Mr Carr may have a deep knowledge of US political history, but he clearly doesn’t understand the history of the forests in his own land – Australia.

He wrote last week that if logging continues in the river red gum forests along the Murray the old trees will be all gone in 10 years and we will be left with only straggly regrowth. This is simply untrue. Almost all the old trees were logged out over 100 years ago, what is now growing along the river is regrowth and the timber industry that remains is selective in not taking the biggest and oldest trees.

What the red gum forests really need is a good drink, and thinning out, not Bob Carr’s idea of help.

During the late 1800s, large quantities of timber were cut to build and operate river boats, for gold mines and for rail sleepers. The extent of the logging, including along the entire river frontage to a distance of approximately three kilometres from the river bank, resulted in concern that the forest would be entirely cut out. So a conservation effort began based on the concept of multiple-use: that the forests be tended and encouraged to regrow for sustainable timber harvesting as well as conservation values.

Significant quantities of timber continued to be harvested from the remaining forests until twenty years ago and, of course, the trees re-grew along the river bank. And all this happened despite changed flow regimes, beginning with the construction of the Hume Dam in the 1930s.

But by the late 1980s the political balance had shifted almost completely from looking after the forests for their timber, as well as conservation value, to seeing them mainly as wildlife habitat. Large areas were listed as national parks and Ramsar sites because of their value as ‘wetlands of international importance’.

The push to lock up more forest as national park continued during the 1990s. In 2003 The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, led by the late Peter Cullen, claimed that the forests needed to be protected because vast numbers of ancient red gums were dying along the entire length of the Murray River because of drought.

Clearly there were many stressed trees and there still are, but declaring more area national park is not going to make it rain.

The best way to protect these forests, particularly during drought, is through controlled thinning and getting more water into them, including through overbank pumping – both important management practices that armchair greenies like Bob Carr continue to oppose.

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The picture shows two boys on a jet-ski on the Murray River and red gums just upstream of Koondrook, Central Murray Valley, in November 2007.   Photograph taken by Jennifer Marohasy.

Jennifer Marohasy writes a fortnightly column for The Land newspaper.  This article is republished from The Land of Thursday, August 6, entitled “Gumming up the works”.

“IN 1966 the Victorian government published a booklet entitled Summer Peril. On the cover was a terrifying photo of the 1964 Lorne bushfire. The foreword was by the Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, who began: “Over the years our state of Victoria has been plagued by bushfires leading to tragic loss of life and devastation of natural resources, public and private property.”

The booklet offers practical advice to farmers and rural landholders about the precautions they should take to minimise the risk to their property and what to do if bushfires should engulf them. One noteworthy sentence declares: “Anyone who ignores warnings about the fire risk during acute danger periods must be a fool, and a selfish, ignorant and stubborn one at that.”

The report by the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Victorian Parliament Inquiry into the Impact of Public Land Management Practices on Bushfires in Victoria, July 2008, lists twenty-three bushfires from 1965 until 2008, resulting in the deaths of 102 people. On February 7, 2009, Black Saturday, 173 people died. Those words from 1966 now have a prophetic ring to them.

On February 9 the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, announced the establishment of a Royal Commission with wide-ranging terms of reference to inquire into the causes of the firestorm and to recommend policies which would mitigate against future disasters. The Premier would have been aware that the appointment of such a body would forestall criticism of his government for failure to act on the recommendations of the parliamentary committee that had reported in July 2008. This committee made very specific recommendations, particularly about the need for fuel reduction activity, which had either been rejected by the government or accepted in principle only. The committee, chaired by former Labor minister John Pandazopoulos, comprised members from both houses and both parties with an independent, Craig Ingram, as deputy chair. Its report is an example of the great benefits that federalism provides. Canberra could not match this document. It is comprehensive in its scope, witnesses of all shades of opinion are quoted at length, there is much historical material woven into the narrative, and much detailed local knowledge is laid out for the reader; but its recommendations, made without dissent, were ignored by the Brumby government.

The Royal Commission has now been established. My deep interest in the proceedings and outcome of this Royal Commission is a consequence of the decision my wife and I made in 1994 to buy a cottage at Marysville. We renovated and extended the cottage, which we rented out to tourists; we constructed two outbuildings, and developed a magnificent garden on three-quarters of an acre. The house and the garden were destroyed on the night of Saturday February 7. The workshop survived.

Paragraph 2 of the Royal Commission’s terms of reference refers inter alia to the “prevention … of bushfire threats and risks”. As far as I am aware no submission or comment following the tragedy of Black Saturday has raised arguments concerning the prevention of bushfires in the future. All the attention so far has focused on what went wrong. The Royal Commission would be doing a much greater service if it inquired into ways in which bushfires in Victoria were to be eradicated.          

The Brumby government ignored the 2008 report for reasons which were wholly political and which go to the heart of the problems we face not only on the bushfire front, but also on water supply issues and on any major development in Victoria which offends the sensitivities of the Greens. The Brumby government, to its credit, stared down the Greens on the Port Phillip channel deepening issue, but that is the only attempt it has made to win a serious confrontation with the political-cum-religious forces which seek to stop economic development in Victoria or, as in the case of the Latrobe Valley brown coal power stations, simply shut them down and thus leave Victoria without electricity.

The takeover by the socialist Left of the environmentalist movement in Australia can be dated from the early seventies, culminating in the 1973 AGM of the Australian Conservation Foundation, an organisation founded by Sir Garfield Barwick and Sir Maurice Mawby, funded in part by the McMahon government, and which had as its aim increasing the public awareness of the importance of environmental matters.

By the late 1960s the communist Left was suffering from defections over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, but more significantly from the brutal repression of the Dubcek regime in Prague in 1968. The Communist Party of Australia and its fellow-travelling socialists in the ALP were having doctrinal and morale problems. In a brilliant strategic move, it was decided that the environmentalist movement was a new and promising vehicle for obtaining political influence and power.

The American sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote in a review article in the American Spectator in 1983:

“As an historian, I am obliged by the record of the Western past to see Environmentalism—of the kind espoused by the [Barry] Commoners and the [Paul] Ehrlichs—as the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history; the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism.

“The appeal of Environmentalism, in its more extreme manifestations at least, becomes irresistible to that permanent cadre of political and social radicals Western society has nurtured ever since the French Revolution. This cadre has never been primarily interested in the protection of nature,but if such a movement carries with it even the possibility of political and social revolution, it is well that the cadre join it; which, starting with the late 1960s, it did.”

So Greenpeace was taken over in Canada, its founder, Patrick Moore, was ousted, and in Australia, the Left, having enrolled into the ACF in considerable numbers, ousted the old guard in October 1973, and installed Geoff Mosley, hitherto a recent employee of the ACF, as its new Director. John Blanche, the former head of the organisation, resigned immediately, as did many members of the board.

