be back to campaigning against the export of product to pulp mills in Japan?

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May 26, 2008

Australia’s 2008 State of the Forests Report Released

Australia's State of the Forests Report 2008 was launched by the Hon Tony Burke MP, and Commonwealth Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on May 21, 2008. According to a media release from Forestry Tasmania:

“The Report is based on data from the public and private sectors and provides the most comprehensive review of the state of our forests ever undertaken,” said Dr Hans Drielsma, Forestry Tasmania’s Executive General Manager.

“There are many positive signs amongst the Report’s finding. For example, Australia’s forests sequester more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they emit and therefore help to offset Australia’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Report shows that managed native forests offset about 5.5%, and plantations about 3.5% of total national greenhouse gas emissions in 2005. Additional storage in wood products offset a further 1% of emissions. This complements the preliminary research done by FT that shows State forests are sequestering carbon over the long term.

“According to the document, since the 2003 Report, the area of Australia’s native forest in formal nature conservation reserves has increased by about 1.5 million hectares to 23 million hectares, from 13% to 16%.

“There are a total of 8.5 million hectares of forest certified as being sustainably managed under the premium (and not-for-profit) Australian Forestry Standard, and about 600,000 hectares certified under the FSC system. Combined, this is an increase of approximately 2.5 million hectares over the previous year.

“The State of the Forests Report shows that over 30 million hectares of public forests (20% of the total forest area) is managed primarily for protection, including of soil and water values; most is in nature conservation reserves.

The Report also confirms the fact that the net loss of woody vegetation (mostly forest) estimated by the Australian Greenhouse Office was 260,000 hectares (0.25%) per year between 2000 and 2004, due mainly to clearing for agriculture and urban development, and not forest practices.

“The report uses the internationally-established Montreal Process framework for criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management and was done by the national-level Montreal Process Implementation Group for Australia (MIG)."

The 2008 report was prepared by the MIG, comprised of representatives from the Australian, state and territory governments. Production of the report was co-ordinated by the Bureau of Rural Sciences on behalf of the MIG.

In addition to the main report, a package of supporting materials will also be launched, comprising a stand-alone executive summary and a series of fact sheets on topical forest issues such as carbon, certification, conservation, employment, fire, sustainable yield, forest type and extent, and water.

You can download the report here: http://adl.brs.gov.au/forestsaustralia/publications/sofr2008.html

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May 14, 2008

Campaign Against ANZ Forest Policy Disingenuous - A Note from Alan Ashbarry

The ANZ bank recently released it Forest and Biodiversity Policy as part of its corporate responsibility on the environment.

The bank developed the policy over the last few years in consultation with its customers and stakeholders.

The policy demands that its customers when engaged in the forest industry must meet extensive criteria including independent environmental certification and the protection of high conservation value forest. Forestry must be legal and not be undertaken in World Heritage Areas, National Parks and conservation reserves.

In terms of high conservation values the policy looks at international and national definitions. High conservation value forest is not defined by lobby groups such as the Wilderness Society or by the forest industry but by a fully open and transparent process. In Australian identifying HCV forest has its roots in the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement, defined in what is known as the JANIS criteria, and implemented by the Regional Forest and Community Forest Agreements.

In terms of sustainable practices, ANZ will engage customers involved in large scale forestry activities to advocate credible sustainable forest management (SFM) certification. However, the bank acknowledges it is the customer’s choice on which internationally recognised certification scheme is adopted.

Forest certification schemes provide a way of defining sustainable forest management as well as third party, independent verification that a timber source meets the definition of sustainability. Certification schemes include a mechanism for tracing products from the certified source forest to the end use.

A number of certification schemes operate throughout the world. Operating in Australia are:
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)

So it’s a bit surprising that our national broadcaster The ABC is running claims from the Australian Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that ANZ's new forest policy is too broad. And that “the bank's new guidelines on providing funding for forestry and timber processing projects lacks detail.”

The FSC in Australia is run by a board of Directors including representatives from Timber Workers for Forests, Timber Communities Australia, The Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Paperlinx, Timbercorp, Integrated Tree Cropping and one independent. It is chaired by Sean Cadman, the National Forest Campaigner of the Wilderness Society.

The other certification scheme is the Australian Forest Standard that is part of the PEFC. Its Board comprises 10 Directors, with representation being four from government, three from the Forestry and Wood Products Sector, one Employee Representative, one General and up to two Independent members, one of whom is the Chair of the company, currently Geoff Gorrie.

In light of these schemes it is difficult to understand the motive of such criticism by the FSC, perhaps it is due the inclusion of a competing scheme by the Bank or perhaps it is due to fact the Wilderness Society is currently targeting the ANZ bank about the Tasmanian Pulp Mill?

In Tasmania, Forestry Tasmania, Gunns Ltd and Forest Enterprises Australia have been externally certified as complying with the international standard for environmental management systems (ISO 14001) and have also been externally certified against the Australian Forestry Standard (AS 4708) rather than the FSC.

Gunns Ltd has received Commonwealth and Tasmanian approval to build a pulp mill to value add woodchips that would other wise be exported from forests covered by the Regional forest Agreement.

Alan Ashbarry
Website: http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home
About: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001252.html

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May 12, 2008

Victorian Timber Industry to Pay for Water?

"IN A blow to Victoria's massive plantation industry, the State Government has moved to make thirsty timber plantations accountable for the water they use.

"Companies such as Timbercorp may face extra costs as Government documents show it is considering making them pay for the water the trees suck up...

Read more here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/plan-to-make-timber-industry-pay-for-rain/2008/05/10/1210131335198.html

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May 10, 2008

New Website on the Tasmanian Pulp Mill: A Note from Alan Ashbarry

Last year the Tasmanian Parliament and the Australian Government approved the pulp mill for the Tamar Valley.

They did so after the developer, Gunns Limited, published an Integrated Impact Statement comprising 7,500 pages of social, environmental and economic analysis representing a planning investment of more than $11 million and in excess of 350,000 hours of research, study, modeling and reporting.

A report that was debated examined and generated even more studies, reports and media attention.

Yet despite this, the general public throughout Australia is being asked to oppose the mill.

The latest campaign is to rally against the ANZ bank because the pulp mill will “be a disaster for climate change, It will be 80% native forest-based”.

This is despite the IIS and the shed full of additional information showing that the majority of timber used during the mill’s life will be from plantations (64%) and that the reports detail that over 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved each year in reduced shipping and the generation of renewable power.

With the passage of time, much of the information is hard to find, so a new web site has been started to look at the claims being made in the Media and to get to the facts behind the headlines. The Web site will link to a range of reports and information on the Mill and Tasmania’s sustainable forest management.

You are invited to bookmark my new web site http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home and visit it regularly as it will be updated frequently. If you have a question or issue that you want more detail, there is a contact section.

Alan Ashbarry
Hobart.

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February 04, 2008

Dead River Red Gums (Part II)

Yesterday I posted some photographs of healthy Blue Gums in the Grose Valley.

I suggested in the comment thread that followed, that River Red Gums are more suseptible to fire, and that a fire in October 2006 in the Barmah forest destroyed many trees.

River Red Gums are also susceptible to drought.

The following photographs were taken in the Murray Valley last November.

West of Koondrook before the Kerang turnoff, November 21, 2007

West of Koondrook before the Kerang turnoff, November 21, 2007

West of Koondrook before the Kerang turnoff, November 21, 2007

Trees along the Murray River were healthy, but this isolated stand of trees on a farmed section of the floodplain appeared mostly dead - I assume from drought.

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February 03, 2008

Blue Gums in Grose Valley Healthy After Back-Burning

Just over a year ago media reports indicated the Blue Gum Forest of the Grose Valley was “hanging in the balance” because of a wildfire made “more intense, unpredictable and extensive by massive backburning operations”.

I trekked into the forest today and was surprised and pleased to see a beautiful forest with little evidence of fire damage.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the south-east.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. Looking to the north-west.

The Blue Gum Forest, Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, February 3, 2008. At junction of Grose River and Govett Creek, looking to the north.

As I struggled up the steep escarpment on my way out of the valley, I passed a couple descending into the valley and I asked if they were planning to visit the Blue Gum Forest.

“Yes,” replied the women, “At least what is left of it”.

Like me, and so many Australians, she believed the media reports that the forest had been badly damaged. As we passed I suggested she would be pleasantly surprised by what she saw.

Why has reporting in the popular press been so negative? Was the state of this iconic forest misrepresented as part of a wider campaign against back-burning?

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Additional Notes and Links

Link to picture of burnt forest in Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-ghosts-of-an-enchanted-forest-demand-answers/2006/12/10/1165685553891.html

Link to earlier blog post with a question from Bill in Melbourne about the state of the forest:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002620.html

The Blue Gums in the Grose Valley are Mountain Blue Gums Eucalyptus deanii, here are some links to the more common Tasmanian Blue Gum, Eucalptus globulus:
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1702968.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Eucalyptus+globulus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_globulus

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January 15, 2008

Global Warming Hysteria in The West Australian: A Note from Roger Underwood

Over the last 6 months, readers of The West Australian newspaper have been subjected to a barrage of hysteria over global warming. Very bad news stories of one kind or another are published almost every day, all with the common theme that civilisation as we know it is about to be destroyed.

Some of these stories are simply laughable, like the article asserting that a rise in temperature of 1-2 degrees will result in the extinction of the karri forest. Another reported that rising sea levels (caused by global warming) will, amongst other calamities, lead to a killer increase in salinity in the Swan River. Many readers were surprised by this, since the Swan River is a tidal estuary in its lower reaches, and is fed by the salt-laden Avon River in its upper reaches.

Day after day The West Australian delivers stories unequivocally foretelling the melting of ice caps and glaciers, death of forests, disease outbreaks, the collapse of agriculture, social disruption, loss of coastal communities and beaches, catastrophic storms, floods, droughts and bushfires. All of this is based on an unquestioning acceptance of the theory that human-induced CO2 emissions are causing the world to heat up, and an unquestioning belief in the link between projected warming and ghastly consequences.

I am curious about this lack of editorial scepticism. When it comes to reporting politics or community issues, journalists generally pride themselves on pricking sacred balloons, cutting down tall poppies, exposing spin and highlighting hidden agendas, in short doing what journalists do. The West Australian is quite good in this area, even if their judgement is not always infallible. They have not been afraid to attack government Ministers or powerful Union bosses or to probe politically-incorrect issues, such as alcoholism and education in Indigenous communities. But on global warming their stance is one of uncritical acceptance of Worst Case Scenarios. The whole package of political game-playing and agenda-driven alarmism is taken at face value and delivered on to readers as if the newspaper was a propaganda pamphlet, rather than a mature organ of the Australian media.
It is not just The West Australian. ABC current affairs journalists to a man and woman are also promoters of Global Warming Apocalypse. A good example was the recent segment on The 7.30 Report which suggested that a slight projected increase in temperature would result in a regime of completely unstoppable bushfires. This proposition was put to the gullible journalist by a climatologist and an environmental activist, neither of whom had any experience in bushfire science or management. No one with this knowledge or experience was interviewed.

And just before the Global Warming True Believers launch their barbs at me, I assure them that I accept the idea of climate change - the climate is always changing. I am also concerned about air pollution from industry and vehicles. However, I regard as unproven the theory of ‘accelerated global warming” as a result of human CO2 emissions. And I consider the worst-case scenarios uncritically presented as fact by journalists to be unhelpful to a community struggling to make sense of a complex issue.

There are risks associated with constant promotion of Worst Case Scenarios. The first is that people will start to shrug their shoulders, feeling that the whole situation is beyond hope: the planet is doomed, so we might as well live for the minute. This leads to the second risk: doomsday projections becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.
The one-sided reporting of the global warming debate is perhaps explained by the fact that journalists are frightened of presenting both sides of the global warming story. They do not want to alienate those powerful sections of the community who will attack them if they do, i.e. environmentalists, academics and business interests profiting from global warming alarm. Alternatively we are just seeing another example of the professional immaturity of the Australian media. I have observed that they have always regarded dramatic disasters and fearsome calamities as more newsworthy than everyday life or good citizenship. Thus trees being chainsawed to the accompaniment of wailing protesters is a far “better” story than a forest quietly regrowing under the stewardship of dedicated foresters. I can see no solution to this.

Roger Underwood
Perth, Western Australia

PS: I sent a copy of this article to the Editor of The West asking for any comments before I posted it on this blog. He did not reply. However, a week later a short article appeared with the first positive comment about global warming I have ever seen in this newspaper. The journalist reported the view of a marine scientist that global warming would lead to extensive new coral reefs forming all along the Western Australian coast, perhaps as far south as Perth. That will be nice.

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In September 14, 2006, I posted a piece entitled 'Déjà Vu on the ABC' by Roger Underwood which went on to win a place in the On Line Opinion best blogs competition for that year. This article is also about inaccurate and misleading media reporting of an environmental issue. Read more here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001633.html.

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January 14, 2008

Another Assumption in Trouble: No Convincing Evidence for Decline in Tropical Forests

Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds.

This major challenge to conventional thinking is the surprising finding of a study published today in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences by Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography and one of the world's leading experts on tropical deforestation.

In the first attempt for many years to chart the long-term trend in tropical forest area, he spent more than three years going through all available United Nations data with a fine toothcomb – and found some serious problems.

Read the entire EurekAlert write up here.

Philip Stott also has a good write up here.

The abstract from the paper is below:

Difficulties in tracking the long-term global trend in tropical forest area

Alan Grainger*

School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom

Edited by B. L. Turner II, Clark University, Worcester, MA, and approved December 3, 2007 (received for review April 3, 2007)

Abstract

The long-term trend in tropical forest area receives less scrutiny than the tropical deforestation rate. We show that constructing a reliable trend is difficult and evidence for decline is unclear, within the limits of errors involved in making global estimates. A time series for all tropical forest area, using data from Forest Resources Assessments (FRAs) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, is dominated by three successively corrected declining trends. Inconsistencies between these trends raise questions about their reliability, especially because differences seem to result as much from errors as from changes in statistical design and use of new data. A second time series for tropical moist forest area shows no apparent decline. The latter may be masked by the errors involved, but a "forest return" effect may also be operating, in which forest regeneration in some areas offsets deforestation (but not biodiversity loss) elsewhere. A better monitoring program is needed to give a more reliable trend. Scientists who use FRA data should check how the accuracy of their findings depends on errors in the data.

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November 10, 2007

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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October 07, 2007

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

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

Posted by jennifer at 09:59 AM | Comments (54) | TrackBack

September 23, 2007

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

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.

Posted by jennifer at 04:56 PM | Comments (7)

September 12, 2007

Pulp Mill Should Go Ahead Says AEF Chair, Don Burke

"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.

-----------------------
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 .

Posted by jennifer at 08:06 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

September 11, 2007

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

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.

Posted by jennifer at 01:08 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

September 05, 2007

Greenwashing River Red Gums

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.

Posted by neil at 07:33 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

August 30, 2007

Stopping Logging Won't Stop Global Warming: A Note from Norman Endacott

Save the Forests: they are crucial to reducing CO2

This is the call to arms which we get from Professor Brendan Mackey, Professor of Environmental Science at the ANU, in the Opinion Section of the Melbourne's The Age of August 7, 2007. The heading was followed by a sub-heading which makes the unequivocal assertion that “Stopping Logging Will Help Solve the Global Warming Problem”.

He gives us a farrago of nonsense about the capability of the world’s forests in turning back the tide of man-made CO2 emissions, provided mankind will but leave those forests alone, without fire protection, unmanaged, un-logged, unharvested, and un-regenerated.

He focuses on Tasmania, and complains about the recent Labor endorsement of the status quo, wherein the Forest Management Agency (Forestry Tasmania) manages Tasmania’s public forests on Multiple Use and Sustainable bases.

On August 1st, Jon Faine who conducts ABC’s popular morning talkback radio programme, anticipated the doomsday scenario of Prof. Mackey concerning Tasmania and CO2 emissions. In an interview with Kevin Rudd on Labor policy, he accused Rudd of propounding a contradictory policy – on the one hand supporting the Government’s stand against Global Warming, and on the other hand commending the forestry status quo in Tasmania.

Professor Mackey and Jon Faine have acquired the same mindset, most likely from such sources as the Greens and the Wilderness Society, with all the accompanying anti-forestry baggage.

I will endeavour to tease out some of the falsehoods embedded in the Mackey article.

These are my counter-arguments:

(1) Tasmanian land-use statistics, present and past, indicate that today’s forest boundaries embrace land which stands at 66% of the hectares of forest that existed in 1803. Virtually no forest diminution occurred in the 20th century or later

(2) Furthermore, within Tasmania’s late 20th and early 21st centuries we have seen a prodigious area of Public Forest landscape dedicated as National Parks, Wilderness, Valleys of the Giants, so-called “Old Growth Forests”, Cool Temperate Rainforests, and “Forests of High ConservationValue”, also forests with romantic-sounding names, like “Tarkine”. These areas have been excluded from timber utilization in perpetuity.

(3) These swashbuckling logging exclusions occurred under the auspices of the Helsham Enquiry , the RFA Agreement, Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement 2005, and the 2004 pre-Federal Election horse-trading between Howard, Latham & Paul Lennon . This all happened within the span of a couple of decades. The Forest Industries Association of Tasmania has produced a set of progress maps which show the cumulative extent of reservations, as percentages of total forest. The cumulative % figures are : 1982 – 14%, 1992 – 21%, 2001 – 40%, 2006 - 47%.

Considering the situation on mainland Australia :

(4) If Prof.Mackey is advocating a vast Australia-wide plantation programme, as a supplement to the “saved” native forest, where is the productive land to be found? From compulsorily acquired farmland? If so, has he studied the problems of agricultural macro-economics on the national scale?

(5) Prof. Mackey claims that one hectare of mature, tall,wet forest can store the equivalent of 5,500 tonnes of CO2. This seems an extraordinarily large figure, and takes a lot of believing., especially as he blithely tosses it into the ring seemingly as an Australia-wide average. Probably he has this figure embedded in one or more published peer-reviewed “scientific” papers. If so, one would be interested to see how such an enormous figure matches up with the fact that cool temperate rain forest with a tall eucalypt overstory is seriously atypical of Australia’s forest landscapes. The land occupied by our overall forests is generally much less propitious to biomass production than his model. Low and unreliable rainfall( less than 800 mm), shallow and infertile soils (less than one metre depth) and low productivity are the norm. He further confuses the lay community by comparing all this with 1300 cars emitting exhaust fumes over one year, presumably continuously.

(6) Has Dr Mackey compiled a stratified map of Australian forests and potential forest areas, giving himself guidance in factoring hectares and biomass productivity classes into his computations? That would seem to be a sine qua non, to an expert on this subject.