An example of the attitude of the new regime to the role it envisaged for the ACF is found in 1983-84 Annual Report, written by Geoff Mosley:

“Undoubtedly the main issue to attract the Foundation’s attention was peace and disarmament and the related topic of opposition to uranium mining and export.

“The worsening arms situation not only threatens annihilation, but by absorbing resources and creating a feeling of doom is rapidly eroding the possibility of dealing with drastic social problems such as land degradation and deforestation.

“It is, indeed, difficult to see the arms race and deterioration of the physical and social environment as being in any way separate matters. Any solution will require a global anti-nuclear movement.”

The ACF has adhered to a hard Left position on every environmental issue ever since.

In 1982 the Cain Labor government won office in Victoria. Although Rod McKenzie was appointed Minister for Forests in 1982, Joan Kirner was in charge of the political agenda. Kirner was the leader of the Socialist Left faction in the ALP, in effect a medieval baron not beholden to the Premier for her office. In June 1983 Cain announced the creation of a new mega-department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, which subsumed existing departments of Forestry, Crown Lands and Surveying, the Department of Planning and the Department of Conservation. The Victorian Forests Commission was dissolved and the new department came into being in December 1983.

Joan Kirner was the first minister and early in 1985 she fired Ron Grose, a forester with an internationally distinguished reputation, who had been chief of the Forests Commission. She also fired or retrenched the people who had served in the top three layers of the Forests Commission. She appointed as head of the new department Tony Edison, an unknown figure from the UK, who was outspoken in his hostility to foresters and forestry, and he in turn appointed hardline greens as senior officials in the department. From that day to this the department, now officially the Department of Sustainability and Environment but known throughout rural Victoria as the Department of Scorched Earth, has been completely dysfunctional.

The Victorian Forests Commission had a history going back to its establishment in 1918, and had built up a culture of expertise in forest management which made it respected throughout the international forestry community. Its expertise and knowledge of local terrain and silviculture extended deep into the domain of Victoria’s forests. Some of that expertise and knowledge is still to be found in the people, mostly now retired, who once worked for the Forests Commission. Its dissolution at the hands of Joan Kirner was akin to the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, but where Henry handed over the vast treasures of the monasteries to his favoured courtiers, Kirner handed over the treasure trove of Victoria’s forests to the Greens.

The cause of the dysfunctionality of the DSE is doctrinal. At the core of Green doctrine is the belief that trees are sacred and that mankind is a pest or a virus on the planet. So the logging and timber industry has been targeted by the Greens for extinction, just as whaling was targeted for extinction in the 1970s. In fact the ban on logging in parts of Western Australia, and the closure of timber communities in those regions, for example, was specifically likened by West Australian Greens to the end of Albany as a whaling town. Trees and whales are either very tall or very large, and both are sacred.

Two characteristic examples of the articulation of Green doctrine, one from 1990 and one from 2007, illustrate this point. Ted Traynor, lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of New South Wales, gave a talk on Robyn Williams’s ABC radio program Ockham’s Razor in May 1990:

“For a long time to come, our top national priority in countries like Australia should be to reduce the GNP as fast as possible, because we are grossly over-developed and over-producing and over-consuming and there’s no possibility of all people ever rising to the per capita levels we now have, let alone those we’re determined to grow to.

“Often it is obvious that developments that would do wonders for the GNP should be prohibited, such as devoting local land and water to export crops.

“There would be far less trade and transporting of goods than there is now. There would have to be many co-operative arrangements; the sharing of tools, many community workshops, orchards, forests, ponds, gardens, and regular community meetings and working bees.

“Applying the concept of appropriate development in the over-developed countries would make it possible for most people to live well on only one day’s work for cash per week, because many of the relatively few things they need would come from their own gardens, from barter, from gifts of surpluses and from the many free sources within the neighbourhood.”

Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist who has been charged with piracy on the open seas, said in an editorial on May 4, 2007:

“We are killing our host the planet Earth.

“I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth”. I make no apologies for that statement.

“No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.

“We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.

“Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should   be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.”

Statements of this kind could be multiplied hundreds of times. They are representative of the core Green movement. Although most people who vote for the Green Party in Australia would be horrified if governments enacted legislation to bring about the reduction in population and living standards thought essential by Traynor and Watson, these are the doctrines which illuminate and influence Green decision-making, wherever the Greens have political or administrative power.

Now a department of state which has management responsibilities for forests on Crown land (an area in Victoria comprising one third of the state), but which is staffed at senior levels by officials who believe that trees are sacred, and are there to be worshipped rather than exploited for the use of mankind, cannot manage the forests. Because an explicit avowal of such beliefs would, at this stage of the Green Revolution, be premature, the sacred nature of forests is euphemised by words and phrases such as “old-growth forests”, the incommensurability of “wilderness”, and by appeals to the over-arching importance of biodiversity and the necessity, therefore, of leaving forests untouched and dead trees on the roadside undisturbed. Biodiversity is a magic word which is used to legitimise the expropriation of private property (amongst many other uses).

Green doctrine on trees and forests is pre-Christian and incompatible with Western civilisation. An important example of the clash between the pagan worship of trees, and Christian utilitarianism concerning the use of timber for structures and implements of all kinds, took place in Germany in the early eighth century.

An English boy called Winfrid was born in Devon about 675 AD. He showed great intellectual promise and wished to devote his life to the church. His parents objected but he eventually obtained their permission and was ordained as a priest in about 705. He became a Benedictine monk and eventually received the Pope’s permission to evangelise the German-speaking peoples to the east of the Rhine.

He was later appointed bishop, taking the name of Boniface. In one famous encounter with the environmentalists of his time, and to show the heathens how utterly powerless were the gods in whom they placed their confidence, Boniface felled the oak tree sacred to the thunder-god Thor, at Geismar, near Fritzlar. He had a chapel built out of the wood and dedicated it to the Prince of the Apostles. The local tribesmen were astonished that no thunderbolt from the hand of Thor destroyed the offender, and many were converted. The fall of this oak tree marked the decline of pagan influence in that part of Germany.

Today St Boniface would be prosecuted for cutting down a tree without a permit, although since it was an oak tree he may have escaped the watchful eye of our own Green high-priests who, in a nice blend of paganism and xenophobia, are concerned with worshipping eucalypts and anathematising exotic deciduous trees. This may seem a trivial thing, but it is indicative of the power which the Green movement has seized. It is arguable that environmentalism has become the established religion of the Commonwealth of Australia, in contradiction of Section 116 of the Constitution which prohibits such establishment.

The firestorms of Black Saturday are a stark reminder of the incompatibility of pagan beliefs about trees and the demands of twenty-first-century life. As the Victorian parliament’s report of July 2008 demonstrated, any program of bushfire control in Victoria’s eucalypt forests which has any chance of success must rely upon continual and sustained fuel reduction as the basis of policy. In the absence of more radical changes to property rights in Victorian forests, this requires the end of Green hegemony within a restructured public service charged with responsibility for managing Crown forests.

The most illuminating recent defence of Green doctrines concerning forest management is found in an essay entitled “Thoughts on the Victorian Bushfires”, in February 2009, by Andrew Campbell, who claims to have been a Victorian forester; a bushfire researcher; the founder of the Potter Foundation’s whole-farm planning in early 1980s; one of the initiators of Landcare; CEO of Land & Water Australia until about three years ago; and is now a consultant living in Queanbeyan, close to the corridors of power in Canberra. This essay has not been published but is available on his website and has been widely circulated.

The essential points he makes are as follows:

“Claims that more broadscale fuel reduction burning in Victoria’s forests would have prevented these fires … are nonsense … [Extreme weather conditions following] lots of late spring-early summer growth, after a decade of drought, made for an explosive tinderbox …

“The crucial point that must be underlined is that under very extreme conditions (Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) above 50—see below), fuel loads are no longer the key driver of fire behaviour, compared with weather (some of which is fire-induced) and topography (especially slope) …

“Prof Ross Bradstock … from the University of Wollongong and the Bushfires CRC, has pointed out that the Fire Danger Index (FDI) was over 150 in Melbourne on February 7. The FDI incorporates temperature, wind speed, humidity and a measure of fuel dryness. It was developed in the 1960s and calibrated on a scale from zero (no fire danger) to 100 (“Black Friday” 1939) for both forests and grasslands. Fuel reduction research has mostly involved small-scale experiments at FDIs between 10 and 20. A forest FDI (FFDI) above 50 indicates that, due to fire crowning and spotting behaviour, weather becomes the dominant indicator of fire behaviour, and it becomes impossible to fight a running forest fire front. When eucalypt forests are crowning, fuel reduction at ground level is academic. Recent research suggests that with a drying warming climate we are now seeing unprecedented FDIs, and need to introduce a new fire danger rating above “extreme” called “catastrophic” to more realistically present the   dangers associated with days like 7 February …

“The whole planning system should be overhauled, way beyond just building codes and vegetation management. Premier Brumby and his cabinet—and I suspect now Kevin Rudd—appear to understand that business as usual will not do. They also seem to understand the link to climate change in making events such as these (and worse) more likely in future. But they have yet to make the logical jump to the urgency of mitigating climate change, which means setting ambitious targets, and retooling the economy from top to bottom to achieve them.”

I have quoted from this essay at length to illustrate the current state of the Green justification of their stewardship of the forests, and also to illustrate the revolutionary ambitions of the Greens in combining the bushfire tragedies with their faith in anthropogenic global warming, in order to justify “retooling the economy from top to bottom.”

Nevertheless Campbell has made an important point about fires in the crowns of eucalypts. The reason why we have had so many bushfires in south-eastern Australia is because eucalypts, after long periods of hot, dry conditions, become equivalent to large fire bombs, containing highly flammable hydro-carbons which are released into the air above the trees as vapours, where they form a fireball when ignited. When our forests are composed entirely of eucalypts, the outbreak of bushfires cannot be prevented, although their severity can be greatly reduced by ensuring the fuel content of the floor of the forest is as close to zero as possible. We know that the eucalypts were not always dominant in Australia; some time in the past eucalypts were restricted to the outskirts of rainforests and various native beech trees (which can still be found in sheltered gullies) were the dominant species.

It is impossible, therefore, to escape the conclusion that if we are to make Victoria free of bushfires, we need to reduce substantially the density of eucalypts in our forests and replace them with other species. On Black Saturday exotic deciduous trees, poplars, elms, oaks and plane trees were in large measure untouched by the fires, particularly if they were at some distance from eucalyptus trees. The Gould Memorial Drive on the Buxton Road approaching Marysville, two glorious rows of Lombardy poplars, provides such testimony; as does the Fernshaw Park Reserve, a haven of elms, plane trees and oaks, halfway up the Black Spur Road from Healesville.

The argument that Victoria has to replace a major portion of its eucalypt forests with exotic trees such as English oaks, poplars, plane trees, and other non-flammable exotic species will be seen as sacrilege of the most egregious kind by the Greens who have ruled the DSE and other departments since the 1980s. But since it is they who must now give an account of how their stewardship of Victoria’s forests resulted in the deaths of more that 170 people on Black Saturday, and the loss of billions of dollars worth of property, they first have to acknowledge that what has been done since the 1980s has been a terrible mistake. If that does not happen then there has to be a reversal of the Kirner revolution of 1983 and new people, untainted by Green pagan doctrine concerning the sacred nature of indigenous trees, have to be appointed to senior positions. More of the same will not survive a serious political backlash.

The greater part by far of Victoria’s forests are never seen by the public except from the air. Whether they comprise eucalypts or other species is a matter only of symbolic value. From a social point of view, the squeeze that has been placed on the logging and timber industries by the Green bureaucracy—a squeeze designed to kill the industry within a politically acceptable framework and timetable—has significantly reduced the number of people living and working in the bush (people with a knowledge of bushfires and firefighting); has reduced road access into the forests; and has exacerbated greatly the damage done in the recent disaster.

The deliberate and systematic throttling of the timber industry has been manifest in the establishment of the Great Otway National Park and the shutting down of the timber industry in the Otway Ranges; the reduction of timber harvesting in the box-ironbark forests to a minimum level; the ending of timber harvesting in the Wombat Forest; and the establishment of new or expanded national and state parks totalling over 100,000 hectares.

These vast areas of forests become wilderness, symbols of Green religious power, in which man is a hostile and unwelcome intruder. They also become sanctuaries where feral animals and noxious plants of all kinds flourish and can spread into neighbouring farms and properties. Above all they become huge reservoirs of stored energy, awaiting the next dry spell and hot weather before turning into raging infernos.

From an economic point of view the closing down of that substantial portion of the timber industry based on Crown forests has resulted in timber shortages, increasing dependence on imported timber, and above all, the substitution of steel for timber in the domestic building industry. If steel were to replace timber as the consequence of competition between alternative materials on a level playing field, which culminated in a cheaper product of equal or superior quality, that would be one thing. But when an industry is deliberately choked to death by government fiat, that is another.

In order to protect Victoria from a repeat of the tragedy of Black Saturday, the logging industry must be given a new charter which will provide confidence for revival, growth, new investment and the development of new technologies and processes which will restore timber’s competitiveness with steel. Such a charter requires the transformation of the Crown forests, however they are designated, into ninety-nine-year leaseholds which can be auctioned in appropriate sizes together with covenants requiring the replacement of eucalypts with exotic non-flammable trees (excluding pine trees, which burn readily), up to a certain proportion, within a reasonable period.