(7) He does not appear to give any credit to the foresters of our country in their pursuit of Multiple Use and Sustainability. To him, their mission in life is simply to flog woodchips off to Japan.

(8) He manages to convey to us that the diminution of a forest is a greenhouse crime, but to do so with the alleged objective of producing pulpwood or woodchips would seem to be infinitely more reprehensible than any other usage. This gratuitous and unfavourable mention of woodchips divulges his covert philosophical linkages with green activist groups.

(9) In his baseless conviction that UNDISTURBED Australian forests are the answer to Australia’s alleged greenhouse problem, Prof. Mackey has lost the ecological plot and fails to grasp the myriad of complexities, constraints , limitations , roadblocks, perils , even stubbornness of Nature,which stand in the way of his masterly “green solution”.

Any forester worth his or her salt, is familiar with the manner in which a tree or forest stand passes through its life cycle (or in forester’s jargon, it’s rotation). Here are the stages in the cycle, starting from the initiation of an Australian afforestation event (natural or artificial), assuming eucalypts, and focussing on biomass (carbon) accumulation :

a) Juvenile phase - insignificant biomass production, grading through to significant and accelerating.

b) Sapling/ Pole phase - rapid growth in height volume and carbon content

c) Middle Age phase - maximum rate of growth in biomass

d) Mature phase - plateau effect, extending over decades.

e) Overmature phase – rate of growth of biomass in decline, verging on the static

f)Senescent phase- absolutely static growth, and tree health now a consideration, plus attack by insect and fungal parasites and saprophytes, leading inevitably to the forest giving up its store of organic matter to the atmosphere as CO2.

g) The first symptom of this disintegration of the forest overstory is the progressive shedding of the dead branches. The last stage is gravity consigning the mortal remains to the forest floor, to join the invertebrates, microbes, and of course the CO2 stream.

h) The question arises – what does Nature have in store for this “residual” forest area, which will have bitterly disappointed Professor Mackey by not retaining its carbon store and forest cover for more than a miserable couple of hundred years. No mention of the word “PERPETUITY” anywhere . That concept seems to be the preserve of Foresters !

i) If we search diligently for the evidence of this failure of our forests to perform to Prof. Mackey’s greenhouse aspirations, we could find the above ecological drama playing itself out in its final phase, in some veteran Eucalyptus regnans stands in Victorian Central Highlands, or Tasmania’s Florentine, Styx & Weld Valleys.

Norman Endacott.
(Retired Forester)

Posted by jennifer at 07:43 PM | Comments (4)

Geoffrey Cousins Should Visit Us: A Plea from Timber Workers in Tasmania

High profile Sydney business man Geoffrey Cousins is running a campaign against a new pulp mill proposed for the Tamar Valley in Tasmania. His campaign appears to haver resulted in the federal government deciding to delay their decision by at least six weeks. But how much does Geoffrey Cousins really know about the forestry industry?

Timber Communities Australia extends a public invited to Mr Geoffrey Cousins to visit and meet with Tasmanian timber dependent families.

Tasmanian timber families are only to willing to share with Mr Cousins their pride in being part of Tasmania’s sustainable forest and timber industries and provide him with the opportunity to see both sides of the picture.

“Mr Cousins admitted on local talk back radio this morning that he had not meet with timber dependent communities and we what to help him over come this failing” Barry Chipman Tasmanian State Manager Timber Communities Australia said today

“So far he has only heard outrageous claims, and we are very willing to assist him in seeing for him self just where the proposed pulp mill will be and how well our forests are managed”.

Mr Cousins Insurance Company sponsors the WWF Climate Change program, and this will be an opportunity to learn how Tasmanian forests are removing greenhouse gasses and that the proposed pulp mill will reduce greenhouse gasses.

“If Mr Cousins is prepared to meet with both sides, we are convinced he will be a supporter not a critic of the proposed pulp mill”

As a businessman he should know how important it is for Australia to reduce its deficit in trade of timber products.

“The Bell Bay Pulp Mill has the potential to reduce this balance of trade deficit by $400 to $450 million each year (20 to 25%).”

TCA would endeavour to assist him to visit Five Mile Bluff the site of the ocean outfall, as we wonder if he is aware that the Federal Department of Environment and Water “has not identified any likely significant impacts on the marine environment in Commonwealth waters from the proposed pulp mill.” [Recommendations Report Paragraph 36]

TCA also wonders if he is aware of how ECF pulp mills and for example wineries, co-exist in harmony in other parts of the world including France, Portugal and British Columbia, in fact right around the world with no adverse impacts.”

“We hope Mr Cousins will accept our invitation before he further puts at risk the social and economic well being of timber dependent families throughout Tasmania.” Mr Chipman concluded.

Posted by jennifer at 07:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Already an Aluminium Smelter in the 'Pristine' Tamar Valley: A Blog Post by Graham Young

If you were planning a pulp mill there could hardly be a better spot [than the Tamar Valley in Tasmania]. What's more, the area is so settled that only an idiot, or someone who hadn't even bothered with the minimum of research, could call it "pristine"...

Read the full blog post here which shows that the proposed site for the pulp mill in Tasmania is next to an established aluminium smelter in the supposedly pristine Tamar valley: http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/002259.html

Posted by jennifer at 06:17 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

August 29, 2007

Pulp Mill Debate getting sillier by the Minute! A note from Cinders.

Just when the ALP Leader Kevin Rudd and his Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett AM, MP, are being urged to bury the Ghost of former Environment Minister Graham “Richo” Richardson we see for Liberal leader John Hewson enter the fray.

Rudd and Garrett have been warned that the preference deal stitched up by Richo with the greens came at a huge cost to the Nation including “Two of the most noticeable Labor government pay-offs were the banning of a promising mining project at Coronation Hill, an area located within the boundaries of Kakadu National Park but in reality a patch of rubbishy wasteland, and of a paper pulp mill in southern Tasmania, opposed by a NIMBY coalition including hobby farmers who joined Bob Brown's burgeoning state Green party temporarily to push their interests:.:

The Australian Article quoted warned that the ALP must not fall into the same trap.

Now on the ABC’s 7.30 report told of how former Liberal leader John Hewson thinks “Turnbull's mad not to just set up an inquiry that kicks the issue off the election agenda.”

He of course is referring to Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in effect he is urging John Howard’s Liberal Government to do a “Richo” when the ALP “killed off “ the Wesley Vale pulp mil just before the 1990 Federal Election. By doing so according to the Institute of Public Affairs he created sovereign risk and economic hardship in Tasmania.

Let’s hope Minister Turnbull will take notice as the greens will never give their preferences to the Liberal National Party coalition as their state aim for this election is to defeat the Government.

Of course the 7.30 report couldn’t resist the misty vision of the Tamar Valley to portray it as ‘wonderful, beautiful wine growing area, wonderful sort of tourist area, and so on’. They did not show that the proposed mill is to be located in Tasmania’s largest industrial estate.

But perhaps that just par for the course for the National Broadcaster on the 5th of July they claimed the pulp would taint fish (http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r148708_526664.asx) that featured vision of scallops being caught when the ABC was aware the vision was from 1999. That the fact scallops had not been caught in Bass Strait west of Flinders island since then is confirmed in public government /fishing industry reports.

More myths are flying about but will history repeat itself?

Cinders

Posted by Paul at 04:20 PM | TrackBack

Tasmanian Forests – The Wildcard in Australian Politics (Part 2)

According to Caroline Overington from The Australian, political aspirant Geoffrey Cousins’ inspiration is attributed to The Monthly’s Out of Control - The tragedy of Tasmania’s forests, by Richard Flanagan.

It is certainly a powerful lot of words that draw heavily on reader-environmentalism. Reference to Tasmania mortgaging its future to the woodchipping industry, reminded me of a contrary allegation from the Prime Minister in 2005, who described his offence to the idea that the extreme greens have a mortgage on concern and compassion for the forests or for the environment of this country.

No doubt there is as much cynicism from both sides of the debate, but in this mounting electoral issue: of national conservation significance versus state economic opportunity, Australia will be further divided unless political integrity prevails.

In matters such as these there is no doubt that corruption represents the greatest obstacle to the achievement of political propriety. Whether the iconic forests of Tasmania are quarantined from logging or their availability for woodchipping is secured, federal and state intervention is vulnerable to corruption without:
• the effective integration of economic and environmental considerations;
• maintaining or enhancing the productivity of environmental assets, as well as their health and diversity,
• ensuring that environmental actions are cost-effective and not disproportionate to the significance of identified problems, and
• ensuring that consumer pricing is consistent with the full life cycle costs of providing environmental goods and services.

Posted by neil at 02:19 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

August 25, 2007

The French Mix Pulp Mills & Wineries: A Media Release from Barry Chipman

The Australian media has been in a frenzy over a proposed pulp mill for the Tamar Valley in Tasmania. Most recent objections have included the idea that the mill should be located away from wineries. Yesterday, Barry Chipman from the NGO Timber Communities Australia had the following response:

Following claims that the proposed Bell Bay pulp mill could impact upon the Tamar Valley’s valued wineries Timber Communities Australia conducted its own research looking at the economic make up of other major wine producing regions.

“That research commenced at what TCA saw as the top of the tree in wine producing regions; being the Bordeaux region in South West France, The region is promoted as the Fine Wine Capital of the World and our findings where quite amazing in light of what’s being claimed here.” Barry Chipman Tasmanian State Manager Timber Communities Australia said today

The Bordeaux region produces 800 million litres of the highest quality wine annually, the region also attracts 3 million tourists annually.

Along side of this world leading fine wine and tourist industry is a very devise cultivated forest industry producing, Kraft pulp (Smurfit Kappa Cellulose de Pin pulp mill) glazed Kraft paper, Liner Kraft paper, Fluff pulp, and the full range of sawn timber products. (Including many wine crates) This wood products industry generates 2.5 billon EUR annually.

The Bordeaux region is also internationally recognised as a major scientific and technical centre for wood, product research including a major focus upon pulp and paper in particular ECF technology, the centre employs 200 researchers.

Then over in the neighbouring North East is another major fine wine and tourist region of Probence, and within the region surrounded by fine wine vineyards, is the Tarscon-sur-Rhone ECF pulp mill. (This is the same technology as the proposed Bell Bay pulp mill.)

Upon learning how, French wine producers and wood and paper products producers appear to prosper in harmony with each other it is hoped that this can also translate to Tamar Valley.

Perhaps those that seem to have doubts about this could just as a starter follow TCA’s lead and “Goggle” Bordeaux then follow up with ECF pulp mills Bordeaux France

Tasmania should not be left behind by the French we to can be a world leader in demonstrating harmony between all industries. Mr Chipman concluded

Posted by jennifer at 10:30 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

August 23, 2007

Tasmanian Forests – The Wildcard in Australian Politics

Over the last decade or so Tasmanian forestry issues have emerged as the predictable wildcard in Australian federal politics. I say predictable because the issue is always there but tends to manifests itself in unpredictable ways.

At the last federal election unionists rallied for John Howard, a Liberal Prime Minister, when Mark Latham, the Labor challenger went ‘too green’ in his forestry policies. Neither political party released its forestry policy until the last week of the campaign. Then a few days out from the election, television images of blue-collar workers cheering John Howard at a rally in Launceston stole momentum from the Labor party in the final days of the campaign.

There is another federal election likely sometime before the end of the year and it initially appeared Tasmanian forestry would not be an issue. Both parties have similar policies including on a proposed pulp mill.

But a now former prime ministerial adviser has decided to very publicly attack the environment minister for apparently supporting the pulp mill.

Geoffrey Cousins says he will campaign against Malcolm Turnbull because he is appalled the Minister has fast-tracked the approval process for the proposed $2 billion Gunns pulp mill in northern Tasmania.

As far as I can tell the pulp mill has not been fast tracked. Rather the greens have thrown as many obstacles in the way as they can over many years, and every time one is lifted out of the way, someone is accused of being undemocratic or fast tracking approvals?

And who is Mr Cousins anyway. Why is the media making such a big deal out of his bully-boy tactics?

Previous posts on this issue include:

Tasmanian Pulp Mill assessment process vindicated by the Federal court http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002209.html

Tasmanian Pulp Mill at Crossroads: A Note from Cinders
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001972.html

Posted by jennifer at 10:48 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

August 22, 2007

The Great "Illegal" Logging Swindle

In a note from Gavin, attention is drawn to Tim Curtin and The Great “Illegal” Logging Swindle.

It appears that the primary issue concerns the propriety of Australia’s (and other OECD countries including USA and UK) criteria for establishing the ‘illegality’ of import logging.

Australia’s Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation (Senator, the Hon. Eric Abetz), relies largely upon its commissioned Jaakko Pöyry Report (JPC), which ranks source countries of Australia’s timber products, first by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (TICPI) and then by its own assessment of their governance and managment capacity (GMC).

JPC deems the total timber exports to Australia, from countries with high TICPI and medium or low GMC, as illegal or at best “suspicious”.

Under its own environmental policies, Australia has acknowledged that to achieve sustainable economic development, there is a need for a country's international competitiveness to be maintained and enhanced in an environmentally sound manner. Unfortunately, there exists no compliance requirement to its own Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment and as a consequence there is often no accountability.

Posted by neil at 11:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 16, 2007

Different Emotional Responses to Mining and Logging in Jarrah Forests: A Note from Boxer

The response by our society to mining on one hand and logging on the other in the jarrah forests of Western Australia could not be more in contrast. Alcoa’s bauxite mining is met with silence, but to oppose logging of virtually any sort (even of plantations in some cases) has become a normal part of the moral foundation for all well-informed citizens. Yet if we look at other forms of economic activity that covers large tracts of land, only well-managed tourism could be said to have a similar or less environmental impact than well-managed commercial native forestry.

As Roger Underwood recently explained, bauxite mining causes total removal of all organisms from large tracts of the forest and removal of several metres of soil (bauxite ore), material that is the foundation upon which a forest exists. This is followed by re-establishment of the forest back onto the irreversibly altered soil profile. The changes that are imposed by mining are permanent in terms of geological time scales – these soils/ores were formed on-site by many millions of years of weathering of the underlying granite basement rock. Roger’s post gives additional important information.

Logging on the other hand is a short period of harvesting that occurs within a process that takes many decades: the forest is regenerated, managed by thinning, controlled burning and other practices, leading to the maturing of the overstorey trees over a period of between one and several human generations. Harvesting occurs again, followed by the same regeneration and management process. Many Australian native forests have been through two or three such cycles, yet they are now considered “high conservation value” forests by the greens and the public.

Harvesting may be either clear felling at one extreme to selective (individual tree) logging at the other, and there is a continuous spectrum of logging practices between the extremes. But most importantly, the soil is left almost undisturbed compared to mining, and the understory is not stripped away. No species has been recorded as having been driven to extinction by logging in Australia, though this is not a reason to be complacent. It does indicate that the commercial use of native Australian forests since European settlement has had less impact upon biodiversity than urban expansion or farming, or indeed the first arrival of humans tens of thousands of years ago.

Possibly the paradox arises because of three factors and our normal emotional responses to these factors. They are our perception of order versus chaos, a sense of time, and a sense of space.

Order versus chaos

Order and chaos are easy to recognise. In this context, logging is chaotic. The jumble of smashed limbs and small trees presents a confronting image. Furthermore, as timber has a relatively low economic value and the yields per hectare are relatively low, the logging debris is left in place for a year or so and then burnt (more chaos), which means that chaos interacts with time to create the impression of lasting destruction. There is plenty of time for Bob Brown to get up on top of the biggest stump (“big” being related to our sense of space) for photo opportunities.

In contrast mining demonstrates a good deal of order. After logging, the debris, stumps, and all the understorey is heaped and mulched and removed promptly. Access to the entire mining “envelope” is prohibited for safety reasons. Some of this biomass debris is sold for renewable energy and charcoal, whereas native forest logging residues from normal logging are ruled to be non-renewable. This is known as “painting with the Alcoa brush”, because this is all it takes to change a commodity from dirty and undesirable to green and renewable. This simple self-deception occurs at senior corporate and political levels, as well as at the general public level. I maintain that it makes more sense to consider all the biomass residues from logging and mining to be renewable, as occurs across Europe and North America.

The sense of order in mining continues because after the removal of the biomass residues the open mine area looks like a ploughed paddock. The boundary of the surrounding forest is clearly and cleanly defined and looking into a tall forest from the side is an emotionally pleasant experience. As the site is stripped, drilled, blasted and the ore removed, there is little confronting imagery of chaos, though many people find the instant of blasting very confronting if they can see it. By the time the public are allowed back (after the mining envelope moves away through the bush) the pit has been rehabilitated and order continues to reign – smoothed contours, curved parallel rip lines, young plants germinating under-foot. It’s a positively pastoral image.

The importance of time comes up in several ways. During the time of public exclusion from a mining envelope, the public is unaware of the time passing for this particular point in the forest. A tour of Alcoa’s operations takes you from one point in the process to the next by bus: this step is followed by this step, by this step etc, and then ... here is the rehabilitated pit. The emotional response of the viewer is influenced by the rapidity of the tour. You’re back home in time for tea. The same occurs if foresters take you on a tour of forest operations, but the demand for such tours is non-existent. The public do not wish to be further informed about commercial forestry and the political arm of government would be reluctant to fund such public relations exercises for an industry that the public tells them should be closed down.

In contrast, the campaigns against forestry always leave the observer with the impression that this smashed up post-logging condition is the end result, rather than the end of one week’s work in a cycle that spans many decades. You are never shown photos of the stump Bob Brown stood on ten years after the logging, because the regrowth at that stage is so thick, it would tend to detract from the message of “devastation, forever”. Bob wouldn’t even be able to find the same stump.

A sense of time

Time can also be influential in other ways; telling people that the devastation in this photo will look like the young forest in that tourist brochure in three decades has little emotional impact. A trivial immediate benefit is of much greater emotional consequence than a major benefit in the next decade. So long periods of time can make it harder to portray the concept of an environmental impact now (logging) being followed by a positive response a human generation in the future.

It is interesting how green activism often involves the use of photos taken in regrowth forest. In this case, the beauty of the tall evenly-spaced trees (the sense of order again, but did you realise they are spaced that way because of thinning?) is used to convey the impression of permanence, and the permanence of a good thing being desirable. Senescing forest, with it’s dead tops and crooked old trees, is rarely used for this type of publicity, because to do so would disrupt the sense of order and implies decay, and so undermines the association between the attractive forest and permanence. However if you take people to that same patch of regrowth forest and show them a photo of what the exact same spot looked like immediately after it was last logged, or killed by wildfire, they are astounded and often excited. In this case it is possible to use a long period of time from the past devastation to convey the understanding that the forest is a vibrant dynamic system. I find young forests uplifting.