Once secure property rights were established for the forests, investors and entrepreneurs would not only see opportunities in developing the logging and timber industry but also in investing in eco-tourism and recreation. Above all, these proprietors would have an overwhelming interest in securing their assets from the destruction of bushfires, and in ensuring they were not liable for damages to neighbouring property caused by their own negligence. The government could then withdraw from the business of forest management, confident that the interests of proprietors and the public alike were in alignment.

We know from the Soviet tragedy that communal farming and the absence of property rights in the farming industry produced chronic famine and shortages. The absence of property rights in the Victorian forests sector has produced the same sort of result. It is no coincidence that the radical students of today proclaim themselves as activists in the green-red coalition.

Many of the deaths on Black Saturday were caused by the transformation of roads under firestorm conditions into “channels of death”. Roger Underwood, an experienced forester from Western Australia, came to Victoria after Black Saturday and was taken through many of the regions devastated by fire. He subsequently wrote:

“I was shocked to observe kilometres of long-unburnt road reserves running through semi-cleared and agricultural landscapes. These are more like tunnels than roads, with a narrow strip of bitumen winding between overhanging trees and bush right at the road edge which had clearly not been burned for over 20 years and carried a fuel load of about 35 tonnes to the hectare. These roads are potential death traps, not escape routes.”

Currently the clearing of fallen logs and other debris from roadsides is prohibited. This prohibition is another example of Green Power in action. People should not only be allowed, but should be encouraged, to obtain firewood from the roadside and to keep the road verges clear of debris.
The capture by the Greens of a number of shire councils and the regulations such councils imposed on new housing certainly aggravated the damage and arguably caused increased loss of life on Black Saturday. This issue has received considerable attention in the media but there has been no comment on how a small group of people, admittedly passionate in the religion which gives meaning and purpose to their lives, can capture a council and impose regulations which are not only dreadful in their consequences but are also regarded as lunatic by most people living in the shire.

Following the changes made to local government by the Kennett government, in which a large number of small shires were amalgamated into fewer, much larger entities, local government became too big to be responsive to local opinion and knowledge, and too small to be taken seriously by most people. This enabled small groups of zealots, through commitment and political skill, to capture these bodies. They had the advantage that a high proportion of Greens are childless (most Greens are against children) and many are well off in secure jobs. They therefore had the time, energy and resources to devote to political activity. The Nillumbik Shire Council on the north-eastern edge of Melbourne is perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon, but other rural shires on the outskirts of the metropolis have the same problem in varying degrees.

The answer to this serious problem is a return to local government. In other words, shire councils should represent real communities, not conglomerations of towns and hamlets extending over hundreds of square kilometres. If, for example, Marysville had its own shire council, then local government would be representative of Marysville and its immediate surrounding district, and local knowledge of the district would be brought to bear in every discussion on council. The argument that there are economies of scale in local government, and that amalgamations would lead to reduced costs, is belied by the substantial increases in rates that have occurred since the Kennett “reforms”.

The same arguments apply with equal force to Kinglake and Flowerdale, two other towns destroyed on Black Saturday.

It may be said that the Greens are too entrenched both politically and in the bureaucracy for any arguments made here to gain any support. However, the next Victorian government will find, as in 1992, that Victoria is deep in debt and radical measures are necessary to restore the financial viability of the state. Turning the Crown forests into private leaseholds would bring in a very large sum of money, and it would demonstrate to everyone that the new government is prepared to take desperate measures in desperate times and, in particular, is resolved to ensure that bushfires of the kind we have experienced so often in recent years become a thing of the past.

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This article is based on Ray Evans’s submission to the current Victorian Royal Commission.  It was first published by Quadrant under the title ‘The Lessons of Black Saturday’ and is republished here with permission from the author. http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/7-8/the-lessons-of-black-saturday

The picture, via Noeline Franklin, shows the bushfire that devastated Canberra in January 2003 as it emerged from Brindabella National Park.

This post is part 16 of a series ‘Defining the Greens’.   Earlier parts of this series can be found through the search box at this blog using the words ‘defining the greens’ and also here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/index.php?s=defining+the+greens

Their campaign revolves around research by scientists from the Australian National University Fenner School of Environment and Society who have found that large amounts of carbon reside in some Australian “old growth” forests. Environmental activists have shoe-horned this finding into their over-arching 40-year campaign to completely evict timber production from all Australian forests. Their rationale is that a total absence of timber harvesting will allow all forests to become “old growth” which will store maximum amounts of carbon.

This raises several important issues. First, closing a carbon-positive industry that is based on a renewable resource is hardly likely to reduce carbon emissions. Second, the capability of most forests to attain “old growth” is reliant on fire, irrespective of timber harvesting. And third, there is concern about the integrity of the Wilderness Society’s campaign and the key participatory role of several ANU scientists.

It is hardly a surprise that large trees store more carbon than small trees. Yet this is essentially the finding of the ANU research which the Wilderness Society has loudly trumpeted as an exciting new development since it was released via two academic papers published during the past 10 months.

The first paper entitled Green Carbon – the Role of Native Forests in Carbon Storage – Part 1, by ANU scientists Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith, Sandra Berry, and Professor David Lindenmayer, was published in August 2008. This is now supported by a follow-up paper published just days ago (in late June 2009) – entitled Re-evaluation of forest biomass carbon stocks and lessons from the world’s most carbon dense forests, by Keith, Mackey, and Lindenmayer.

Much of the research underpinning these papers has focused on mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests in Victoria’s Central Highlands. Prior to February 2009, the majority of these ash forests were classed as advanced regrowth derived from the 1939 and 1926 bushfires. Only about 1.5 per cent of their area was classed as “old growth”.

February’s “Black Saturday” fires changed this quite significantly by killing a large area of ash regrowth and most of the “old growth” ash. Ash forests depend on fire for renewal and these burnt areas will regenerate as new young stands. The period between stand replacement fires is variable, but may be sufficiently infrequent to allow some forests to grow for hundreds of years to attain “old growth” status. However, as we have seen over the past century, more frequent fires can kill huge areas before they grow old and thereby maintain much of the forest in a regrowth state.

Anti-logging activism is typically silent on matters of scale and proportion as it is far easier to foster community outrage by implying that all forests are threatened. However, this is far from the reality. In Victoria, less than 10 per cent of public forests are available and suitable for timber production: the national figure is 6 per cent. Within these available forests, harvesting and regeneration occurs on a sustainable cycle that aims to supply timber and fibre in perpetuity.

Despite being Victoria’s most productive forest type, about two-thirds of the state’s mountain ash forests are in parks and reserves where timber production is excluded. Where permitted, timber production is restricted to regrowth ash forest mostly emanating from the 1939 bushfires. While, the ANU research and associated environmental campaign have built a perception that central Victoria’s “old growth” ash forests are threatened by logging, all were protected in parks and reserves, or by management prescription.

The exclusion of timber production from the vast majority of Australia’s forests means that most already have the potential to grow their carbon stocks towards their maximum carrying capacity. However, it is drawing an extremely long bow to expect all Australian forests to attain “old growth” given the prevalence of fire in the landscape; and an even greater leap of faith to expect that closing down a timber industry which operates in only a minor part of the forest, to be a catalyst for maximising forest carbon storage.

On the contrary, it is highly likely that closing Australia’s hardwood timber industry would exacerbate climate change. This is because it would encourage greater importation of hardwoods from developing countries whose forests are not sustainably managed; and increase the substitution of renewable wood products with non-renewable alternatives, such as steel and aluminium, which embody massive carbon emissions in their manufacture.

Furthermore, the forced removal of economic activity from Australia’s forests in response to political activism is already acknowledged as a significant factor in declining capability to manage forest fire. Total removal of industry and associated government workforces would only exacerbate this problem and thereby further reduce the chances of forests growing old before they are burnt.

The ANU research has ignored all these factors. In particular, its failure to consider the role of fire as the ultimate determinant of forest carbon storage is a stunning omission from scientists of such high standing. The magnitude of this flaw was emphasised when the February bushfires killed most “old growth” ash forest in the O’Shannessy catchment (north of Melbourne) which had been the study area for the most recent ANU research.

Forest carbon storage is clearly a complex matter. It cannot be simply assumed – as the Wilderness Society does – that “saving” forests from timber production is a climate change fix. Their campaign is also deceitful because it lumps Australia’s sustainable forestry (in which trees are harvested and regenerated), with deforestation in developing countries (where trees are permanently removed for another land use). It is the latter activity which is mostly responsible for a reported 18 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

Australian environmentalists view themselves as an ally of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, with regards to forests, they are out of step given that in 2007, the IPCC stated that:

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.

Deceptively avoiding inconvenient truths is almost expected of activists fixated on an ideological outcome. However, similar behaviour should be intolerable among scientists working for respected academic institutions carrying credibility for being apolitical and scientifically objective.

Unfortunately, there is a growing suspicion that the ANU scientists researching forest carbon have been less than objective since their Fenner School partnered the Wilderness Society to establish the ANU Wild Country Research and Policy Hub. The lead scientist working on forest carbon – Professor Brendan Mackey – is the Hub’s Director of Research and is responsible for its management.

The progress of the ANU’s forest carbon research thus far points to a disturbing slackening of academic process to assist the Wilderness Society’s political activism. As pointed out in an earlier article in On Line Opinion (”Blurring the lines between science and political activism”, October 30, 2008), the Green Carbon paper by Mackey et al was part-funded by the Wilderness Society. However, more significantly, the paper failed to conform to accepted academic standards when:

•  it was published without any technical data to support its findings;
•  its key findings were publicly launched by its lead author (Professor Mackey) some nine months before it was published. This was at a Wilderness Society function held at the UN Climate Conference in Bali in November 2007;
•  the pre-publication launch occurred before the academic peer review process had been completed;
•  it was able to satisfy peer review standards without any supporting technical data. thereby raising concerns about the veracity of the peer review process;
•  one of the peer reviewers was Emeritus Professor Henry Nix, Chairman of the Wild Country Hub’s Advisory Board and co-Chair of the Wilderness Society’s Wild Country Science Council of which the paper’s lead author, Professor Mackey, is also a member; and
•  also prior to publication, the paper’s findings were made available to Wilderness Society members to assist them in making submissions to the Garnaut Climate Change Review.

The key finding of the Green Carbon paper that halting native forest timber production will give superior carbon accounting outcomes fits neatly with the Wilderness Society’s position articulated in its Forests and Woodlands Policy:

The Wilderness Society “does not support the use of native forests to supply woodchips for pulp, wood for power generation, charcoal production, commercial firewood, or timber commodities”.

The recent release of a follow-up paper by three of the same ANU scientists has raised further concerns. While this new paper is more measured and does not directly advocate closing timber industries, the timing of its publication and the activities of the authors have again been integral to the current round of carbon-based political activism.

The most recent phase of the environmental movement’s carbon campaign appears to have been specifically designed to coincide with Federal parliamentary debate about a proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme. As can be seen below, the recently released ANU research is integral to this:

•  June 5: Australian Greens media release – Greens in vigorous pursuit of forests solution in climate change – announces that Senator Bob Brown has “… explained to the PM, in detail, the latest research from the ANU showing that carbon emissions from logging native forests in NSW, Victoria, and Tasmania could be more than ten times above government estimates”.
 
•  June 16: Senator Brown signifies his intention to move that the Senate:
(a) notes the findings of Professor Brendan Mackey, Professor David Lindenmayer and Dr Heather Keith of the Australian National University that Victoria’s Eucalyptus regnans (mountain ash) forests are the most carbon dense on Earth; and
(b) calls on the Government to inform the Senate by 24 June 2009:
•    whether the report has validity,
•    what government measures are being taken or considered to protect Eucalyptus regnans forests in Australia that are currently targeted for logging,
•    what area and volume of such forests are available for logging under current planning regimes, and
•    whether ending native forest and woodland removal in Australia would reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 20 per cent.
 
•  June 16: ANU Media Release – Australia home to forest carbon winner – announces that Victoria’s Central Highlands are the most carbon-dense forests in the world according to a paper by Dr Keith, Professor Mackey and Professor Lindenmayer published in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
•  June 16: an article appears in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper – “Mountain ash the best for carbon” – referring to the Keith et al paper;
 
•  June 16: Professor Mackey is interviewed on ABC radio’s AM program. The program includes a supporting interview with Dr James Watson, University of Queensland. Dr Watson was formerly a key figure in the Wilderness Society and is thought to have played a role in obtaining funding for the forest carbon research.
 
•  June 16: an article in the Brisbane Times extensively quotes Wilderness Society campaigner, Virginia Young, who believes that the latest ANU research outlines “a huge opportunity for the government to help solve the climate problem through protecting and restoring native forests”.
 
•  June 22: The Wilderness Society’s Gavan McFadzean has an 800-word opinion piece published in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper – “Preserving old growth forests is vital to saving the planet” – which draws extensively on the ANU research.
 
•  June 24: Professor Mackey, Dr Keith, and Professor Lindenmayer conduct a public lecture at ANU to explain their latest research.
 
•  June 24: the ANU paper so extensively promoted in the media since June 16 is finally published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
•  June 25: the Senate defers a vote on the introduction of an emissions trading scheme until August.
 
•  July 1: an article written jointly by Wilderness Society campaigner, Amelia Young, and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s, Lucy Manne, appears in On Line Opinion – “Forests – the essential climate fix”.