A sense of space

Space is critical. Big is always better in emotional terms if you are contemplating an object of which you approve, but the reverse applies if you are contemplating something of which you disapprove. (If you want to minimise the effect of a traumatic memory, you repeatedly visualise it and then make the image smaller in your mind.) A tall dominant tree species is generally much more emotionally influential than a dumpy sub-dominant species. A tall straight tree is more valuable than a crooked or heavily forked tree, which comes back to the sense of order and possibly the perception of beauty being related to symmetry.

Selective, or single-tree logging is widely perceived to be more benign than clear-felling, because the area of chaos is smaller. The small clearing created by the tree’s falling crown is surrounded by undisturbed forest. The big stump used for the anti-logging photo opportunity is always taken against a background of an open space caused by clear felling, and that space always continues to the local horizon, which creates the impression that this chaos extends, if not to the nearest coastline, certainly as far as the eye can see. A short camera lens is used and the image cropped to convey the impression of perhaps a thousand metres to the cleared horizon. It is never taken with the 50 year old regrowth just behind the photographer in the shot.

But this use of space to engender a feeling of anxiety about total destruction over vast tracts of land may be at odds with the evidence of forest science. In some forests (typically the tall wet forest types in Australia) it is better to regenerate blocks of forest as even aged self-sown seedlings over areas of perhaps 10 to 30 hectares to reduce competition between established trees and seedlings. And 10 hectares, photographed from the right angle with a short lens, carries a strong emotional impact. The data that demonstrates the degrading influence of selective logging in some forests has no appeal at the emotional level.

It is a curious contrast between public and activist reactions to logging and mining. Examining the basic differences in perceptions of logging and mining, for example, the perceptions of space, time and order/chaos, demonstrate that the emotional responses to logging are not related to the fundamentals of conservation.

In the context of this discussion, none of these factors directly relate to the fundamental principle of conservation of protecting biodiversity. To prevent the extinction of any species seems to me to be the inviolable principle of conservation. If we were really honest with ourselves, then our emotional responses to these three factors would have little relevance to the preservation of biodiversity.

Boxer is a regular reader and sometimes contributor to this blog.

Posted by jennifer at 01:14 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

August 10, 2007

Tasmanian Pulp Mill assessment process - a note from Cinders

Tasmanian Pulp Mill assessment process vindicated by the Federal court

The Federal court confirmed today that the Assessment of Tasmania’s proposed pulp mill was fair and reasonable and that the public had ample opportunity to state their views.
A Federal Court judge rejected the claims by the Wilderness Society and a group calling itself Investors for Tasmania’s future and dismissed their application to overturn the Commonwealth assessment process.
The Federal Court was asked to review two decisions made by the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Water Resources.
The first decision was to make the mill a controlled action in relation to threatened and migratory species and Commonwealth Marine Waters. The second decision was that the relevant impacts of the proposed action be assessed on preliminary documentation (eg all the documentation created under the failed RPDC process, including the Draft Integrated Impact statement, Peer reviewed reports, Supplementary information and 700 odd public submissions that had been gathered since 2004.)
The Wilderness Society made the following allegations:
• there is no valid referral of the proposal to support either decision;
• in making the first decision, the Minister misconstrued the EPBC Act, failed to take into account for the potential adverse impact of sourcing timber from Tasmanian forests to supply the pulp mill;
• in making the first decision, the Minister failed to consider whether the pulp mill would have or is likely to have a significant impact on the environment on Commonwealth land;
• the Minister misconstrued and/or misapplied the EPBC Act in making the second decision;
• in making the second decision, the Minister denied members of the public interested in the assessment procedural fairness;
• the second decision is invalid because it is affected by apprehended bias in the Minister;
• the second decision involved an improper exercise of power by the Minister; and
• the second decision was manifestly unreasonable.

The Investors appear to have also alleged that the Minister took into account Gunns’ commercial imperatives in making his decision.

The Federal Court rejected all allegations.

This means to me that the Assessment approach and decisions leading to it are valid.
The Judge was satisfied that the Minister acted in accordance with the Law, with fairness and without bias in making his decision on the assessment process that was demonstrably reasonable.

That there is no need to assess the impact of the mill on Tasmanian forests as these and the species of flora and fauna are protected by the Regional Forest Agreement.
That is was entirely appropriate for the Minister not to consider Commonwealth land. In relation to World Heritage Values the green groups did not even raise this as an issue, thus claims to UNESCO that WHA will be impacted are clearly unsubstantiated.
.
Many people in Tasmania have been concerned about the process of assessment since the developer withdrew from the RPDC assessment in February, some 2 years three months after the start of the “18 month” assessment. However much of the challenges raised with the Federal Court would have applied to the RPDC process, in fact one member resigned due to a claim of bias by the Greens.

The decision now means that Tasmania can get on with the assessment process and have a decision by both the Federal Minister and the State Parliament based on the scientific evidence.

Copies of the Federal Court’s Judgment are available here.

Posted by Paul at 12:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 08, 2007

Bauxite Mining in Jarrah Forests: A Note from Roger Underwood

One of the most interesting anomalies in Australian environmentalism is that the alumina industry is destroying the jarrah forest – and nobody seems to care. At least, nobody is complaining.

Open cut mining of State Forests in Western Australia by two alumina producers (Alcoa and Worseley) has been going on for about 40 years. Mining involves clean cutting of the forest (removal of all saleable timber, including woodchips), full agricultural clearing, blasting with explosives and then removal of the forest soil. This converts the jarrah forest into a patchwork of pits 8-10 metres deep and up to 40 hectares in size. In and around the pits the remnant forest is criss-crossed with haul roads, crusher sites, conveyor belts and power lines. The rate of forest clearance is about 1000 hectares a year. It is estimated that mining will proceed for at least another 50 years.

The mined-out pits are “rehabilitated” by smoothing the edges, ripping the pit floor (a white kaolinitic clay) with bulldozers and replacing a film of topsoil. Various tree and shrub species are then sown or planted. Pre-1988 the revegetation was basically a plantation of exotic species, mostly eucalypts indigenous to NSW; post 1988 the main tree species planted or sown is jarrah.

Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) is a tall long-lived tree noted for its superb timber, toughness and resilience. It grows in a relatively harsh environment of long dry summers, frequent fire, and infertile soils. Jarrah occurs only in a restricted area in the southwest of Western Australia. Most of the northern jarrah forest is also an important water resource area and protects the city and goldfields water supply catchments. It also provides important habitat to native species, a range of recreational activities and is famous for its springtime display of endemic wildflowers. Jarrah timber played an important role in the development of Western Australia. It was used almost exclusively in the construction of the State’s harbours, bridges and railways, for telephone and electricity distribution, for house and building construction, for fine furniture manufacture and domestic and industrial firewood. For many decades it was the State’s third most valuable export (after wheat and wool) and was regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful, as well as strongest and most durable timbers.

In a biogeographical and ecological sense, the jarrah forest is virtually an island. It falls within the Australian south-west botanical province, known as a biodiversity hotspot - most jarrah forest can carry 60 or more different species of plants in the understorey - and is home to a unique fauna. To the west of the forest belt is the coastal sandplain, these days increasingly becoming one large residential subdivision. To the north and east are the cleared agricultural regions and to the south the narrow strip of karri forest and the Southern Ocean. The forests were traditionally managed for water production, catchment protection, sustainable timber production, wildlife conservation and recreation. In more recent times the management priority has been designated simply as “conservation of biodiversity”, but as we shall see, this is subservient to minerals production. The jarrah timber industry scarcely now exists. This has been virtually extinguished over the last 5 years as logging became a politically unacceptable activity in the state’s forests. The few small timber production operations remaining are all based on regrowth forests, where they are under constant challenge from protest groups whose aim is the total elimination of the industry.

Jarrah forest soils are lateritic and contain bauxite. This is the ore from which alumina and ultimately aluminium is produced. In the 1960s, the State government issued leases for bauxite mining over 800,000 hectares of jarrah forest, and put in place State Agreement Acts which guaranteed easy access to the leaseholders. Mining commenced in the forest in the mid-1960s and expanded rapidly. At first there was a single mine near Jarrahdale. The ore was railed to a refinery at Kwinana. Before long a new refinery had been built near Pinjarra and new mines were opened up at Del Park and Huntly on the banks of the South Dandalup dam (part of Perth’s water supply). By the early 1980s there was a third refinery at Wagerup, a new mine in State Forests south of the Murray River, another mine at Mt Saddleback and a fourth refinery near Collie. As recently as 2006 the WA Environmental Protection Authority approved a further expansion of the rate of mining for the Wagerup refinery, and there are current moves by the State government to expand the rate of mining for the Worsely refinery, so that it is likely that the annual rate of forest destruction will soon exceed 1000 ha.

There was some initial opposition to the forest mining, mainly from foresters, including a campaign run by the Institute of Foresters in the 1960s. The Institute produced an excellent booklet, detailing the undesirable impacts of mining on the forest ecosystem. However, these protests were quickly snuffed out, the problem being that most foresters at that time were also public servants, and it was illegal for them to criticise government policy, even as members of their professional institute. The “conservation movement” showed an initial flicker of interest, but this died away almost immediately. At that time and ever since, the focus of environmentalists was on the timber industry, bushfire management and forestry. Over the last 40 years, there has not been a peep of protest from any green organisation in WA (government or NGO) about bauxite mining.

In this light, it is worth looking at the mining operation in more detail. Mining eliminates the entire forest ecosystem both above and below ground. Following clearing no native plant or animal survives. Following mining the forest soil itself is irreplaceably gone. The natural landscape is greatly altered, since the best bauxite deposits are on the gravely uplands, and these disappear, leading to a landscape with less topographical variation. The post-mining revegetation is sown into well-cultivated and fertilised topsoil and comes away rapidly. Visually it resembles even-aged regeneration after clearfelling or in the gaps created by selective logging (the latter being the normal silvicultural approach in jarrah forest).

There are many concerns however. No experienced forester would guarantee the long term viability of dense forest stands growing on a film of topsoil over highly impermeable clay and granite. Jarrah prefers deep friable gravels with excellent water-holding capacity. Where thin, heavy soils occur in the natural forest, jarrah tends to be replaced by wandoo and on shallow soils over granite it is more common to find sheoak. The oldest minesite rehabilitation is now about 40. Some of these stands have started to look very sick as the present period of below-average rainfall persists. Ecologically, the revegetation is very different from the original forest, and some obvious niches have been eliminated. For example no “habitat” trees are retained to provide for hollow-nesting bird species, as is the case in areas from which timber is cut. Some “old growth” elements, such as grass trees, will take centuries to re-establish, or may never regrow on the new substrate.

Apart from the loss of native forest, there has been a significant loss of run-off into streams and dams in the mined-over catchment areas. Pits have been designed to retain rather than shed rainfall, so run-off to forest streams is close to zero, and in many cases old mine pits cover nearly 50% of each sub-catchment. This has obvious impacts on water resources and aquatic ecosystems. The revegetated mine pits also represent a challenge to bushfire management. Although the young rehabilitation (up to about age 4) will generally not carry a fire, litter and flammable understorey soon begin to build up and the new plantations are extremely hazardous and vulnerable to fire over the next 10 years.

There are other environmental concerns. Alumina refineries produce toxic waste (soil contaminated with caustic soda) and both the refineries and aluminium smelters are significant consumers of electricity and emitters of greenhouse gasses. Bauxite miners are exempt from the requirements of both the State’s Wildlife Conservation Act and the Clearing Control Legislation. These Acts can severely constrain landowners who wish to carry out commercial timber production in their own native forest, or to undertake prescribed burning for bushfire remediation (which the government includes within the definition of “clearing”).

Given their fierce opposition to the comparatively benign and ephemeral impacts of timber cutting and prescribed burning, it might be expected that environmentalists and green bureaucrats would be dying in their boots to oppose and hamstring bauxite mining in the jarrah forest. This has not occurred. For over 30 years the alumina industry has enjoyed total freedom from green displeasure and support from conservation bodies - including the Environmental Protection Authority. None of the standard features of a protest campaign against logging, for example, have ever been seen. There are no protest camps in the bush. No students or yuppy celebrities are chained to trees. Mining equipment has not been vandalised, ore trains have not been derailed, haul roads blockaded or port facilities bombed (all features of the campaign against woodchipping). There are there no marches on parliament, no orchestrated campaigns of letters to the paper and call-ins to the talk-back stations. Senator Bob Brown does not appear to have voiced the merest concern. The WA Greens Party has no policy about bauxite mining in the jarrah forest. They seek to prohibit mining and exploration in national parks, wilderness areas and conservation reserves, but do not extend this policy to State Forests. Nor has Janet Woollard (who was elected to the WA Parliament representing a Save-the-Forests party) taken any position on bauxite mining in the jarrah forest. Even the ABC’s Four Corners has shown no interest. Normally they would find irresistible a story about destruction of Australian forests by big business, especially in an industry which is such a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and is American-owned. Instead they are down in Tasmania fulminating against timber production and plantations.

I am not anti-mining. However as a forester I wish the alumina industry would go elsewhere. Nor am I anti-Alcoa. I have always found them to be an efficient and clever organisation, and it is a pleasure to see the professional way in which they have approached their operational and research obligations. They have poured multi-millions of dollars into the WA community over the years, including generous donations to conservation groups, cash payments to government departments, grants to sporting bodies, sponsorship of the arts, dispensing free tree seedlings to farmers and funding academics in the universities.

The uncritical and universal acceptance of bauxite mining in the jarrah forest is disappointing, but not difficult to understand. The government clearly believes that the economic returns from bauxite mining and alumina refining justify the impact on the forest and other forest uses. The broader community has no understanding of what is going on, since the media is silent, and in any case there has never been any public affection for the jarrah forest in the way there has been for the more visually attractive karri forest.

There are two possible reasons why the environmentalists have chosen not to fight bauxite mining: (i) they have been bought off; or (ii) they have decided that it is a battle they cannot win. The latter is the most likely. The alumina industry well-established and prosperous, is fully supported by government agencies, and has a superb public relations machine. The environmentalists would be done over, and they know it. It would be different if 1000 ha of native forest each year were being destroyed for cattle grazing, timber plantations, or water resource development, all of which are easy targets - any protest campaign against them would attract strong media support, especially from the ABC.

Despite environmentalist and community apathy, my personal view is that there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when West Australians realise what has gone on, and the extent and cost of the ecological damage which has occurred. Then perhaps they will look back on the government, agency and NGO-supported destruction of the jarrah forest by bauxite mining as one of the greatest conservation blunders in our history.

Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Posted by jennifer at 10:18 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

July 08, 2007

Reports on Tasmanian Pulp Mill Proposal Give Green Light

Sinced the anti-logging campaigns of the 1970s, growing timber in Australia has been a controversial business. In Tasmania the industry is often accused of converting too much of its forests to wood chip which is exported to Japan for not very much money.

Interestingly the same environmental lobby that criticises the export of wood chip, is also against the building of a pulp mill which would allow the wood chip to be converted to paper in Tasmania rather than Japan.

The Tasmania Minister for Planning recently contracted two independent consultants to undertake an assessment and review of the proposed new Gunns Limited Pulp Mill proposal, pursuant to the Pulp Mill Assessment Act 2007.

SWECO PIC has undertaken an assessment of the project against the Environmental Emission Limit Guidelines for any New Bleached Kraft Eucalypt Pulp Mill in Tasmania and concluded 92 percent of guidelines are met by the project with the remaining able to be addressed through permit conditions.

SWECO is a Swedish based consultancy and the report entitled 'Assesment of the Gunns Limited Bell Bay Pulp Mill Against the Environmental Emission Limit Guidelines', published 25 June 2007 is available at http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/justice/pulpmillassessment/sweco_pic_report

ITS Global has undertaken a review of the net social and economic benefits of the proposed mill concluding that the mill will add approximately 2.5 percent to annual Gross State Product which in lump sum terms is equivalent to $6.7 billion in net present value terms to 2030. The pulp mill is also assessed as broadening and strengthening the industrial base of the Tasmanian economy. The report is available at http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/82282/Final_ITS_Global_Report.pdf .

Both reports and supporting information are also available for download at http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/justice/pulpmillassessment

Given these reports, you would have to be simply anti-development and investment in Tasmania to oppose the pulp mill.

Posted by jennifer at 10:31 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

June 30, 2007

Tall Stories About Tasmanian Forestry: A Note from Ken Jeffreys

Forestry Tasmania has set out on a mission to establish a new benchmark for openness and transparency in the debate over the management of our forests.

So far, we have thrown open the doors of our headquarters in Hobart to the media. We have started hosting briefings for the community in our regional offices around the state.

We have demonstrated our commitment to admit to mistakes and we are introducing new ways of communicating with our stakeholders (eg.. Branchline e-newsletter).

These build on an already transparent approach. FT is subject to Freedom of Information (FoI). Our three year wood production plans are freely available, Forest Practices Plans are also made available to the public and we are required by law and through the Australian Forestry Standard to consult widely.

As a Government Business Enterprise, every year our business is scrutinised by the Parliament, and every other day, forestry is scrutinised by the media.

This high level of scrutiny has resulted in significant improvements. We no longer convert native forest to plantation. We don’t use clearfelling on old growth, unless there is no other safe or viable option. Our regenerated native forests are chemical free and we no longer use 1080 to control browsing animals.

The question now has to be asked is whether the failure of forestry critics to match our level of transparency, is causing a whole generation of Australians to be swindled?

The Wilderness Society is a $12 million business. To continue to survive, it needs confrontation and a sense of crisis. It relies on $9 million in donations and why would people continue to give if there is no imminent threat or crisis. A quick look at the society ’s web site will show that every issue is accompanied by a plea for people to give now before it’s too late.

Just as our business is heavily scrutinised, so should theirs. The Wilderness Society is not subject to Freedom of Information. If it were, we would learn how this organisation works. Without this basic tool, the responsibility of media to question is greater. If the media unquestioningly accepts Green rhetoric as fact, there is every risk that well intentioned Australians could be swindled into handing over cash to solve non-existent crisis.

How much confidence can Australians have in what they hear on the news? Are they getting the full story?

Forestry Tasmania has for the past five months endeavoured to find a solution to the dangerous and illegal protests in the southern forests. The Wilderness Society has consistently refused to discuss the issue, claiming that it has nothing to do with the protests and that FT should talk to those responsible for the protests. FT does not accept the Wilderness Society has no influence over the activities of these groups.

However, in May, FT’s Derwent District took on the Wilderness Society’s recommendation, and approached a group of protesters in the Florentine Valley. These protesters assured FT that they were independent and acted without outside direction. A Memorandum of Understanding was struck allowing FT to complete roadworks and to collect fallen timber in the Florentine Valley without further interference from protesters. It has now come to light that MoU was in fact submitted to and edited within the office of Australian Greens leader Bob Brown. It has since emerged that at least some of the Florentine protesters have simply moved to a different forest where one of Bob Brown’s staff, Adam Burling, is a member of an organisation that organises illegal protests. At no point during the negotiations did the Florentine Group reveal their connection to Bob Brown’s office or his staff.

In June, the same group of protesters organised a protest in an area called the Wedge. In our view, it was no coincidence that Mr Burling requested permission from FT for Senator Brown to fly over the area in a helicopter with a photographer previously used by the Wilderness Society on the very same day that these independent protesters decided to hold their protest action.

It stretches the bounds of credibility to suggest the decisions to take a helicopter ride and the decision to stage a protest were taken independently of each other.

In a few weeks, another documentary decrying Tasmania’s forest practices will be aired on cable television around the world.

It will claim that industrial logging of native forests is destroying the habitat of the endangered wedge tailed eagle. To the casual viewer, the program will appear to be a genuine investigative documentary, compiled by an independent film company. It will feature interviews with Senator Brown, the Wilderness Society’s Geoff Law, an assorted group of eagle experts and thrown into the mix to add credibility will be comments by Tasmanian Government public servants and the Managing Director of Forestry Tasmania, Bob Gordon.

The conclusion, however, will be that forestry is driving eagles to extinction. What the viewers wont know is that the program is being funded by an anti-forestry activist, who has provided $200,000 on condition that he remains anonymous.

How do we know? Well, the producer Brett Shorthouse told Forestry Tasmania, during negotiations on Bob Gordon’s inclusion in the program. While the anonymity of the businessman behind the project would be protected, Mr Shorthouse did reveal when pressed that the businessman had recently purchased a property in Battery Point. To his credit, Mr Shorthouse has behaved honourably. He has never attempted to hide, and in fact warned FT about the pro-conservation motivation behind the program.

However, we believe people have a right to know who funded the program, so they can make up their own minds about its credibility.

Another cable television documentary by world champion swimmer Ian Thorpe also raised concerns about transparency and balance. FT was approached by Mr Thorpe’s producers asking permission to enter state forests.

Of course, permission was granted, but our invitation to brief Mr Thorpe and to provide a tour of forestry operations was ignored. Instead, Mr Thorpe chose to interview only environmental activists. We would have loved dearly the opportunity to at least put an alternative view to Mr Thorpe, but the producers refused on the grounds that the program was non political and really about entertainment rather than serious discussion. We were therefore somewhat surprised to learn that Senator Brown was a participant. We can only conclude that although Senator Brown draws a politician’s salary, is the leader of a political party, Mr Thorpe does not believe Senator Brown is a politician.

Readers of Richard Flanagan’s articles in the UK Telegraph and the Monthly magazine might be forgiven for believing the articles were entirely researched by the author without any outside assistance. It might well come as a surprise for those readers to learn that a few months prior to the publication of the articles, Mr Flanagan flew by helicopter to the Styx Valley with Greens Leader Bob Brown. The excursion was organised not by Mr Flanagan, but by Senator Brown’s office. It was Senator Brown’s office that contacted FT seeking permission to land a helicopter on state forests, and we therefore assume the trip was funded by Senator Brown and perhaps, taxpayers. I am the first to admit that FT does not know the purpose of the trip, and there is every possibility that it was in no way related to the articles written by Mr Flanagan. Nevertheless, it is important for readers, especially those who thought the articles were compelling, to know about the trip. It may assist in helping them to understand why only one side of the forestry debate was presented. To date, Mr Flanagan has not made any attempt to speak to Forestry Tasmania.

Ken Jeffreys
General Manager Corporate Relations
Forestry Tasmania

---------------
Republished with permission from Forestry Tasmania's electronic newsletter. Register for this newsletter by contacting tamika.triffitt@forestrytas.com.au.

Posted by jennifer at 05:03 PM | Comments (54) | TrackBack

March 29, 2007

Global Initiative on Forests and Climate: Media Release from Australian Prime Minister

"Today the Australian Government launched a Global Initiative on Forests and Climate. This represents a material advance in the global effort to tackle climate change and protect the world's forests, according to a media release from the office of the Australian Prime Minister.

The media release continued, "the Australian Government has committed $200 million to kickstart this world leading initiative that will reduce significantly global greenhouse gas emissions.

Almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing the world's forests - second only to emissions from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, and more than all of the world's emissions from transport.

Globally, more than 4.4 million trees are removed every day or 1.6 billion trees each year - almost 1 billion of which are not replaced. An area twice the size of Tasmania is currently cleared each year - this is the equivalent of removing around 71,000 football fields of trees every day.

If the world could halve the rate of global deforestation we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year - more than five times Australia's total annual emissions and about ten times the emissions reductions that will be achieved during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

Reducing deforestation, planting new forests, and investing in sustainable forest management practice are among the best ways to reduce global emissions now.

Working with both developed and developing countries the Australian Government's $200 million investment will:
• support new forest planting;
• limit destruction of the world's remaining forests;
• promote sustainable forest management; and
• encourage contributions from other countries.

Specific activities include:
• building developing countries' technical capacity to assess their forest resources;

• putting in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging; and
• promoting the sustainable use of forest resources and diversifying the economic base of forest-dependent communities;

Since Kyoto negotiations began more than a decade ago, Australia has consistently and strongly argued for effective international action on deforestation as an essential part of the global response to climate change.

Through this initiative we will work with like-minded countries and will be inviting nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan and Indonesia to join the Initiative. We will also work with international organisations including the World Bank, and businesses, to reduce emissions from deforestation and to sustainably manage the world's forests.

Harnessing our combined resources will make a difference for world forests and the climate.

This Initiative also builds on the almost $20 billion invested by the Australian Government for the environment over the past 11 years.

The Global Initiative on Forests and Climate delivers practical action that will substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Facts Sheet

The Australian Government is providing $200 million for ‘Global Initiative on Forests and Climate'. This funding will be used to support projects in selected developing countries (particularly, but not exclusively, in the South-East Asia and Pacific regions) to:
• build technical capacity to assess and monitor forest resources, and to develop national forest management plans;
• put in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging;

• promote the sustainable use of forest resources and diversify the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
• support practical research into the drivers of deforestation;
• encourage reforestation of degraded forest areas;
• develop and deploy the technology and systems needed to help developing countries monitor and produce robust assessments of their forest resources;
• pilot approaches to providing real financial incentives to countries and communities to encourage sustainable use of forests and reduce destruction of forests.

These projects will be developed in cooperation with regional countries and relevant international organisations including the World Bank. They will reflect the priorities of the countries concerned, while seeking to achieve the maximum possible benefit for forest management and the global climate.

In relation to the provision of incentives to developing countries for sustainable forestry practices and reducing net forest loss, we expect to explore a range of approaches that reflect the differing needs and circumstances of different countries. However, a common element of any incentives is that they will be provided only on the achievement of pre-agreed forest sustainability milestones (e.g. agreed reductions in national deforestation rates). Measurement of achievement of these milestones will be underpinned by the investment in the technology and systems to robustly monitor forest resources.

Effectively tackling the issue of global deforestation will require a huge investment from governments and businesses around the world. The Australian Government will therefore be working closely with governments and businesses from other developed countries to build support for and help in the delivery of this global initiative, so that we can harness the collective effort required.

The contributions that other countries may make will obviously be a matter for them, but we will be talking to key countries about the initiative over the next few weeks. Those discussions will also address the most effective means for countries to mutually identify areas and projects for joint activity, and how best to form clusters of partners to undertake those activities.

As a soon as we have a good initial picture of the views of key countries and others, we will decide how best to proceed with this initiative, including through engaging key Ministers from these countries.

Planning and delivery of the Initiative in Australia will involve a whole of government effort, including through the Environment, Foreign Affairs (including AusAID) and Forestry Departments." [End of media release.]

Posted by jennifer at 10:59 PM | Comments (29)

March 28, 2007

Tasmanian Pulp Mill at Crossroads: A Note from Cinders

Hi Jennifer,

For a second time since the late 1980’s a pulp mill in Tasmania has been delayed by green campaigning. This week we will see if another pulp mill – a value adding, downstream processing, job-creating factory – will also be thrown on the political scrap heap.

If the pulp mill assessment Bill is not approved by Tasmania’s Upper House, it is likely the project will be ‘dead in the water’. If this occurs, will Tasmania’s economy suffer again from the ‘Green Disease’ as described in a 1999 Institute of Public Affairs article by senior Press Gallery journalist David Barnett describing the politics leading to the scrapping of the Wesley Vale Mill.

Since the Wesley Vale Mill’s debacle, a lot has happened in Tasmanian forestry. The Commonwealth and State Governments have negotiated a Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) on the sustainable management of our forests and the Commonwealth published Environmental Guidelines for a Bleached Kraft Pulp mill. Technology has also moved on and improved and the bleaching of the pulp is no longer done by elemental chlorine which previously raised concerns about pollution. Today ECF and TCF are the standard.

In 2002, the 5 year review of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement confirmed that we have a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system, ecological sustainable forest management and opportunities exist for industry development.

In 2003, the Tasmanian Government tasked the ‘Resource Planning and Development Commission’ (RPDC) to update the Commonwealth emission guidelines for pulp mills, this saw new guidelines approved in October 2004.

In December 2004, Gunns proposed a Pulp mill that was declared a Project of State Significance (POSS).

In terms of the small Tasmanian economy it certainly is significant, potentially adding $6.7 billion (+2.5%) to the economy, including an additional $894 million in extra tax revenue between 2008-2030, 3,400 more jobs in the state than if the mill were not constructed and once operational, an average 1,617 more Tasmanian jobs.

However, the assessment process has come to a crisis point following two directions hearings held by the RPDC. These hearings were held after almost two years. There was one year to develop guidelines for an “Integrated Impact Statement”, and another year for the developer to write such an impact statement, time for the public to provide written comment and for the RPDC consultants to undertake independent peer review.

At the first directions hearings the Greens challenged a panel member, Dr Raverty, because he was an employee of a joint venture with CSIRO. They challenged the CSIRO’s TAPM (the air pollution model) and other CSIRO activities including the fact sheet by ENSIS.

This legal challenge resulted in Dr Raverty resigning, leading to the Panel Chairman also resigning, a new panel being appointed and a second directions hearing being held.

At the conclusion of that 2nd preliminary hearing in February no definite date had been given for future optional hearings, and no detailed time line given, only a time span, may be November, maybe next year!

Gunns Limited, the developer, withdrew from the RPDC stating that the assessment process was too long, and was too opened to enable due and proper project management in terms of accessing capital and ordering equipment. They considered that each additional month of delay was costing $10 million.

In order to salvage the project the Tasmanian Government has introduced a Bill that will see the assessment process finalized by an expert consultant, with a definite time table of assessment. The consultant’s report will be submitted to Parliament by 31 August 2006. Then both Houses of Parliament must consider the report and approve/ reject the project.

The Bill requires the project to be assessed against the emission guidelines approved in 2004.

A casual glance at Tasmanian media will confirm that this situation has created literally hundreds of news stories in Tasmania with private conversations being reported, speculation of conspiracy, cherry picking reports and documents, and so called independent experts offering their opinions.

The Lower House approved the Bill with 21 of the 25 members supporting it. Today it is debated in the State’s Upper House, the Legislative Council.

Cheers, Cinders

-------------------------
Cinders also provided me with a link to a letter from Rodney Stagg, Retired bushman and log truck owner, sent to the RPDC on 30th August, click here: http://www.rpdc.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/69061/11_Rodney_Stagg.pdf

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March 24, 2007

Eco-Freaks: A New Book by John Berlau (Part 2, Trees Can Cause Smog)

In a new book ‘Eco-Freaks, Environmentalism is hazardous to your health’, John Berlau contends that environmentalists have promoted doomsday scenarios some of which have proven to be false, and that nature is not always benign and can sometimes pollute and poison.

Following my post on John Berlau’s chapter on DDT (Eco-Freaks: Part 1, DDT), a regular commentator at this blog known as SJT, suggested the book was misleading because Berlau’s has written that, “tree contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than cars.”

When I first posted on DDT, I hadn’t read the chapter on trees or the chapter on cars.

I read on, and on, and on, including these two chapters. But I could not find any reference to “trees contributing more C02 to the atmosphere than cars”.

So I emailed John Berlau. He replied:

"Jennifer,

I never have written that trees contribute more CO2. I was talking about the hydrocarbons in smog, [in] which I do document that tree contribute a greater portion, part of which is due to the fact that the catalytic converter has reduced cars' hydrocarbon emissions by 90 percent.

But also due to the fact that new measurements show that gases from trees contribute much more than thought, when devices were developed to trace the hydrocarbons' source.

The first such study documenting this was the University of Georgia Chaimedes in 1988. It has been show again by dozens of prestigious reasearchers, including some I cite [in the book] from Australia's top scientific agency.

[Ronald] Reagan, however, was not simply pulling this out of his hat when he said this in the late 1970s and the 1980 campaign. He cited scientists such as Texas A&M's John J. McKetta, who questioned the assumptions about the relative contributions of cars and trees [to smog] and were later vindicated when the research confirmed their theories.

An interesting point is that in cars, the catalytic converter reduces pollutants by, or course, transforming hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide into water vapor and carbon dioxide. This was hailed as a great advance at the time, around the early 1970s.

Liberal senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat from Maine who sponsored the Clean Air Act of 1970, spoke about how wonderful this device was that could turn these harmful pollutants into, in his words, "harmless carbon dioxide" that we breathe out and plants breathe in.

This is a point that needs to be made more often: that one major reason for the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is actually pollution control. [end of quote]

The first time John Berlau mentions trees and cars in 'Eco-Freaks' is in chapter 4 ‘Smashing the engine on public health’. This chapter is essentially about the long running campaign in the US against cars. On page 118 Berlau makes the point that:

“The main charge against cars made since the late 1970s is not that they are adding harmful pollution. It’s that they are contributing to the buildup of carbon dioxide … but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant like lead. It is a basic element that humans breathe out and plants breathe in. In fact, cars are emitting carbon dioxide in part as a way of reducing pollutants. Catalytic converters, placed on cars after the mandated pollution reductions from the Clean Air Act of 1970, “oxidize” pollutants such as carbon monoxide and harmful hydrocarbons and transform what comes out of the tailpipe into water and carbon dioxide. … Proponents of the Clean Air Act, including many environmentalists now sounding the alarm about carbon dioxide, thought this was great … proclaiming proudly that with catalytic converters, cars would now be primarily emitting the same substance that plants breathe. [end of quote]

In summary, trees can contribute to smog, cars now emit more carbon dioxide than they used to, and don’t believe everything you read in comments following my blog posts.

Posted by jennifer at 04:38 PM | Comments (47)

March 23, 2007

Red Gum vs Concrete Sleepers: A Note From Vic Eddy

Dear Jennifer,

This morning 23rd March, an item on 'AM' the ABC Radio current affairs programme quoted an ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation) report as saying that the use of timber sleepers results in 500x the carbon emissions compared to using concrete sleepers.** That report claimed the Australian Greenhouse Office as its source.

I have commented to AM through their web site which unfortunately goes to them and them alone. For your interest the following is a reasonable reproduction of that email.

"Dear Sir,

Your item this morning 23rd March quoted the Australian Greenhouse Office as the source of a statement that the use of timber sleepers produces 500 times the carbon emissions of concrete sleepers. That statement must surely put the credibility of the Greenhouse Office at risk.

Some basic facts:

Fact 1. We should all know that timber contains carbon and concrete does not.

Fact 2. To store 1000kg of carbon in railway sleepers 67kg of carbon will be emmitted in the process. The production of concrete to do the same job emits 430kg of carbon and stores none.

Fact 3. To convert a timber sleeper track to a concrete sleeper track means that all the timber sleepers become an emission. Add that to the emissions of producing the concrete replacements and we have a combined emission of 61.2 tonnes of carbon per km and none in storage.

Fact 4. A natural forest of regrowth and old growth is carbon neutral. That is it is emitting carbon at the same rate it is absorbing it from the atmosphere.

Fact 5. A healthy, sustainably managed, production forest is constantly absorbing more carbon than it emits. At the same time carbon is being stored for the life of its products in service.

Fact 6. By excluding the tribal aboriginal from the river front, open woodlands of River Red Gum have turned into closed forests of tall slim trees. If these forests become National Parks they will still need thinning treatment if they are to support the range of biodiversity that we expect to find.

Fact 7. Forests in National Parks can receive thinning treatment, as is the case in the Box- Ironbark, but the trees must be felled to waste as the product from a National Park cannot be sold.

Yours faithfully
Vic Eddy

-----------------
** On October 01, 2006, I blogged 'Switch to Concrete Railway Sleepers, Negates Wind Farm Savings' with comment that:

"There is much community concern about global warming and an expectation we will all do our bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So why did the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) decide to transfer its annual requirement for 400,000 railway sleepers from timber to concrete?

According to Mark Poynter* this will result in an extra 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year that could otherwise have been negated by carbon sequestered in forest regrowth and saved by avoiding concrete manufacture.

Read the full post here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001660.html

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January 19, 2007

Counting Trees in Australia for Greenhouse Accounting

The National Greenhouse Accounts and Land Clearing: Do the numbers stack up?
by Andrew Macintosh, at The Australia Institute,
published January 2007.

Australia’s capacity to meet its Kyoto target is contingent on a reduction in emissions from land clearing. Government projections indicate that if land use change emissions are at their 1990 levels in 2010, Australia’s total emissions will be 27 per cent above 1990 levels, meaning Australia will exceed its Kyoto target by 19 per cent.

The National Greenhouse Accounts suggest that between 1990 and 2004 there was a 59 per cent reduction in emissions from land use change, which has ensured that Australia’s total emissions have increased by only 2.3 per cent. Approximately 70 per cent of the decline in land use change emissions is attributed to a fall in the rate of
land clearing in Queensland. The Federal Government has relied on the decrease in land clearing to justify its claim that Australia ‘remains on track’ to meet its Kyoto target.

Data published by the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) in Queensland raise doubts about the accuracy of the estimates of land clearing in the National Greenhouse Accounts. For example, the total amount of land clearing in Queensland identified under SLATS between 1989/90 and 2000/01 is approximately 50 per cent
higher than the amount estimated by the Federal Government’s National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) between 1990 and 2001. There are also significant differences in the land clearing trends identified by SLATS and NCAS, with peaks in clearing shown in the SLATS data in the late 1990s and early 2000s not evident in
NCAS results...