It is a concern that the ANU’s latest forest carbon research paper was for most of the time unpublished while its findings were being promoted as published fact in the media. This raises the question of whether this is a deliberate ploy to stifle debate by denying critics (and journalists) the opportunity to examine the veracity of the science.

It is also curious that the paper was published only during June 2009, despite being received by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences almost a year earlier.  In light of earlier events, this raises suspicions about whether publication was delayed at the behest of the authors to fit the Wilderness Society’s campaign requirements.

Superficially, it may seem reasonable to cease timber production by placing all forests in national parks so they can grow old and store maximum levels of carbon. However, when considered in context with the natural prevalence of bushfire and the carbon-value of wood products, it would be counter-productive to the effort to mitigate climate change.

It had been hoped that the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires would finally show environmental activists that fire – not timber harvesting and regeneration – is the ultimate arbiter of Australia’s forests. Sadly, their forest carbon campaign shows they have learnt nothing.

Mark Poynter, Melbourne

***************

This article was first published by Online Opinion: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9170&page=0 

The photograph of the tree trunk was taken in Tasmania in May 2005.

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 30 years experience. He is a member of the Institute of Foresters and the Association of Consultant Foresters, and author of the book Saving Australia’s Forests and its Implications (published in 2007).

Australian Greens’ Senator Bob Brown has been claiming the area as pristine forest and suing those with permission to log it:  Not log it to destroy it, but log it as part of a sustainable rotation.

Anyway, the outspoken activist lost his last round in the courts and is short $240,000 after costs were awarded against him.    All up the fight has cost him nearly $1 million with most paid for by his supporters.   

But he is now short a couple of hundred thousand and a couple of days ago he launched a media campaign claiming he will be throw out of parliament if he can’t raise the money.

Of course offers of financial support are pouring in from Australia’s elite because he is so fashionable – gay, green, and a martyr.

But, in my opinion, his key arguments concerning Tasmania’s forests have been morally bankrupt for some time.

*********************

Notes and Links

Photograph of Wielangata forest taken by Jennifer Marohasy in November 2006.

Browns going red beat-up,  by Barry Chipman, Timber Communities Australia:

By now every one would have heard of Senator Brown self imposed $240,000 legal bill, with out doubt it is just about the worlds biggest media beat-up ever.  Following yesterdays mass media coverage (or perhaps fund raising campaign) we sort some background information to what was being claimed and it is very interesting indeed to find what Brown and sections of the media didn’t say. 

One very telling admission we learnt yesterday regarding the awarding of costs is that  the Federal Court process is for a draft bill to be sent in to the Registrar, who assesses it, and provides a gross figure – this is called a taxation. The other side has time to lodge objections to specific items; if not, the bill is confirmed (by certificate) as payable at the taxed amount (ie, the Registrar’s assessment).

And guess what Brown’s lawyers failed to object to the taxation by the Federal Court Registrar. So then on 21st  April the costs bill was then taxed at $239,368.63,.   So if Brown was so worried about going red why didn’t he lodge an objection? Was he happy to pay the cost or is it all about he creating as a self imposed stage for him self to be seen as the all mighty martyr.

Also:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25612811-25209,00.html

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/brown_lacks_green_stuff/
 
And some other posts on Senator Brown at this blog:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/06/tall-stories-about-tasmanian-forestry-a-note-from-ken-jeffreys/
 
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/12/win-for-bob-brown-loss-for-forests/

 http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/11/the-story-of-wielangta-how-environmentalists-mistake-a-timber-town-that-disappeared-for-pristine-wilderness/

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2005/10/mark-latham-on-green-forests-brown-bob/

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2005/08/the-price-of-woodchip/

Each of these groups have been the target of clever campaigns by Green groups including The Wilderness Society and WWF Australia.

Tasmanian forest workers have put up committed and organised resistance and many of their truck and utilities sport bumper stickers with the comment “Greens tell lies”.  

While these forest workers continue to resist campaigns to close down their industry, the capacity for the industry to move forward, for example through the construction of a state of the art pulp mill, is always a battle against Green propaganda.

A Presentation by Dr Ian Woodward which can be viewed at www.tasmaniapulpmill.info details the often repeated fallacies about the proposed pulp mill and explains that in reality the factory will have no significant adverse impact on public health, the marine environment or air quality, that no old growth forest will be used, and that dioxins associated will older chlorine mills have been virtually eliminated so that they are no longer of scientific significance.

Dr Woodward concludes that these facts are unlikely to sway die-hard mill opponents who “will prefer to remain locked inside the familiarity of their self-confirming fallacies rather than accept the contrary realities.”

Adherence to strongly held beliefs which affirm their values, rather than accord with reality, seems to be a characteristic of Greens who run environmental campaigns in Australia.  As a consequence they are typically labelled liars by the minorities they target.     

******************

Notes

Pulp Mill Fallacies and Realities
Separating the fantasy mill from the real mill
Dr Ian Woodward, Principal Environmental Scientist, Pitt&Sherry
http://tasmaniapulpmill.info/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Pulp_Mill_Fallacies_and_Realities_Ian_Woodward_April_2009.135223348.pdf

You can play the interview at the ABC Triple J website  while watching a slide show. [1]
  

The issue is ongoing conflict at a blockade in the Florentine Valley along a road that was constructed in the mid 1960’s. Until recently a protest camp has blocked the path of a new spur road to access forest harvesting areas.  The timber of the Florentine Valley, together with the Styx Valley, was granted to a consortium of media companies in the late 1930’s to create a newsprint pulp and paper mill and jobs at the end of the last world recession.

 The mill is still operating, and the forests are still harvested.  

Indeed so good has been the forest management that large chunks of the Styx and the Florentine were reserved in the 1997 Regional Forest Agreement and as part of negotiations resulting from the 2004 Federal Election.

Pictures of trees from these valleys are regularly flashed around the world by the environmental movement.
 
The green movement still want more, and are demanding that a number of coupes containing old growth forest be added to the reservation system; currently a million hectares of old growth is reserved in Tasmania.
 
The coupes will be harvested by small businesses on a selective harvest basis for Forestry Tasmania with high quality saw logs destined for local saw and veneer mills.  Pulp wood arising from the harvest will be sold as export woodchip.  The refurbished newsprint mill and the approved modern elemental chlorine free mill when built will not take these logs as they are designed to use plantation grown and young regrowth pulp wood, see http://www.forestrytas.com.au/topics/2009/01/upper-florentine-valley
 
Protesters have conducted a series of operations that has stopped work in the forest and at the export wood chip mill. 

The ABC program’s summary of the broad cast states:

 ”Protestors have been slowing progress in the Upper Florentine Valley for over two years. Tension is fierce between forestry workers and the protestors.

The stakes are particularly high for the many forestry workers that run their own small businesses contracting to Gunns and Forestry Tasmania. When work is stopped, these guys don’t get paid.”