Read the complete report here: http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP93.pdf

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January 15, 2007

Let Us Keep Harvesting Timber: Media Release from NSW Private Native Forests Group

“The sustainable management of native timber on private land is an important income stream for many farming families struggling to survive the current drought,” said Andrew Hurford, spokesperson for the New South Wales Private Native Forests Group.

“For decades, [Australian] farmers have managed small forest holdings for times such as these - to help put food on the table for their families.

“Calls by Sydney-based greens to increase restrictions on the harvesting of private timber is a cruel blow to many farming families across the state,” said Mr Hurford.

Not only do private native forests provide a living for farmers in these times of stress, but, just as importantly provide work for thousands of timber workers.

“The money generated by private native forestry during times of drought helps to keep small, struggling country towns afloat.

“When the wheat crop fails and you have to sell your livestock because of a lack of rain, income sourced from the sustainable harvesting of timber is a life-saver,” said Mr Hurford.

On the Mid-North Coast, private native forestry generates a staggering $120 million each year to drought stricken communities and employs over 850 workers.

In the Riverina, in south west NSW, the industry contributes approximately $16.5 million each year and over 180 jobs.

“The flow-on effects to the rest of the community cannot be underestimated. It’s the shop keeper, teacher and the local mechanic who are forced to pack-up as well,” added Mr Hurford.

In August last year, the NSW Government was forced by angry farmers, timber mill owners and workers to shelve its plan to introduce a ‘Code’ that would have seen 60 per cent of forests on private land ‘locked-up’ into de facto National Parks.

Mr Hurford fears that if the ‘Code’ goes ahead dozens of communities will suffer the same fate as the Pilliga community in north-west NSW where the State Government ‘locked-up’ the Pilliga Forest into a National Park.

“It was devastating, over $40 million was stripped from local economies, six timber mills were forced to close and over 400 jobs lost. Now the towns have been left to die,” Mr Hurford said.

“With green preferences up for grabs at the next State election, the industry is fearful that an adverse decision restricting timber on private land could result in the loss of 3,000 jobs and $300 million from the NSW regional economy.

“Sound forest management can continue to provide multiple outcomes for the environment, regional communities and the economy. Forestry management actually stimulates the growth of healthy trees, healthy environments and healthy communities,” said Mr Hurford.

--------------------------
This is the text from a media release from the NSW Private Native Forests Group issued on 9th January 2007.

Posted by jennifer at 10:24 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 07, 2007

Treaty troubles

In Matthew Denholm's article in Saturday’s Australian, Greens Senator Bob Brown describes a Howard Government proposal to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999, as “…an absolutely pivotal moment in Australian environmental history.”

In a federal court case brought by Senator Brown, Justice Shane Marshall found Forestry Tasmania's exemption from the EPBC Act did not apply at Wielangta.

Under the EPBC Act, a person or corporation must not take an action that is likely to, or will have, a significant impact on a listed threatened species included in the endangered category. The threatened species in this case include the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, the broad-toothed stag beetle and the swift parrot. Under another section of the same act, however, approval is not needed for forestry operations permitted by Regional Forest Agreements (RFA).

The RFA definition of “protect” lay at the centre of contention. The applicant submitted that ‘agrees to protect’ means ‘deliver protection of’ and not ‘agrees to try and protect’ or ‘consider protecting’.

According to the article, Forestry and Conservation Minister, Senator Abetz, said the judgment appeared to create a definition of "protect" that went far beyond that envisaged by commonwealth and state governments. Amendments to the act and the RFA might be necessary and could constitute a speedier way of returning certainty than appealing against the decision.

Senator Brown is quoted as saying “the Government would need to rewrite the EPBC Act to get around the ruling and most likely withdraw from international biodiversity conventions.”

As ratified treaties bind Australia in international law, the EPBC Act is constructed in conformity with its international obligations. The Commonwealth Constitution does not provide the Parliament with specified powers to legislate in respect to the environment in any way, other than under the Section 51(xxix) External Affairs power.

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December 20, 2006

Win for Bob Brown, Loss for Forests

Yesterday the Federal Court in Hobart ruled that logging operations in the Wielangta forest in south-east Tasmania breach an agreement between the Australian and Tasmanian governments and that the logging company does not have an exemption under relevant environment protection laws.

Senator Brown had argued in court that forestry operations endangered a rare beetle, the swift parrot and the wedge-tailed eagle.

Since the ruling Senator Brown has suggested that all logging operations in Tasmania are a threat to rare and endangered species and that the ruling should be the catalyst for an immediate review of all logging operations in Australia.

Also, according to Senator Brown's website:

"The Judge pointed out that the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act requires more than avoiding harm – it requires that logging plans help the rare species populations to recover.

Here are paragraphs 281 and 282 of Judge Marshall’s 301 paragraph ruling:

281 I do not consider that the State has protected the eagle by applying relevant management prescriptions. Management prescriptions have helped to slow the eagle’s extinction but have not protected it in the sense of either maintaining existing numbers or restoring the species to pre-threatened levels.

Will the State protect the three species by applying relevant management prescriptions?

282 It is unlikely the State can, by management prescriptions, protect the eagle. As to the beetle and the parrot, the State must urge Forestry Tasmania to take a far more protective stance in respect of these species by relevant management prescriptions before it can be said it will protect them. On the evidence before the Court, given Forestry Tasmania’s satisfaction with current arrangements, I consider that protection by management prescriptions in the future is unlikely."

Cinders, a regular contributor at this blog, sent me the following note:

"The Federal Court has found that forestry operations in the Wielangta forest area have not been carried out in accordance with the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) by reference to clause 68.

Clause 68 of the Tasmanian RFA states that: The State agrees to protect the Priority Species listed in Attachment 2 (Part A) through the CAR Reserve System or by applying relevant management prescriptions.

The state government has created a reserve system of 2.7 million hectares including 97% of high quality wilderness, 45% of the State’s Native forest and over 1 million hectares, yet the judge ruled that this reserve system was not adequate to protect three threatened species listed in attachment 2 (Part A) of the Tasmanian RFA.

He also found that management prescription introduced by the state through its experts in the Department of the Environment, funded with millions of dollars from taxpayers, and also through Forestry Tasmania’s management systems and forest practice planning systems were inadequate to protect the species.

I would argue that the “protection” failed last week when wildfire consumed the proposed harvesting coupe and much of the surrounding forest!

Despite the Court appointed expert stating “that the forestry operations in Wielangta in coupes 17E and 19D and the proposed forestry operations in Wielangta in coupes other than 17E and 19D are not likely to have a significant impact on the eagle, having regard to its endangered status and all other threats to the eagle.”

The judge perferred to use legal precedent and interpretation to determine that there would be significant impact.

The upshot of all this legal arguement in a forest that is not pristine but has been heavily harvested in the past is to now create uncertainty for timber workers and their families in the week before Christmas.

In a Media release issued yesterday, Barry Chipman, State Manager of Timber Communities Australia said:

“This is a lousy Christmas present to the families of forest workers and dependent businesses.”

“The federal court’s decision not only endangers the RFA but the jobs of over 10,000 timber workers in Tasmania.”

The full judgment can be found at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2006/1729.html .

Cinders.

-------------------

I have previously written about the Wielangta forest here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001746.html

Posted by jennifer at 09:39 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

December 03, 2006

National Park Declaration Didn't Save Tinkrameanah Forest in the Pilliga

As part of the campaign to have State Forest converted to National Park in the Pilliga-Goonoo region of central western New South Wales, the Western Conservation Alliance held a forest protest in the Tinkrameanah State Forest in August 2002. The main thrust of their media release* announcing the sit-in was that : logging was a threat to the beautiful and high conservation value Tinkrameanah forest because contractors were not supervised.

Tinkrameanah State Forest became national park just over a year ago and timber harvesting is now banned.

This last week there have been bushfires in the Pilliga-Goonoo region with over 100,000 hectares burnt.

Volunteer fire fighters have been working around the clock, but in the Tinrameanah nature reserve they couldn't put in a fire break because national parks officers were concerned about the potential environmental impact.

Yesterday I received an email from a woman who lives in the Pillaga near Tinrameanah, Juleen Young wrote:

"Tinkrameana was under State Forestry control but went under National Park’s control with the Brigalow decision. They have not had it 12 months and it has been incinerated, gone."

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Tinkrameana forest would one day burn?**

The Pilliga forests are only new. Early explorers described the country as open grassland and woodland. Early European settlers followed with sheep but they didn't survive the drought. Then there were flood in the 1880s triggering massive germination of native cypress and Eucalyptus. A timber industry established and flourished until about 1967 when the state government started converting the working forests to National Park beginning with the 80,000 hectare Pilliga Nature Reserve.

In May last year then NSW Premier Bob Carr announced a ban on logging over a further 350,000 hectares describing the decision as achieving 'permanent conservation' of the iconic forests. As the timber workers were chased out of their forests, they explained that without active management there can be no conservation. They said that the Pilliga forests need to be tended - including thinned and protected from wildfires.

Indeed foresters have a vested interest in not letting their forests incinerate, and that vested interest has benefited barking owls and koalas.

I’m sure that the Western Conservation Alliance, not to mention the Wilderness Society, are disappointed that the Tinkrameanah is gone. But the bottom-line is that while campaigning so hard to have State Forest converted to National Park, they didn’t budget for fire prevention.

In fact environmental activists in NSW have lobbied hard for restrictive fire intervals for prescribed burning and heavily conditional licensing and on top of this the National Parks and Wildlife Service is chronically under funded with inadequate reources for effective hazard-reduction (see 'When Will We Ever Learn?' by Jim and Aled Hoggett).

The Tinkrameanah forest may start to grow back one day, but with timber workers excluded will it ever be as biologically diverse? Indeed if the cypress is not thinned it may just develop into thicket void of koalas and barking owls?

The Western Forest Alliance was wrong to suggest the greatest threat to the Tinkrameana was logging, indeed the long term survival of biologically diverse healthy forests in the Pilliga region may depend on sustainable use conservation, in particular getting timber workers back into the forests.

------------------------------------
* Media Release
Embargoed until 12 noon, 9 August 2002

Western Forest Protest: First ever in region

Today the Western Conservation Alliance is holding the first-ever forest protest in the region against destructive logging, including the destroying of hundred-year-old grass trees in Tinkrameanah State Forest, near Coonabarabran.

"Management of this beautiful forest by State Forests is seriously lacking. Logging contractors are either failing to follow new licence conditions negotiated last year, or they are working under old, inadequate licences with no supervision", said Friend of the Pilliga representative, David Paull.

"Either way it's obvious that when land is designated state forest, it is in harms way. National park protection would ensure such damage would not occur."

The WCA is calling for an immediate investigation into the logging and a moratorium on all logging of high conservation areas in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion, such as Tinkrameanah State Forest, until the Western Regional Assessment is finalised.

'Conservationists from all over the Western Region and NSW are concerned about the ongoing destruction of western woodland remnants and other poorly conserved forest communities' said Bev Smiles from National Parks Association of NSW.

'The protest highlights the need to stop logging key western forests and start planting hardwood timber lots on degraded agricultural land', she said.

The Western Conservation Alliance wants Tinkrameanah State Forest to be protected in the Western Regional Assessment, to be finalised this year.

The peaceful protest in Tinkrameana State Forest, 40 km east of Coonabarabran and just to the west of Tambar Springs is being held on Friday 9th August. Further protests are planned.

** See comment from Luke (December 2, 3.21pm) following my recent blog post 'Pilliga Forest Burns' for a history of fires in the Pilliga.

Posted by jennifer at 10:33 AM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

December 01, 2006

Pilliga Forest Burns

Large areas of Pilliga scrub are burning right now in central western NSW with large koala populations threatened.

The forests were declared national park less than 18 months ago, with many timber workers losing their jobs*. At the time the timber workers warned that unless National Parks and Wildlife officers maintained fire breaks and control burnt the entire forest could convert back to grassland.

Today a new group, the NSW Private Native Forestry Group put out a media release about forests and fires with particular reference to the fires now burning in the Pilliga:

"With predictions that this summer will see the worst bushfires in the state’s recorded history, farmers and foresters are warning that further government restrictions on the management of forests on private land will dramatically increase the threat and severity of bushfires.

“It’s time the NSW Government knew what farmers and foresters have known for decades: sustainable management of forests reduces the risk of catastrophic bushfires,” said Andrew Hurford, forester and spokesperson of the NSW Private Native Forests Group.

“Farmers and foresters help to reduce the frequency and intensity of bushfires by managing dangerous fuel loads that accumulate on the forest floor before they become a problem. We also play a crucial role in maintaining fire trails so that firefighters can access remote areas quickly.

“Farmers and foresters are the best ‘frontline of defence’ against bushfires: we are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the forest, helping to put out fires as soon as they occur. It’s in our best interests to protect these forests from catastrophic wild fires,” said Mr Hurford.

Mr Hurford said that radical green groups would have politicians believe that the policy of ‘Fence and Forget’ is the best way to conserve native forests on private land: a theory that totally ignores the fact that Aboriginals actively managed Australia’s bushland for thousands of years.

“Just look at how this policy has been an absolute disaster for fire management in our National Parks. For example, in the last forty-eight hours, 100,000 hectares of the Pilliga Forest near Coonabarabran in Central West NSW has been incinerated,” said Mr Hurford.

“Today, over 8.5 million hectares of private land in NSW (an area larger than Tasmania) are able to be looked after and sustainably managed for timber production by farmers and foresters.

“Millions of hectares of native bushland and millions of dollars worth of rural infrastructure, such as fences and sheds, will be incinerated if radical green groups get their way on locking-up private forests,” Mr Hurford said.

In August this year, the NSW Government was forced by angry farmers, timber mill owners and workers to shelve its plan to introduce a ‘Code’ that would have seen 60 per cent of forests on private land ‘locked-up’ into de facto National Parks.

“Without private landholders, who will be left to safeguard bushland from fires?” said Mr Hurford.

The 2003 ‘State of the Environment Report’ for the Australian Capital Territory lists that nearly 6.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere during the January 2003 Canberra wildfires: equivalent to 1.6 million new cars on the road for a year.

“The radical green policy of ‘Fence and Forget’ will lead to more catastrophic bushfires and more greenhouse gas emissions – the very thing governments are trying to prevent!” said Mr Hurford.

The NSW Private Native Forests Group is made up of timber mill owners, forest workers and farmers who harvest timber from private land. The Group is supported by the NSW Forest Products Association, Timber Communities Australia and Australian Forest Grower’s. Private native forestry is the long term and sustainable management of native forests on privately-owned land. The industry employs approximately 3,000 people and generates over $300 million for the NSW regional economy. Around a third of all native forests in NSW (or 8.5 million hectares) are on private land.

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* At the time I wrote several blog posts on the issue including:

Timber Communities and National Parks (Part 1), 21st April 2005
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000563.html

Pilliga-Goono Lockup Announced, 5th May 2005:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000590.html

And I wrote about enviromentalism and the forests for On Line Opinion in June 2005:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3535

Posted by jennifer at 11:14 AM | Comments (61)

November 30, 2006

Thinning Forests To Increase Water Yield

"Despite being portrayed as a villain, timber harvesting in the form of thinning can substantially counteract the impact of fire regrowth on water yield. The benefits of regrowth thinning have been widely studied throughout Australia. In Melbourne's catchments, strip-thinning trials have shown that up to 2.5 million litres a year of additional run-off can be generated from each hectare of thinned regrowth. A program of thinning the 1939 regrowth could add billions of litres of water to our storages.

Western Australia has been quicker to take advantage of thinning as a water management tool. Earlier this year, a $20 million, 12-year thinning program was initiated in a substantial segment of Perth's catchment following four years of exhaustive public and stakeholder consultation. Every 1,000 hectares thinned is expected to deliver an additional one billion litres of run-off into the Wungong Dam a year."

This is an extract from an opinion piece by Mark Poynter first published in The Age and just republished by On Line Opinion, entitled 'Fired-up Forests, Have More Impact Than the Loggers'. Read the full article here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5213

Posted by jennifer at 09:55 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Thinning Forests To Increase Water Yield

"Despite being portrayed as a villain, timber harvesting in the form of thinning can substantially counteract the impact of fire regrowth on water yield. The benefits of regrowth thinning have been widely studied throughout Australia. In Melbourne's catchments, strip-thinning trials have shown that up to 2.5 million litres a year of additional run-off can be generated from each hectare of thinned regrowth. A program of thinning the 1939 regrowth could add billions of litres of water to our storages.

Western Australia has been quicker to take advantage of thinning as a water management tool. Earlier this year, a $20 million, 12-year thinning program was initiated in a substantial segment of Perth's catchment following four years of exhaustive public and stakeholder consultation. Every 1,000 hectares thinned is expected to deliver an additional one billion litres of run-off into the Wungong Dam a year."

This is an extract from an opinion piece by Mark Poynter first published in The Age and just republished by On Line Opinion, entitled 'Fired-up Forests, Have More Impact Than the Loggers'. Read the full article here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5213

Posted by jennifer at 09:55 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

November 22, 2006

The Story of Wielangta: How Environmentalists Mistake 'A Timber Town That Disappeared' for Pristine Wilderness

There is a lot of forest in Tasmania.

In the south east of the island, there was once a thriving timber town known as Wielangta. In its heyday it had a general store, bakery, blacksmiths’ shops, a school and of course several saw mills.

Wielangta was ravaged by bushfires in the 1920s and abandoned in 1928.

I visited the area yesterday with Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney – the Irish born producers of Mine Your Own Business.

All we saw was forest. The town has disappeared.

This is some of the beautiful blue gum forest we saw along the Wielangta forest drive.

The forest has re-grown and like most forest in Tasmania is now falsely considered pristine wilderness. But within the forest there is a rusted boiler and decaying tramlines -- all that remains of the once thriving timber town known as Wielangta.

Interestingly, according to the website dedicated to Bob Brown’s fight to stop logging in Wielangta forest, this forest is described as “the most untouced and secluded area within 50 km of the Hobart CBD. It is a tiny fragment of the complex biodiversity here at the end of the last Ice Age.”

Wielangta forest is home to the swift parrot, wedge-tailed eagle and broad toothed stag beetle.

Parts of the forest have been cleared felled and then burnt by timber workers since European settlement. And the forest has always regrown.

Here's Phelim in a recently burnt coup, perhaps looking for the town that disappeared?

Here's Phelim perhaps looking for the ancient Wielangta (broad toothed) stag beetle.

----------------------------

Thanks to Alan Ashbarry for taking us to Wielangta and for organizing the Tasmanian showing of Mine Your Own Business. Following the screening last night there was much comment over drinks, about how relevant the film is to Tasmanian timber communities struggling to survive against environmentalism. The film will be screened tonight (Wednesday night) in Sydney and tomorrow (Thursday night) in Perth. For more information visit http://ipa.org.au/events/event_detail.asp?eventid=120 .

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November 14, 2006

Net Increase in Forest Cover Globally

For years, environmentalists have been raising the alarm about deforestation. But even as forests continue to shrink in some nations, others grow — and new research suggests the planet may now be nearing the transition to a greater sum of forests.

A new formula to measure forest cover, developed by researchers at The Rockefeller University and the University of Helsinki, in collaboration with scientists in China, Scotland and the U.S., suggests that an increasing number of countries and regions are transitioning from deforestation to afforestation, raising hopes for a turning point for the world as a whole. The novel approach, published this week in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks beyond simply how much of a nation's area is covered by trees and considers the volume of timber, biomass and captured carbon within the area. It produces an encouraging picture of Earth's forest situation and may change the way governments size up their woodland resources in the future.

Read more: http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/?page=engine&id=549

Posted by jennifer at 09:56 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

November 09, 2006

Possums Killing River Red Gums: A Note from Michael O'Brien

Dear Jennifer,

I was reading your blogs criticising the misrepresentation of the facts surrounding the Murray river floodplains and death of river red gums. I own a property on the Murray river floodplains, downstream of Echuca. My property has river red gum wetlands that have quite naturally not recieved any flooding since 1995.

For the last 15 years my red gum wetland and many other red gum wetlands in the region have suffered massive decline in tree health and in some instances all of the trees have been killed. It is changing the look of the landscape and is quite obviously a regional catastrophe.

But what is the cause? Ask any of the experts and they insist it is "drought", but in my district the average rain for the past 15 years has only been slightly below the long term average and in reality the redgums have probably had as much flooding as they ever did in dry periods.

The actual cause of the tree death is something much more cute and cuddly, common brush-tailed possum's. Brush-tailed possums are abundant in these hollow redgums. At times I have spotted up to 15 mature possums in one tree. Each summer the trees grow a few leaves and then for the remainder of the year the possums strip them clean. The trees can only take about three years of this kind of constant bombardment before they die. From the 200 large trees within my wetland at least 75% have died in the last 10 years, and the remainder are in poor health.

Prior to European settlement in the area, the local Aboriginals heavilly utilized brush-tailed possums for food, clothing etcetera. So much so that one of the early pastoralists in the area referred to them as the "possum-eaters".

As an experiment I possum guarded a number of random trees last November.

The following photograph I took this morning of one of the possum- guarded trees. The trees in the photograph were all in similar health at the time of guarding last November.

Possum attack is a widespread problem in the Murray flood plains now that possums are unable to be utilized and managed, and probably explains a lot of the premature death of red gums that people are witnessing in this natural dry period.

Regards,
Michael O'Brien

Posted by jennifer at 04:12 PM | Comments (21)

October 21, 2006

Log a Tree, Sequest Some Carbon: Mark Poynter

Only 10 percent of Victoria's native forests are logged. Yet anti-logging campaigners are still unhappy, ramping up a campaign in conjunction with the upcoming state election to have the industry closed down completely.

Why anyone would oppose the sustainable harvest of such a small percentage of Victoria's extensive native forest estate is difficult for me to understand. Then again I see both environmental and economic benefits in growing and cutting down trees as part of the active management of a native forest.

In 'Campaigners can't see forest for trees' Mark Poynter* expains the value of logging in terms of carbon sequestration:

"Sustainable logging in Victoria's designated wood production zones produces about 1.5 million cubic metres of hardwood sawlogs and residual logs a year from an estimated total harvested biomass of about 2.1 million cubic metres, including roots, bark, branches and foliage. The concept of sustainability dictates that annually harvested amount is replaced by an equivalent volume of growth.

Carbon sequestered each year in new biomass growth in Victoria's production zones is estimated to be equivalent to saving 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This is net of emissions from fuel and power use inherent to timber production and emissions from the regeneration process. It is also additional to the carbon that could have been sequestered if the forest had alternatively been left unlogged.

Putting this into perspective is that clean energy produced from Victorian wind farms has been estimated to save 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Put another way, if anti-logging campaigns were to close Victoria's native forest timber industry, 10 times as many wind turbines as now exist would be required just to make up for the carbon sequestration lost by "locking up" wood production forests.

Enhanced carbon sequestration is only part of the "greenhouse" benefit of sustainable logging. Australian domestic hardwood production also offsets imports of tropical hardwoods and the use of steel, aluminium and concrete that offer poor environmental outcomes."

Read the full article, click here .

If 10 times as many wind turbines would be required to offset the locking up of wood production in the 10 percent of the forest that is still harvested, how much more carbon could be sequested if government allowed logging in say 30 percent of the forest estate? Not to mention the potential environmental and economic benefits.

----------------
Mark Poynter is a forestry consultant, member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and a member of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). His slide show entitled 'Saving Australian Forests, A Counter-Productive Indulgence' given at the recent AEF conference can be viewed by clicking here.

Posted by jennifer at 04:15 PM | Comments (44) | TrackBack

October 09, 2006

Keeping Wildlife In the Freezer

When I worked for the sugar industry, there was a guy who lived in Ingham, in Far North Queensland, who used to regularly pull the same fish out of the freezer when there was a fish kill and get it on television as an example of poisoning from acid sulfate soils.

It seems activists also keep wildlife in their freezers in Tasmania and have no worries pulling a possum killed by a motorcar out of the freezer and parading it as an example of 1080 poisoning. At least that's the message we get from Pier Akerman writing in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday in a piece entitled 'Hello, wasn't that the ex-possum again?'.

While some activists have no real interest in the truth, just a particular barrow to push, you would like to think journalists from the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, were a bit more diligent. But it seems they don't even have a particularly good system for keeping track of file tape/news footage... click here.

Posted by jennifer at 06:13 PM | Comments (62) | TrackBack

October 01, 2006

Switch to Concrete Railway Sleepers, Negates Wind Farm Savings

There is much community concern about global warming and an expectation we will all do our bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So why did the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) decide to transfer its annual requirement for 400,000 railway sleepers from timber to concrete?

According to Mark Poynter* this will result in an extra 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year that could otherwise have been negated by carbon sequestered in forest regrowth and saved by avoiding concrete manufacture.

At the recent AEF conference Poynter said:

“To put this in perspective, the Victorian government has firmly embraced windfarms as part of its renewable energy strategy. They are estimated to be saving 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Some 75 percent of this has been negated by the ARTC preference for concrete sleepers.”

According to Minister Warren Truss back in April:

"This contract will provide a massive and ongoing boost to the Australian concrete and cement industry … the concrete sleepers can carry heavier loads and incur less maintenance costs. They provide a more consistent, stable and reliable track and have a longer life, with less degradation than timber, he said.

No mention of the greenhouse cost?

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* Mark Poynter is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia, he spoke at the recent AEF conference as part of a panel on ‘Saving Australia’s Forests’. ABC Online mentioned the conference last Friday, and in particular the AEF award to timber company Gunns Ltd.

Posted by jennifer at 04:05 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

September 14, 2006

'Déjà Vu on the ABC' by Roger Underwood

What happens to ABC journalists found to have performed unprofessionally?

In August 2006, a Four Corners program on forestry in Tasmania was found by the The Australian Communications and Media Authority to be bias and inaccurate. This program attacked the management of Tasmania’s forests and timber industry. Lords of the Forest was found by the independent adjudicators to fail almost every test of professional journalism; it did not even meet the ABC’s own Code of Practice on impartiality and accuracy in current affairs reporting.

Subsequent to the ACMA findings, I have been asked by several people: "What will now happen to the journalist in question Tikki Fullerton?”

Well might they ask. If history is any guide, she will probably go on to stardom.

Sixteen years ago, Four Corners made an equally clumsy foray into Western Australian forest management. This was The Wood for the Trees, broadcast by ABC TV on June 18th, 1990. I was then a forester working for the WA Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM), also a senior officer of the department.

CALM had recently published management plans which provided for the full balance of forest uses from “locked away” nature reserves, to National Parks, to State forests where timber cutting and regeneration were permitted. We also had significant programs of plantation development and wildlife management, and we provided extensively for forest visitors and recreationists. Our forestry work in those days was fully endorsed by State and Federal governments and by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority. This will surely resonate with Tasmanian foresters in 2006.

In spite of all this, CALM was deeply unpopular with extreme environmentalists. Four Corners were sooled onto us by Perth green activists, who saw this as a way to discredit us nationally, and tip the political balance against the timber industry and the forestry profession. One of WA’s most rabid environmentalists admitted subsequently in a radio interview that she had mapped out the Four Corners interview schedule for their program. It became obvious later that the activists not only suggested the interviewees, but also the lines of questioning and field stops. Four Corners worked in WA with them for some weeks before even contacting anyone in CALM. When eventually they did meet up with us it was clear that their position had been rigidly determined. They were out to get us.

The resulting program was diabolical, even worse than Lords of the Forest. All the most reprehensible traits of agenda-driven journalism emerged: the presentation of unsupported and incorrect statements by environmentalists as if they were indisputable facts; failure to check statements by our critics, or to show our refutation of them; uncritical acceptance of the most palpably absurd assertions made by political activists; and failure to interview anyone (including CALM scientists) who might have provided an alternative view to some of the most outrageous claims. One of the guest interviewees was the owner of a small art gallery. Another interviewee given plenty of air-time was a small-time disgruntled sawmiller, who (surprise, surprise) was uncomplimentary about CALM’s allocation of logs, just possibly because of our failure to allocate a large number of really good ones to him. Two Canberra CSIRO botanists were also interviewed, and the journalist cleverly made out that they were critical of CALM’s system for protecting rare and endangered plants, although what they actually said was totally innocuous. I later met these two botanists and they were disgusted at the way the journalist had manipulated them.

I was present in the room when the Four Corners journalist interviewed CALM’s Executive Director, Dr Syd Shea. The interview lasted nearly four hours without a break. In the broadcast this was reduced to a few minutes of carefully selected snippets. The journalist was aggressive and unrelenting throughout.

It was the first time I had watched a current affairs journalist at work. The first thing that struck me was that he had already made up his mind. The second was that the purpose of the interview did not appear to be to gather information or seek understanding, but to attack a person and an organisation. He would ask the same question over and over, but every time he would phrase it in a slightly different way. And he would keep coming back to issues already discussed to probe them yet again, searching for a weakness or something he could later portray as a damning admission.

It would be too much to hope that Tasmania’s forestry people had time to marshal media resources, but we were fortunate – we managed to make our own video of the interview. This allowed us later to compare the actual questions and Dr Shea’s answers with the massively edited version eventually shown by Four Corners. All the journalist’s and editor’s stratagems were thus dramatically exposed. Anything said by Dr Shea which did not fit the journalist’s predetermined position was edited out, while any slight slip or ambiguity was highlighted. Later, the journalist ridiculed Dr Shea as a 'baby-kissing politician', while showing a shot of Shea kissing a baby. The journalist neglected to mention that the baby shown was Dr Shea’s daughter.

Dr Shea was not a man to take this sort of personal insult lying down, any more than he would accept the unjust assault on his agency. With the full support of Premier and Minister, he strongly counter-attacked the ABC. A wide range of State and Federal politicians were briefed and their support obtained. An official complaint was written up and published in a substantial document. This included the transcripts of both films – ours and the one shown by Four Corners – of the same interview. A total of 44 separate instances of factual error, misrepresentation, bias and selective editing were described. The document also set out the secretive comings and goings of the Four Corners team in the field, where they had the gall to behave as if CALM was some sort of dangerous terrorist organisation.

Tasmanians who are still fighting the ABC over Lords of the Forest will be pleased to hear that in the end Syd Shea had a win. ABC management was repentant. Four Corners presenter Andrew Olle broadcast an apology in which the litany of false assertions and incorrect statements in The Wood for the Trees was admitted.

But Tasmanians may not like to know the following. Despite the apology, the Four Corners journalist who anchored the program, Mark Colvin, was subsequently given a series of plum overseas assignments. Today he is one of Australia’s most prominent journalists, the host of the ABC’s flagship current affairs radio program PM.

Tikki Fullerton, the journalist from Lords of the Forest, has re-appeared many times as a front-line journalist for the ABC since Lords caused such a storm of anger. As far as I can determine (from letters to the ABC’s Managing Director) she has not even been reprimanded. Nor, to my knowledge, has the ABC ever apologized over the Fullerton program. There is clearly a culture within the ABC, or at least among its journalists, that they are above criticism.

Unfortunately, any apology and adverse finding will always be too late. As the extreme environmentalists know who cook up these programs in the first place, what matters is the initial impression. What they count upon is the gullibility of television viewers, especially those who watch the ABC, live in the leafy suburbs and don’t know anything about forestry, but like to indulge in trendy arms-length environmentalism. Thus, cruel damage is done – irreparably in WA, as it turned out.

Sixteen years after The Wood for the Trees program I am still unable to watch Four Corners; indeed I have not been able to watch any television current affairs programs since then without a feeling of betrayal. I have seen how the journalists work, experienced first-hand the editorial trickery, the deep bias, the loaded questions, the uncritical acceptance of absurd nonsense from people with the 'right' ideology, and the selective interviewing.

For me, the Four Corners attack on forestry in WA was the moment when ABC current affairs journalism lost its credibility. I realised then that a 'crusading' journalist was one who closes one eye in order to see better with the other. From this perspective, even though it hurts to admit it, Lords of the Forest was simply déjà vu.

Roger Underwood
Perth, Western Australia

PS Within a few days of ACMA’s findings on Lords of the Forest and its advice to the ABC to review its procedures for preparing current affairs television programs to ensure impartiality and accuracy, the Stateline program in Western Austraslia broadcast a program which tried to demonstrate that logging in the jarrah forest would destroy quokkas. I won’t go into the details, other than to say that I have lodged an official complaint which describes 11 separate instances in the program of bias, misrepresentation, selective interviewing, factual error and failure to undertake basic research. What this tells me is that unprofessional journalism and the penetration of environmentalist influence within ABC current affairs is systemic and probably inoperable. The disease is even yet to be diagnosed within the Corporation, let alone addressed. "

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Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Posted by jennifer at 01:12 PM | Comments (26)

August 28, 2006

Rats Destroyed the Forests on Easter Island: Terry Hunt

Easter Island has been described by Jared Diamond as the "clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources".

Prof Diamond has told and retold the story and drawn a parallel between the ecological disaster he says befell Easter Island and our likely fate because we are cutting down too many trees and consuming too much energy.

In the September-October issue of American Scientist Online Terry Hunt details findings from his work on Easter Island.

It is an interesting read in which Hunt concludes that rats introduced by the Polynesians negatively impacted on recruitment in Jubaea palms resulting in forest decline. In contrast, Jared Diamond says the Polynesians simply cut down all the trees.

Furthermore Hunt suggests that the downfall of the original Polynesian civilization resulted not from internal strife associated with ecological disaster following destruction of the forest, but rather from contact with Europeans.

I read a lot of James Michener books when I was a bit younger. Civilizations destroyed by new arrivals is a consistent theme in Michener's stories.

Posted by jennifer at 06:41 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

August 21, 2006

The End of Private Native Forestery in NSW: Jim Hoggett

Under the NSW Native Vegetation Act 2003 harvesting of timber for what government describes as "the purposes of private native forestry" will require approval through the preparation of a Property Vegetation Plan (PVP) or through an application for development consent. Both applications must be in accordance with a Code of Practice.

The draft code was recently released by government for public comment and there has been an outcry from landholders, foresters and academics. The bottomline appears to be that it spells the end of native private forestry in NSW?

Following is Jim Hoggett's submission to the Minister:

"DRAFT CODE OF PRACTICE FOR PRIVATE NATIVE FORESTRY

It is difficult for private individuals to make judgements on a document of such extensive ramifications as this draft code (the Code). However, with combined experience of 60 years in public service, forestry and now farming we are perhaps well qualified to comment.

This submission falls into two parts. This letter contains our more general comments on the Code. The Attachment contains more technical but equally important comments.

Our central criticism of the Code is that it will prove unworkable over the bulk of the private native forest domain. It will therefore be an effective prohibition of most private native forestry. This is of serious concern, as most native forest is on private land and most publicly owned native forest is locked up in Parks with State Forests reduced to a shadow of its former operation. The Code is also a massive overkill when we consider that broad scale clearing has virtually ceased in NSW. Also production native forest is only one twelfth of total Australian native forest and. less than one per cent of production native forest is harvested each year

The prime reason for our criticism is apparent. The Code has been driven entirely by the existing environmental legislation rather than the need to devise an instrument that would marry and optimise environmental and forestry outcomes. The result is not just the effective loss of most private native forestry potential but a much worse environmental outcome than sustainable forestry would provide.

There are three principal reasons why the Code will not work as intended.
Firstly, it is incredibly voluminous and thus hard to comprehend. The code is an extremely detailed set of provisions for forestry operations. The numerous sections, subsections and tables will prove well beyond the comprehension of most landholders let alone their capability to satisfy them. It is a common failing of legislators and officials to assume that the average farmer will have the hours and expertise to actually give effect to complex legislation in the spare time from his daily work. Legislators have only to have a broad understanding of the legislation for a short period before they move on to the next regulation.

Beyond the Code is a wide spectrum of interlocking environmental legislation, regulations, guidelines and Scientific Committee determinations. These embody hundreds of further provisions and constantly expanding lists of prohibitions. The idea that a landholder can follow through all the additional legislative ramifications is fanciful. Its sheer volume will defeat him.

The loss of respect for a huge body of law that is patently unadministrable will have further perverse effects (see below).

Second, the Code is extremely restrictive. A concomitant of the volume of the rules is that it is very restrictive of private forestry activity.

The landholder will need to have regard to all the potential threatened species, populations and communities (at last count there were over 800 endangered or vulnerable flora and fauna). He will need to avoid, riparian zones (including unmapped drainage zones), aboriginal and other heritage sites, rocky outcrops, erosion areas and measure slopes. He will need to prepare and follow a very detailed harvesting plan and possibly a forest management plan. He will need to count and measure tree species, preserve certain species, retain a range of hollow bearing trees, feed trees, recruitment trees, roost trees, nest trees and food resource trees. He will have to observe close to 100 operational conditions. He will have to accept any directions by the Department. He will have to report on all this regularly.