*************

1. Stopping work in the forests, Hack, Triple J, February 26, 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/notes/s2502820.htm

The picture of the trunk of the swamp gum was taken in a Tasmanian forest by Jennifer Marohasy in May 2005.

The creation of new national parks was a 2006 election promise to secure inner-city votes but is based on a lie – on the false belief that by declaring an area a national park you can somehow “save it”. 

In reality the red gums of the mid-Murray need water and thinning and a national park declaration will achieve neither.    The national park declaration will simply increase the risk of wild fires and the death of koalas.

The Rivers and Red Gum Alliance, representing local forest users, provided the government with a well research plan whereby 104,000 hectares could be managed under the principles of the internationally recognised Ramsar convention.  

As Peter Newman, chairman of the Alliance, explained yesterday, “The forests exist in a highly modified landscape surrounded by farmland and need active management to maintain forest health.  This includes fuel reduction through controlled grazing and thinning of the red gum trees to keep the forest open and in a healthy state.” 

But the alliance plan was ignored in favour of city votes.

Announcing the plan to convert the forests to national park and effectively exclude active management, Premier Brumby falsely claimed trees in the forests are more than 500 years old: “You’re talking about trees that are more than 500 years old. And they are ancient, they are part of our history and they need to be protected.”

This is incorrect.  During the late 1800s, large quantities of timber were harvested from these forests for building and operating river boats, gold mining and as sleepers for local and overseas railways. The extent of the logging, including along the entire river frontage to a distance of approximately three kilometres from the River bank, resulted in concern that the forest would be entirely cut out. A Conservator of Forests was appointed in 1888. His focus was on protecting the forest from over-cutting, controlling over-grazing, introducing silviculture treatment and protecting the forest from fire.

The current extent of the largest of the mid-Murray forests, the Barmah forest (23,000 hectares), is thought to be a result of the extensive regeneration that also occurred at this time, in part a consequence of wet years during the 1870s coinciding with the decline of Aboriginal burning practices and preceding the introduction of sheep, cattle and rabbits.

Significant quantities of timber continued to be harvested from the Barmah forest during the 1900s. There was an official assessment of the Barmah forestry resources in 1929–30 and then again in 1960–61. The 1960–61 assessment indicated a considerable increase in growing stock and total sawlog volumes, notwithstanding the significant volumes harvested in the intervening period and despite the fact that river regulation since the construction of the Hume Dam in the 1930s had changed flow regimes.

The Murray River is now flowing strongly with water from this dam, but the water is passing the forests on its way to South Australia.  Some of this water could be diverted.  It could be pumped into the forests, but the Victorian government is intent on waiting until there is a large flood event.

The mid-Murray forests really just need some water and some thinning now.  Yesterday’s announcement by Premier Brumby will secure neither.

**************

Photograph of the burnt koala taken in Barmah Forest, in the Central MurrayValley, October 17, 2008 by Peter Newman.

Related blog posts:

A New Plan for the Red Gums of Northern Victoria, August 1, 2008.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/08/a-new-plan-for-the-red-gums-of-northern-victoria/

Thinning Red Gum Forest at Koondrook, November 9, 2007
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/11/thinning-red-gum-forests-at-koondrook/

After the ‘Top Island’ Fire in the Barmah Red Gum Forest, November 10, 2007
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2007/11/after-the-%e2%80%98top-island%e2%80%99-fire-in-the-barmah-red-gum-forest/

Further reading:

Myth and the Murray, Measuring the Real State of the River Environment, IPA Backgrounder,  December 2003, Vol. 15/5 http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/449/myth-and-the-murray-measuring-the-real-state-of-the-environment

Yesterday Police turned up to remove the cattle, residents turned up to protest, there was some mediation, some media interviews, and the Police left without any cattle – they couldn’t find them in the large forest.

Peter Newman, chairman of the Rivers and Red Gum Environment Alliance said yesterday from the forest, “Dozens of officers have arrived here this morning to remove the cattle and I have been threatened with arrest if I do not comply with directions of police who have blocked entrances to the forest”.

“The Barmah community and supporters are being mobilised now to safeguard the community’s interest. Earlier in the week, the community discussed putting even more cattle into the forest because the grass is growing so fast from recent rains.  This followed a four hour inspection of the forest on Tuesday by three CFA captains and a First Lieutenant from local brigades who said the fuel load in the forest was too high.  
This whole situation could have been avoided if DSE had honoured their commitment given at the Fire Plan meeting with the community on December 9th to slash the grass in the forest.

“We feel that as a community living right alongside the forest we have been treated very poorly by DSE.  This is about managing fire risk on public land and how that affects local communities.   We have put a solution to the forest manager on October 23rd to have 70 cattle in the forest for eight weeks to remove the serious fire risk.  That has been rejected.  DSE have told us they will slash the grass.  That has not happened.  The community have acted to protect themselves.

“This whole exercise is a glimpse into the future management of red gum forests and we don’t like it” concluded Mr Newman.

****************

Photograph taken by Max Rheese on the edge of the Barmah Forest, December 18, 2008.

Despite this, it has become politically incorrect to support native hardwood production as a sensible and responsible use of a naturally renewable resource. Those who do so are routinely vilified as I was last week when a letter I had published in The Age newspaper drew responses that scorned me as an “industry apologist trying to keep us in the dark ages” and a “spin doctor” who “relies on the public being fools”.

In the past, I have also been described as a “mouthpiece for the logging industry” or the “pro-logging lobby”, which is apparently “blind to the bigger picture of global crisis”. I have been called a “forest raper” and a “pro-logging, anti-life person”. Others believe I am “motivated by short term greed” and “headed towards my own demise”. I am apparently one of those “people who can chop, hunt, maim, kill, exploit, dominate and destroy in the name of progress and jobs” and I have been likened to “the captain of the Titanic refusing to believe that your enterprise is fatally flawed”.

When I have made the point that wood production is planned and controlled by foresters on a scientific basis, my professional discipline has been described as an “anti-science rooted in greed and domination” and a “science that fosters death”. Although the facts about forestry are readily accessible from government sources, my critics have described them as “twisted deceptions, cover-ups, hidden agreements between power brokers who care little for the welfare of our planet”. They are apparently “nothing but justifications for an evil that is supported by governments, corporations, and those who cannot see beyond their own narrow interests”.

I am no “logger”, but a forest scientist with five years of tertiary training including a university degree, and additionally, close to 30 years of experience including the last 13 years as a self-employed consultant involved with both plantations and native forests. However, despite this extensive grounding, any attempt to add an informed and rational voice to the forestry debate is met with a stream of personally vindictive bile.