He will be subject to a number of regeneration obligations that the Government does not even impose on its own forest operations.

It may be that there are some trees left to harvest and some capacity to do it after all this but the obstacles are formidable enough to amount to prohibition in most cases. There are so many hooks and traps in the legislation that the sovereign risk imposed by the State government renders it a most precarious venture. Certainly, in our own case, where we did have the capacity to engage in small scale, sustainable native forestry operations, that option has been closed off and part of the value of our property expropriated by the State.

The PVP process, assuming that individual landowners accept it, will complicate rather than simplify private native forestry operations. It will contain all the proposed restrictions and simply add another layer of offsets and bureaucratic intervention. As it stands, landowners would be foolish to contemplate such an enduring and restrictive covenant to their already seriously curtailed freehold.

Third, the Code will be environmentally perverse. The underlying purpose of the Code is to protect and improve the NSW forest environment. By making officially sanctioned private native forestry inaccessible to most landowners, two outcomes are most likely.

In the knowledge that the law will be almost impossible to administer, the more “enterprising” will conduct forestry operations while observing the minimum or no obligations on the ground. They will either “tick boxes” or just ignore the whole legislative mess. They will bank on the knowledge that if they do not have the time to identify and tape measure every tree on their property, the official tree auditors will be unable to do so over the millions of hectares of private native forest.

Many will just give the whole idea up and set aside the land in the hope that the Government will see sense in the end. They will adopt a policy of neglect. To avoid further expropriation or government imposed obligations, they will not report environmental features or endangered species. They will minimise pest and weed control. They will endure the inevitable periodic fires, which will be the more serious and cause greater damage to the forest than would be the case if sustainable forestry were permitted (vide destruction of the National Park estate in 2003). This will maximise forest green house emissions. In short, landholders will not become unpaid rangers in the “parks” created by government on their land.

More fundamentally the legislation once again ignores the dynamic of the natural environment. Forest regions change over time in area and composition. The NPF legislation, like the PVP concept and other NSW laws for the natural environment, is based on the false notion and unattainable objective of a stable existing and future environment that can be centrally planned in detail by government. Like all central planning it is doomed to failure.

This is unfortunately another chapter in the gradual quarantining of productive NSW rural land dressed up as environmental policy.

It could have all been so much better. Instead of importing increasing volumes of timber of dubious provenance we could have developed a code that encouraged the sustainable use of our extensive native forest resource with positive effects on our economic performance and environment and a greater contribution to lowering greenhouse effects. We ask you to look again at this Code as more than a dependent adjunct of “green” policies; in short, as a forest policy with its own imperatives.

Yours faithfully
Aled Hoggett Jim Hoggett
GLOUCESTER NSW

ATTACHMENT
Draft Code of Practice for Private Native Forestry
General Comments

• The code is sloppily written. It has numerous ambiguous statements, a number of inconsistencies, numerous undefined terms, and could be accused of being technically inept, glib and disingenuous.
• Implementation of the technical aspects of this code, and the costs of its implementation are beyond the resources of the average farmer hoping to conduct small scale logging operations. It will prevent owners of small areas of forest (e.g. <100 ha net harvesting area) undertaking logging. We are one farming operation that will be directly affected in this way.
• For managers of large forest areas, the costs of implementing the requirements of CoP will significantly reduce financial returns. The requirements of the CoP are similar to those imposed on public forest, with no compensation for what are Community Service Obligations. Forests of NSW receives funding for its CSOs, has efficiencies of scale and still does not make money on its native forest operations due largely the cost of meeting similar requirements to those listed in the CoP.
• Limiting the choice of silvicultural systems and imposing very high overstorey retention rates will impose significant silvicultural difficulties. They will
o work against achieving rapid regeneration of pre- existing overstorey species in many forest types (particularly moist and tall forests)
o favour an accumulation of advance growth that is incapable of rapid growth and is of poor quality for timber production (stagnate timber productivity)
o favour species that are more shade tolerant and may lead to significant shifts in forest composition (change biodiversity profile).
• The regeneration and stocking requirements are unreasonable considering current State Government practices on public land, onerous to implement in a meaningful way, and entirely unnecessary given the ecology of native forests and the limits on harvesting activities embodied in the CoP.
• Three systems of describing trees have been adopted in the code. They are the canopy class (crown dominance), age structure and cohort systems. Each system has a well accepted technical definition. In this document the authors seem to see them as interchangeable. They are not. The use of all three with no definition for any of them is confusing. Given that standard application of these systems causes much debate even among professionals, it is likely that their use in the CoP, even under tight definition, will be a major cause of confusion and mistakes.

Comments by section
1.1
• Forestry is classified as broad-scale clearing. The Government has a policy to end all broad-scale clearing throughout the state. This code, by sanctioning what the legislation defines as broad-scale clearing, runs counter to clearly and frequently articulated Government policy. PNF is not, and should not be classified as broad-scale clearing. Nowhere else in the world is sustainable forestry classed as broad-scale clearing.
• Definition of PNF is not consistent with the rest of the document. Native forests can be sustainably managed for timber production (a “sustainable yield”) without consideration of a range of other values that the code concentrates on. PNF under this code means something other than “The practice of sustainably managing a native forest for long term timber production”. A definition that reflects the rest of the CoP needs to be up front.
• Why, if a Harvesting Plan (and Forest Management Plan) is to be compiled, and the CoP is so prescriptive, is a PVP required. Does Forests of NSW require a PVP for its harvesting activities? Does National Parks require PVPs for its operational plans where they will impact on native vegetation? One layer of planning is clearly redundant. Our understanding was that PNF conducted under this code was exempt from the provisions of the Native Vegetation Act – that was the whole point of the code. It can only be assumed that this is ploy to boost the number of PVPs issued, and artificially inflate the apparent success of the Government’s Native Veg Act.
2.1.6.a)
• How accurately do all of these features have to be mapped? The level of accuracy that the CMA will accept will determine the cost of this mapping exercise. Mapping is not a trivial undertaking.
• For ii), what constitutes due diligence in identifying these species? Will informal or formal survey work be necessary? What are the consequences for not identifying individuals?
• For ii), will the approved Harvesting Plan and PVP constitute a license to take or kill under the Threatened Species Act, or will individual farmers have to seek a license from the National Parks service to protect them from prosecution in the event of accidental take or kill. What will happen when a threatened species is accidentally killed despite adhering with all the CoP provisions?
• For iii), what will be required in identifying and mapping dispersible and erodible soils? Will informal or formal soil survey work be necessary?
2.1.6.b)
• For iv), why do they need to be described in the HP when the CoP describes them and they are included on the map?
• For vii-x), all of these are silvicultural activities, not simply those listed in x). Any standard contemporary silviculture text will define silviculture as the art and science of managing a forest community in order to produce desired ends (see comment of Glossary). Those ends may be timber, biodiversity conservation, clean water production, soil protection or visual amenity. Defining silvicultural activities simply as those associated with timber production is incorrect.
2.1.8
• What will the life of the PVP be? Will the Government hold a covenant over the property beyond the life of the harvesting operation? Will it extend until regeneration has been demonstrated to be achieved?
2.2.2
• What is the approved form? Is its format available and will it change? Why isn’t what is required by the CoP sufficient to constitute an approved form?
2.2.5
• Long-term planning objectives for what? Presumably the forest, rather than the whole property.
2.2.6.b)
• For ii), what does this mean? Does the PVP cover the FMP or simply the HP. In other words is a new PVP required for each HP under an FMP? Of is it assumed that the FMP and HP cover identical areas? If so, what is the difference between the FMP and HP. The relation between the various planning instruments is not clearly defined. The opportunity for redundancy, inefficiency, conflict and confusion is obvious.
• For v-vii), see comments on the definition of silviculture above.
2.2.7
• How will the landholder amend the FMP if the PVP has already been issued and a condition of the PVP is that the landholder comply with the existing FMP. This seems to imply that the landholder can amend the FMP without seeking consent from the consent authority.
2.3.2
• Why is this necessary? The operations are tightly constrained by the PVP, HP and FMP all of which are approved by the CMA and open to inspection at any time. Reporting is just another administrative process that will cost both landholders and the bureaucracy time and money. It serves no useful purpose for auditing regulatory compliance. What will the Government do with the information? It is possibly commercially sensitive. Reporting production volumes is not a requirement for other products that farmers harvest from their land.
3.1.3
• Why are BA retention standards necessary. The silvicultural objectives of biodiversity protection and retention of a high proportion of overstorey cover have been met other ways. There are strict retention standards for habitat/feed trees, clear maximum gap sizes and percentages limits on gap formation per harvesting operation. There is also a clear definition of what comprises a gap. No doubt, the CMA will have to approve subsequent harvesting activities preventing re-harvesting at short intervals. The minimum BA figure is redundant, its use akin to wearing a belt and braces.
• These constraints coupled with other retention requirement will mean that the intensity of tree removal will be low across the net harvesting area. It will be much lower again when considered against the backdrop of the gross harvesting area or the area covered by the FMP. It will be insignificant when considered on a landscape scale, and infinitesimally small when considered on State scale. At the local level, tree removal standards are not only unnecessarily low, they are counterproductively so for both timber production and long-term ecological outcomes. It is an accepted ecological fact that disturbance to ecosystems at a range of spatial and temporal scales is crucial in maintaining ecosystem diversity and resiliency. Systematic limiting and homogenising of disturbance effects is just as ecologically risky as imposing no limits.
Table A Note
• This note is patently absurd. There is no meaningful relationship between BA retention and the maintenance of forest biodiversity. 18 m2/ha may be retained in a handful of large trees or hundreds of small trees. It may be retained in one species or canopy class group or across all. Biodiversity also includes much more than just retained trees. BA retention is far to blunt an instrument to be meaningful in biodiversity conservation.
• The authors once again appear ignorant of the internationally accepted definition of silviculture. The maintenance of forest biodiversity is a legitimate silvicultural consideration. It does not exist either separate or in opposition to “appropriate silvicultural practices”. Rather there are silvicultural practices that are appropriate for the maintenance of biodiversity. Unfortunately, the constraints on silvicultural practices inherent in this CoP are unlikely to maintain biodiversity.
3.2
• Forest NSW do not undertake systematic regeneration surveys following their harvesting operations. Nor do they rehabilitate areas that are not sufficiently restocked (even when they are aware of them). Forests NSW has not done this at any point in its 100-year history. This has been a conscious decision on Forests NSW’s part as both surveys and rehabilitation work are expensive. It is also clearly acknowledged that even if adequate regeneration is not achieved in the short term (years rather than decades), longer-term processes will ensure adequate regeneration. This is especially the case with high overstorey retention rates. The only cost of a regeneration delay will be reduced annual timber production (i.e. a cost to the landholder). Why should the standards imposed on private landholders be any more stringent than those that the public authority is practicing?
• 5. suggests that landholders, if they report regeneration failures may be made responsible for rehabilitation or replanting work. Rehabilitation or replanting work is potentially very expensive.
• Table B heading says “Elsewhere in the forest” – does this mean in the area logged under the HP or in the gross HP area.
• Explanatory Note: suggests that guidelines will enable people to undertake a valid survey. After studying statistics and survey techniques for 8 years at university and drafting and testing Forests NSW regeneration survey techniques I can confidently state that the results of most surveys conducted pursuant to this code would produce results that were not statistically valid, and in many cases would be worse than useless (provide misleading information).
4.1
• Old growth is defined three times and each time differently (see 4.1.4, 4.1.4.e and the glossary). Which definition should the landholder adopt? Are the agreed protocol and glossary definition the same?
4.4.3
• This suggests that PVP and HP process are not interlinked. If the PVP approval is contingent on the prior preparation of an HP and the PVP provides the authority for the HP, then surely HP would not be approved under the PVP process without all the extant regulatory requirements being met? Can an HP be prepared after a PVP is issued? The whole of 4.4 is ambiguous. Its intent needs to be much more concisely stated.
4.5.4
• The use of topographic map data as a basis for identifying features on the ground is problematic. Some streams on maps are simply not of the significance suggested by the map. There needs to be some allowance for misleading or incorrect map data. Maps are models of reality, they are not reality itself. If the model does not represent reality it is the model that should be jettisoned.
4.5.17
• Why not? Machinery is excluded in all cases and these areas will need to be regenerated (gaps created) at some time. Particular attention to canopy disturbance levels will be required if tree regeneration representative of existing overstorey species is to be expected adjacent to drainage features in moist forest type.
Tables F, G and H
• Because of the limits on harvesting, particularly in protection zones, the distances for higher order streams and for the western forests as a whole are ridiculously large. They cannot be justified in erosion mitigation terms and are unnecessary and potentially counterproductive for maintaining the unique ecological characteristics of riparian vegetation. Tree falling should be allowed in protection zones providing that machinery does not enter the zone. Zone widths should be reduced to levels necessary to ensure soil does not move into the stream.
Glossary
• The definition of Silviculture is simply incorrect. Ralph Nyland, Professor of Silviculture at New York State University defines silviculture in Silviculture: Concepts and Applications (1996, Macgraw-Hill) as “The science, business, art and practice of purposefully organising and managing forest resources to provide continuing benefits for people…These include benefits derived either directly or indirectly from the trees themselves, other plants, water, wildlife and minerals found in forest areas – and also a host of intangible benefits that people realise through recreation and other noncommodity uses”. Similar definitions can be found in all contemporary Silviculture textbooks."

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August 02, 2006

ABC Should Apologize For Misleading Viewers on Forestry: Cinders

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) breached the ABC’s own Code of Practice 2002 by failing to make every reasonable effort to ensure that a Four Corners program about the forestry industry in Tasmania was impartial. ACMA also found the ABC failed to make every reasonable effort to ensure that the factual content of the program was accurate.

Following is some comment from Cinders, a reader of this blog and member of Timber Communities Australia:

"The ABC broadcast a summary of the finding at the conclusion of Monday’s Four Corners program but failed to apologise for the inaccurate and biased program of February 2004.

No apology was forthcoming when the ABC’s own Independent Complaints Review Panel (ICRP) found the same program inaccurate, misleading and seriously lacking in balance and fairness.

Whilst the forest industry feels vindicated by the ACMA findings, when will the ABC actually publish facts about Tasmanian forestry such as 45% of its native forest being reserved and managed for conservation, that it has a million hectares of old growth locked up as well as 97% of its high quality wilderness? That its native forest harvesting has been assessed as ecologically sustainable and complies with all Australian and State laws and is internationally accredited.

E-journal Crikey has raised another dilemma for the ABC: What to do with its Eureka award for outstanding journalism that it received for three environmental programs including 'Lords of the Forests'?

Can the ABC continue to advertise Four Corners and its journalist as Eureka award winners in the light of this damming report?

The ACMA also needs to review its procedures. This finding comes two years and five months after the program was first shown.

Despite having extensive powers to investigate and hold hearings under Section 168 of the Broadcasting Service Act, it chose to only assess the written submissions of the ABC and the complainants. In fact it provided only the ABC with a copy of its preliminary findings, denying the complainants of opportunity to dispute findings.

Four Corners claims to be Australia's premier television current affairs program. It has been part of the national story since August 1961, with consistently high standards of journalism and film-making earning international recognition and an array of Walkleys, Logies and other national awards. The program claims that its current team of reporters maintains a proud tradition of investigative journalism and rigorous analysis.

Can these claims and its place in TV journalism be maintained if it fails to apologise and issue a retraction over this discredited program?

Hopefully the ABC will return the Eureka Award to the Australian Museum and the $10,000 to the Australian taxpayers who sponsored the award.

Cinders."

-------------------
Christian Kerr from Crikey summarized the case against the ABC in a piece published by the IPA titled 'ABC's Paralysis on Bias' in March 2005.

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July 31, 2006

Survey: Native Private Forestry in NSW

I received the following note:

"You may like to bring this survey to the attention of your readers:

http://www.AdvancedSurvey.com/default.asp?SurveyID=42053 .

Responses are public: anyone who takes the survey can see a summary of all the responses when they complete their entry.

Responses are anonymous, I have no way of telling who responded. The survey software assigns each respondent a sequential number (and ensures only one response from each computer), so I can do cross-tabulations of responses, but I cannot identify respondents. If the survey gets sufficient responses to make the result meaningful, an analysis of responses will be published in due course."

So click on the link and fill in the survey, please.

PS Not living in NSW I had problems filling in Question 8, I think I ticked Sydney and then explained at the end that I actually lived in Brisbane.

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June 19, 2006

How Ignorant Are Australia's Elite When it Comes to Toilet Paper?

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.

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June 08, 2006

Counting Energy Efficiencies: Wooden Verus Cement Floors

At the recent Timber Communities Australia national conference, prominent federal Labor politician Martin Ferguson called for a rethink of the national energy efficiency standards for residential buildings in Australia. He told conference delegates:

"Whilst we would all support practical measures that increase energy efficiency, it seems to me that the new building standards are underpinned by too many questionable assumptions and too little scientific evidence.

So does the Productivity Commission which reported its concerns about the analytical basis for the standards last October.

The key issue is the focus on reducing household energy running costs and the thermal performance of the building shell.

And, at least at the time the Productivity Commission was undertaking its investigations the Australian Greenhouse Office’s (AGO) home design manual noted that true low energy building design will consider embodied energy and take a broader life-cycle approach to energy assessment – merely looking at the energy used to operate the building is not really acceptable.

Because timber framed construction is lightweight in nature, it does not fit the thermal performance philosophy.
The analytical basis used also means that concrete slab-on-ground comes up trumps for efficiency over suspended timber flooring.

Consequently, $70 million worth of sales a year have been lost in the Victorian timber flooring market since the Victorian rating system was introduced.

This is despite the fact that a 1999 study undertaken for the AGO found it would take 62 years to get a net greenhouse benefit from a concrete floor over a timber floor.

And recent research indicates a concrete slab produces a net increase in CO2 emissions of 15 tonnes per house compared to a timber floor.

The problem is the standards ignore the fact that cement is highly energy intensive to produce while timber is a renewable resource, grown using direct sunlight and processed using relatively little energy in sawmills.
And sometimes, the energy in sawmills is produced using biomass from wood waste itself.

The Productivity Commission has recommended the Australian Building Codes Board commission an independent evaluation of energy efficiency standards to determine how effective they have been in reducing actual – not simulated – energy consumption and whether the financial benefits to individual producers and consumers have outweighed the associated costs.

And the sooner the government ensures this is done, the better because in the meantime the timber industry is suffering and it may well be doing so for no good reason.

I am pleased to see that the industry has successfully lobbied the Victorian government for an amnesty on wooden floors in new homes until April 2007 to allow time to address this issue.

But it is clear that the greens are now much more sophisticated in their attack on the forest industries, directly targeting industry markets to achieve their ends.

The Wilderness Society responded to the Victorian amnesty saying it was a “cynical attempt by the industry to maintain market share” rather than improve energy ratings or environmental sustainability."

My house is cold in winter, it is wooden, with old wooden floors. But its my choice and I can't understand why environmental groups don't support the Australian timber industry so other home owners can appreciate the beauty of wood... wooden floors, wooden furniture, wooden window frames. And as Martin Ferguson said at the conference:

"Australia has 164 million hectares of native forests – 4% of the world’s forests – and 1.7 million hectares of plantations.

About 10% of our native forests are managed for wood production with less than 1% being harvested in any one year. That small proportion of forests harvested annually is regenerated so that a perpetual supply of native hardwood and softwood is maintained in this country.

Australia’s rigorous forestry standard, the AFS, has global mutual recognition under the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, the largest international sustainability recognition framework for forestry in the world.

But the greens are running a duplicitous campaign around the globe to undermine the status of the standard."

Posted by jennifer at 09:58 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

April 22, 2006

8783 Percent of Amazon Rainforest Intact?

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.

---------------------------------------

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

Posted by jennifer at 03:54 PM | Comments (22)

March 24, 2006

Some Forests Need Fire: Dieback Spreading in Eucalpytus Forests

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".

Posted by jennifer at 08:09 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 19, 2006

Tasmanian Greens Not Happy

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.

Posted by jennifer at 09:06 PM | Comments (45) | TrackBack

March 07, 2006

Worldwide Protest Against Australian Forestry

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.

Posted by jennifer at 05:26 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

March 01, 2006

Ian Mott on Jared Diamond & Old Growth

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.

-------------------------------------------------

* 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.

Posted by jennifer at 06:19 PM | Comments (57) | TrackBack

February 23, 2006

How Much Forest Should Be Saved?

Tasmanians will go to the polls on 18th March. Of course with an election in Australia or Tasmania comes the usual bagging of the forest industry and timber company Gunns Ltd. This time a proposed pulp mill is developing as the point of contention, but really it is all about the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of cutting down tall trees.

Stephen Mayne from Crikey.com was rather vicious yesterday, writing that:

"John Gay [Gunns Chairman] knows how to slaughter trees and export woodchips, but building a huge pulp mill is in another league and some in the market think this simple but aggressive man doesn't have the ability to deliver."

Interestingly according to the Wilderness Society website:

"Gunns is the biggest native-forest logging company in Australia and the biggest hardwood-chip company in the world.

Gunns receives the overwhelming majority of logs destined for sawmills and woodchip mills from Tasmania. It owns all four export-woodchip mills in Tasmania. It exports more woodchips from Tasmania than are exported from all mainland states combined. Gunns exports over four million tonnes of native-forest woodchips each year."

Gunns and Gay are survivors.

And with all the hype it is worth considering some statistics - like how much of Tasmania is logged? Barry Chipman from Timber Communities Australia sent me the following spreadsheet yesterday.

With 45 percent of Tasmanian forests not available for wood supply because this area is reserved, it could be concluded that relative to European countries, John Gay operates in an environment that affords a very high level of protection to its forests.

How does Europe compare to the rest of the world? What percentage of a country should be available for logging? What percentage of Tasmanian forests should be available for logging?

I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk and I use paper everyday.

Posted by jennifer at 04:24 PM | Comments (50) | TrackBack

December 29, 2005

Importing Doctors and Trees is Immoral

I was interested to read in today's Courier-Mail (pg 29) that Queensland Premier Peter Beattie considers it "immoral" for a national as wealthy as Australia to rely on developing nations to provide its medical workforce.

The Premier was referring to what I am told is a growing reliance on overseas trained doctors for rural and regional Australian hospitals.

The Premier was supported by AMA Queensland president Steve Hambleton, who according to the newspaper report, said "We are now getting some of our doctors from very poorly doctored nations ... That's not fair. We should be a net exporter of medical expertise, not an importer."

This is exactly how I feel about forestry issues. How can a country with as many trees as Australia import hardwood from Indonesia and Malaysia? How can the Greens rally against the Tasmanian forestry industry and turn a blind eye to the imported teak furniture displayed in every second furniture store?

For my all my posts at this blog on forestry (beginning with this one) click here and scroll to bottom to read about the lock up of the Pillaga-Goonoo forests in north-western NSW earlier this year.

Posted by jennifer at 10:31 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

Martin Ferguson Promotes Australian Forestry

"Australia has 155 million hectares of native forests. About 10 percent - 11 million hectares - of those forests are managed for wood production with less than 1 percent being harvested in any one year. The small proportion of forests that is harvested annually is regenerated so that a perpetual supply of native hardwood and softwood is maintained in this country.

And let me say that Australia is fortunate to have some of the best foresters in the world working to maintain our forest assets in perpetuity."

So began a speech by Martin Ferguson, the Australian Labor Party's resources and forestry spokesman, to the National Association of Forest Industries titled "Australia's role in the global sustainability of forestry and forest industries" on 28th November 2005.

The speech was the focus of an opinion piece in today's The Australian in which Glenn Milne suggests that,

"Ferguson's speech amounted to the most unrelenting attack on the Greens from a figure of substance on the Labor side of politics since the defeat of the Keating government in 1996. Brown is now on notice. In the words of one senior Labor figure supporting Ferguson: "We're about sending a message to Tasmania. Some sections of the Labor Party now no longer believe that the rainbow alliance is the way forward, especially when it's our economic credibility that's under question. Running around chasing the Green tail just means we're ignoring our base, and that includes small contractors."

In the speech Martin Ferguson tries to take the moral high ground on environmental issues as well as shafting the greens.

As Milne reported, Ferguson said, "The Greens are a political movement chasing votes like any other party. The campaign being run by the Greens is aimed at capturing votes, it has nothing to do with the environment or sustainability, and above all, it is dishonest.
The result of the Greens actions could well be to scare international customers away from sustainable forest resources in Tasmania to countries where illegal logging leaves a trail of total devastation, but where ignorance is bliss."

While the forestry industry and me have been saying as much for a long time, I haven't read anyting like this in The Australian by a regular columnist or heard anything like this from a federal Labor leader - ever.

The Shadow Minister was talking to the timber industry when he gave the speech. Milne is suggesting the speech is part of a new realignment by the Labor party.

But how will federal Labor promote a pro-forestry policy and also retain some of its inner city seats won at previous elections at least in part because of its popularist pseudo-green credentials which have historically been about opposing logging in Tasmania.

Read the speech here, download file here (51 kbs).

Posted by jennifer at 06:01 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

November 24, 2005

Don't Cut Trees in Queensland

Ian Mott, a contributor to this blog, has noted in a comment at an earlier post that:

The Queensland Cabinet is currently considering "phasing out" private native forestry on freehold land. And for all the families that have not only protected forest but actively expanded it over the past 70 or more years, when the bulldozer has reigned supreme, this is deeply, deeply offensive.

Bood Hickson from the Australian Forest Growers Association has written:

The Beattie Government is considering phasing out selective logging of native forest species on freehold land through a cabinet review. This decision comes despite the Government having spent the last year developing a Code of Practice for Native Forests, which did not even raise this ban during the public consultation process.

If Peter Beattie decides to ban selective logging on freehold land it will have the unintended consequence of stopping many would be foresters from growing mixed species native forestry in future, for fear that the government could lock them up as well.

It is not appropriate to ban selective logging in freehold native forests for the following reasons:

1. Ecological reasons.
Appropriate levels of disturbance in fact increase species diversity; help reduce the primary threat to our forests of climate change, by locking up sequestered carbon and reducing methane emissions; and decreasing the import of clear-felled rainforest timber.

2. Social reasons.
It will discourage people from planting native trees; export existing and future employment opportunities, and makes a farce of the State government's alleged support for ecological sustainable development.

3. Economical reasons.
It will make many properties financially unviable; cost the tax payers an unnecessary compensation bill, and reduce the economic diversity and resilience of our economy.

So what exactly is driving the deliberations? Why would the government want to phase out private native forestry?

..............
I now have my own website www.jennifermarohasy.com that lists many of my newspaper articles, a few of my publications, and I will also endeavour to get more speeches up there. The website also gives me a capacity to send out a monthly newsletter to everyone who subscribes, click here.

Posted by jennifer at 12:24 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Kyoto Fuels Forest Fires

I thought it was cattle and cane that was driving the destruction of rainforests in the Brazilian Amazon, but according to an article in New Scientist titled Forests paying the price for biofuels by Fred Pearce, it is soybean grown for biofuels.

Pearce writes that rising demand for biofuels is being driven by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels be blended with subsidized biofuels. All pushed along by recent announcements from the British government mandating that 5 percent of transport fuels be from biofuels to help meet Kyoto protocol targets.

A major source of biofuel for Europe is apparently palm oil from south east Asia. The Malaysian Star newspaper in an article title All signs point to higher crude palm oil prices states that demand for palm oil is being driven by demand for biodiesel production in Europe, implementation of biofuel policies in Asia, GM issues in Europe and the US, and high oil and fat consumption in China.

The article by Hanim Adnan also comments that if Asian countries implement their biofuel policies as planned, an additional nine million tonnes of vegetable oil, equivalent to about 14 percent of current total Asian oilseed production, will be required.

So are we talking about more carbon dioxide emitting forest fires, so the transport sector can reduce its carbon dioxide emissions!

I wrote a few months ago about forest fires for palm oil production, click here.

..............
I now have my own website www.jennifermarohasy.com that lists many of my newspaper articles, a few of my publications, and I will also endeavour to get more speeches up there. The website also gives me a capacity to send out a monthly newsletter to everyone who subscribes, click here.

Posted by jennifer at 11:02 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

September 17, 2005

A Christian Forester's Views

I received the following email from a reader of this weblog:

"Folks, At times the church has been drawn into the forest debate causing concern among Christian timber folk, the church appearing to follow the anti forestry argument. But now it is great to see perhaps a more balanced approach by the Church, with the Anglican Church publishing a very positive article from Christian forester Hans Drielsma. Please take time to read, http://www.anglicantas.org.au/tasmaniananglican/200508/200508-09.html ."

Posted by jennifer at 11:26 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 28, 2005

The Price of Woodchip

On Saturday I attended a conference at the State Library of New South Wales sponsored by the Independent Scholars Association of Australia, NSW Chapter, entitled "Looking for Forests, Seeing Trees: A Continent at Risk".

Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens was the keynote speaker.

It soon became apparent that many of Sydney's 'Independent Scholars' hold Bob Brown in the highest of regard. The audience was clearly enthralled as he told the story of Recherche Bay - Tasmania's equivalent of Sydney's Botany Bay but still essentially a beautiful wilderness area of incredible historical significance according to Bob Brown.

He told of the first friendly encounters between French scientists and the local Aboriginals in 1792 and how now - shock and horror - timber company Gunns Ltd was going to clear fell the forests of Recherche Bay. And it was all for woodchip that would be sold to Japan for $10 a tonne.

We were repeatedly told that Gunns Ltd turns 90% of the 200 year old trees it fells into woodchip which are then sold to Japan for $10 a tonne. We were told it was the same across Tasmania. There would soon be no old growth forest left in Tasmania if the ruthless company Gunns Ltd supported by the horrible Howard-government had their way - and all for $10 a tonne. He described the situation as "a holocaust".

During question time I asked Brown a question that went along these lines. Wasn't 80% of old growth forest in Tasmania reserved, as well as 70% of the original extent of forest still being in existence? Hadn't Recherche Bay already been logged? So to suggest that the last tree was about to be cut down in Tasmania was, to say the least, an exaggeration.

He responded along the lines that there are statistics and statistics (you know: 'lies, damn lies and then there are statistics') but the bottom line is that as more is logged, "the percentage protected increases and eventually all will have been logged and then they (Gunns Ltd) will claim that 100% is protected".

The audience loved Bob and it was with gushing praise he was cheered off the stage and then departed the conference.

Maybe I should have asked a question about the $10 per tonne. I thought it was more like $150 per tonne, but I wasn't sure.

I have just checked some sources tonight.

Brown is not alone is claiming a low price for woodchip. Jared Diamond in his much acclaimed book 'Collapse' quotes $7 per tonne (pg. 404).

When I queried this figure with Alan Ashbarry from Timber Community Australia early in the year he emailed me a copy of the Woodchip Settlement Price dated 18th February from Gunns Ltd for 2004 showing the price per tonne at $159.00 (Download file) and the note:

"Diamonds un-referenced figures on the value of export woodchips do not stand scrutiny. The current price for woodchips is the leading Australian Hardwood Chip Exporter (LAHCE) benchmark price settled at AUD 159.00 per BDMT (bone dry metric tonnes). This equates to US$120, it takes two bone dry metric tonnes of chip to make a tonne of pulp used in paper manufacture. The price for paper quoted by Diamond is overstated when compared to international benchmarks."

I have checked this value against the value in the most recent publication from ABARE, see http://abareonlineshop.com/PdfFiles/PC13135.pdf (pg. 51).

The most recent figures here are for December 2004 with a total volume of 1,413,300 tonnes exported to Japan at a value of $214,147,000 which gives a value of $152 per tonne. This confirms the value of $159 to be about right and suggests the value of $10 per tonne to be complete rubbish.

I did suggest at the conference that they should check the price for woodchip. I hope that there were some independent and scholarly enough in the room to do so. If Brown could get something so basic, and readily available, wrong, as the price for woodchip, can you rely on much that he says?

Posted by jennifer at 10:21 PM | Comments (59)

August 12, 2005

ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland's rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland's old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn't it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. ...So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn't ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled 'Trial by fire' Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, "An interesting rewrite of history - a negative reality inversion."

The link is to an announcement titled 'Research that shaped new bush clearing laws' and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland's native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council - Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham's work didn't enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham's work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
...............

Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod's contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from 'ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham' to 'ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management'.

Posted by jennifer at 11:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

On Jared Diamond and Environmental Law

I had mentioned that I was reviewing Chapter 13 of Jared Diamond's not so new book 'Collapse'.

There have been some offline requests for copies of the review which has now been published by British Journal Energy and Environment. The chapter can be downloaded from the IPA website at,

http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=443 .

I recently also completed a paper for the AFFA inquiry to 'secure a profitable and sustainable agriculture and food sector in Australia'. This long submission includes some detailed recommendations including the need to overhaul environmental regulation and legislation in Australia. It can be downloaded here,

http://www.agfoodgroup.gov.au/publications/Institute%20of%20Public%20Affairs.pdf .

Posted by jennifer at 04:13 PM | Comments (5)

July 23, 2005

Burn the Woodchip Instead?

There is no campaign against the export of woodchip from Queensland's native forests because all the forest 'residue' that could be turned into woodchip is burnt instead.

I understand this was the outcome of the 1999 deal between the Queensland Government,Queensland Timber Board, Wilderness Society, Australian Rainforest Conservation Society and Queensland Conservation Council. That is, that everyone agreed it didn't matter what happened to the 'residues' from native forest harvesting as long as it was not exported as woodchip etcetera or used for 'green energy' generation.

This is so wasteful.

The Tasmanian industry has agreed to no such deal. I understand that woodchip is a good earner for their forest industry - and there is a campaign against it with at least one Japanese Company agreeing to not buy Aussie woodchip. But I don't think they have agreed to stop making paper - and indeed there was no campaign against paper.

The Forest Industry has suggested that the Japanese should rethink their policy, and according to ABC OnLine,

The Forests and Forest Industry Council (FFIC) has made a submission to Japanese paper company Nippon Paper Group, saying the industry in Tasmania is not destructive.

Nippon Paper Group is reviewing its policy on its raw materials supply.

FFIC chairman Rob Woolley says the submission detailed the sustainability of present forest practices.

He says one of the major aims of the submission is to reiterate that any harvesting of old growth forests is minimal and only a small amount is used for woodchips.

"The harvesting is primarily done to get high quality saw log and veneer, and that the chip component that comes out is a by-product," Mr Woolley said.

"The importance of the chip component is that is adds to the economics of harvesting these timbers."

I am all for making use of all byproduct including woodchip for paper rather than just burning it. But as per the above media report, I wouldn't agree that the industry isn't destructive (it is and needs to be because involves clearfelling patches, see http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000708.html)and I understand that woodchip can be a significant component of the total harvest.

Some of the campaigns against woodchip:

http://www.chipstop.forests.org.au/whatis.html
http://www.tcha.org.au/paper.html

Posted by jennifer at 12:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 15, 2005

Timber Town Imports Timber

I was in Gympie yesterday.

When I asked the origin of a pile of logs at a saw mill I gleaned the following story:

There are over 3,000 wooden bridges on main roads in Queensland. These bridges are held up with wooden girders many of which are reaching the limit of their design life. Restrictions on harvesting from 'old growth' native forests in Queensland means that timber for these bridges is now being imported. These logs have been trucked the 700 km from Coffs Harbour (in New South Wales) to Gympie (in SE Queensland), to supply this need: View image of logs, 20kbs.

Gympie was once a proud timber town (http://thecouriermail.com.au/extras/federation/CMFedSClead.htm ).

The Cooloola region is still full of forests that extent west to the famous Conondale Ranges (http://www.travelmate.com.au/Places/Places.asp?TownName=Kandanga_%5C_QLD ).

The forests surrounding Gympie are still full of trees of the same species and with equivalent or larger girths than those being logged in Coffs Harbour. But it is apparently easier for at least one of the timber mills that has traditionally supplied Queensland Main Roads to import, because they are restricted to younger forests with smaller trees in the Gympie region. Sourcing logs is further complicated because the local Forestry Department doesn't have enough officers to mark trees for cutting.

This situation has been driven by mindless and incessant environmental campaigning to stop logging in mature native forests followed by government dollars to 'pay off' and/or 'buy out' the industry.

The following paper by Graham Murray provides information on timber bridges in Queensland and the current dilemna facing local governments in Queensland: http://www.ipwea.org.au/papers/download/Murray_g.pdf.

Posted by jennifer at 12:01 PM | Comments (1)

July 02, 2005

Clear Fell for Tall Trees

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).

Posted by jennifer at 08:52 PM | Comments (5)

May 16, 2005

Tall Trees

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.

Posted by jennifer at 10:05 PM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2005

Newest Tassie Forestry Deal

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.

Posted by jennifer at 09:31 AM | Comments (3)

May 05, 2005

Pilliga-Goonoo Lock-up Announced

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).

Posted by jennifer at 10:55 AM | Comments (6)

April 21, 2005

Timber Communities & National Parks (Part 1.)

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?

Posted by jennifer at 10:20 AM | Comments (47)