It would be surprising if any other scientific discipline has endured such public disrespect and vitriolic contempt as forestry. This mostly emanates from career activists who – through “green” conservation groups – have engendered a supporter base that is largely drawn from an inner urban populace who know little about forestry. These include our brightest, most articulate, and highly educated people who are not normally prone to follow populist causes without firm justification. Remarkably though, when it comes to environmental issues, many need only the flimsiest of evidence to drop their rational reticence and morph into self-righteous and emotional “save-the-whatever” advocates.

This over-the-top and largely irrational support for environmental causes is increasingly being enhanced by enthusiastic, but ill-advised celebrity activists with ready access to a fawning media. This is a social phenomena that has been magnified in recent weeks by the near hero-worship of Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan for his efforts in opposing forestry and industry development in his home state. This was the subject of a recent episode of Australian Story on ABC television (November 3, 2008) and was informally discussed in a follow-up appearance on ABC Radio 774 Melbourne (November 12, 2008).

Richard Flanagan is undoubtedly an intelligent and passionate man with a great love of the environment. A Rhodes Scholar and skilled wordsmith, he is admired for publicly standing-up for beliefs that are in equal measure as unpopular as popular in the stifling hot-bed of emotion which continues to swirl around the forestry debate in both his Tasmanian community and beyond.

For this, Flanagan is feted among the literati, the media, and the intellectual elite; particularly in the urbane mainland states which are farthest removed from the issue. Despite having no scientific training or experience in forest management, he has for many Australians, become the oracle on Tasmanian forestry and all its perceived or actual social ills.

That his every pronouncement on this issue has for many become an undeniable truth, was effectively confirmed at the recent 2008 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards when his 4,000-word essay, “Out of Control: The Tragedy of Tasmania’s Forests”, was awarded the John Curtin Prize for Journalism.

“Out of Control” was published in The Monthly in May 2007 at the height of the Gunns pulp mill debate and was heavily publicised during the 2007 federal election campaign when a wealthy businessman used it as part of his personal mission to unseat then Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. In assessing the essay, the award judges correctly described it as a “piece of advocacy journalism with no pretence at balance”, but substantially erred in describing it at the same time as a “fact-rich piece … full of great anecdotes and telling details”.

If Flanagan knows the facts about Tasmanian forestry he has never publicly acknowledged them nor allowed them to get in the way of a good story. Indeed, after the publication of “Out of Control”, the then federal Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Senator Eric Abetz, noted that it contained some 70 “deliberate or inexcusably negligent errors of fact, selective citing of fact, or twisting of facts”.

This included ignoring the most basic information, such as that 47 per cent of Tasmania’s native forests, including 79 per cent (or about 1 million hectares) of its “old growth” forests, are contained in parks and reserves where wood production is excluded, whilst a substantial part of the balance is unsuited to timber harvesting. Recently, the United Nations World Heritage Reactive Monitoring team concluded that tall Eucalyptus forest in Tasmania is “well-managed for both conservation and development objectives”.

Flanagan’s reluctance to discuss Tasmanian forestry in its proper perspective in “Out of Control” is understandable because it would have invalidated his essay’s central theme that “the rape of Tasmania will continue until one day, like so much else that was precious, its great forests will belong only to myth”.

This studious neglect of the full story of Tasmanian forestry is ironic given that in an interview with the ABC”s Ramona Koval last January, Flanagan complained that his most recent book was written “with a sense of growing distress about what had happened in Australia, the way that anything seemed to be able to be said except the truth, that we were in a prison with these terrible lies, … and we couldn”t break out of it”.

The lauding of Flanagan says much about the media’s unhealthy preoccupation with celebrity and the extent to which writers, actors, artists, chefs, gardeners, film directors, rock stars and sports persons are given opportunities to influence public thought, whilst those who actually know more and work with the issues are largely ignored.

In addition, forestry is one of a number of environmental topics where some elements of the news media have become activist advocates rather than objective reporters from whom we can expect balanced commentary.

The easy media accessibility enjoyed by Flanagan is obvious to anyone who watched Australian Story. Heaping him with praise were two veteran journalists – Martin Denholm (of The Australian) and Charles Wooley (formerly of Channel Nine); as well as Maurie Schwartz (owner of The Monthly), and internationally-acclaimed filmmaker, Baz Luhrmann. The program’s only dissenting voice belonged to former Tasmanian Premier, Paul Lennon, who has been so denigrated on previous ABC programs that his views were effectively discredited even before he spoke.

The unquestioning support for the celebrity view of Tasmanian forestry is also evident in the following exchanges from ABC Radio 774 Melbourne – the Conversation Hour (November 12, 2008):

Flanagan (referring to Tasmania): There is a great crime that has taken place and continues to take place there. I’m no hero, and I don’t actually do that much, but …. I’d feel ashamed if I didn’t do my bit.

Libby Price (ABC Presenter): You have done enough though. You copped it big time from the former Premier Paul Lennon. I was really taken aback at how venomous he was in “Australian Story”.

Bryce Courtenay (author): You said it Libby, that was a wonderful adjective. As though there was some ulterior motive there, when the only motive was to keep the most beautiful island on earth pristine.

Libby Price: It really was extraordinary, and he almost accused you of using your power of language to give a false impression. He doesn’t like you much.

Bryce Courtenay (author): I can’t understand why people don’t get onto their websites, get onto their superannuation funds and say “Don’t buy shares on my behalf in those companies that cut down trees” We could stop it that easily.

Mark Dapin (Program co-host and author – referring to his first visit to Tasmania): I was astonished driving through hills denuded of forest cover. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. I couldn’t believe that people had allowed that to happen. I can still remember the feeling of rage now. ….. Chainsaw graffiti.

Given Australia is among the world’s top five consumers of wood and paper products, and that book authors such as Flanagan, Courtenay, and Dapin are especially reliant on paper; their views on forestry are incredibly ironic and display a naïvety and lack of consideration for the consequences of what they are espousing.

In so far as public policy is to a large extent determined by popular opinion, this type of media coverage is extremely damaging. There is no opportunity to respond. It is almost inconceivable that a forester or industry representative with day-to-day practical knowledge of the issues could ever get the media opportunities of a Richard Flanagan, let alone the many opportunities available to media presenters to subtly peddle uninformed personal agendas.

This raises an important question of public interest given the capacity for agenda-driven celebrities to create a flawed conventional wisdom that can lead to poor outcomes precisely because they do not understand or care about the consequences of what they are striving for. Even something so apparently benign as closing the native hardwood industry is ill-advised because timber is the most environmentally-friendly building material and reducing its availability will have such effects as:

1. Increase demand for substitute rainforest timber imports given that we have few hardwood plantations capable of supplying sawn timber of equivalent quality. We already import a quantity of tropical timber products from suspicious origins (i.e. presumed to be illegally logged and unsustainable) that in round log equivalent is approaching the combined annual native hardwood sawlog harvest from Tasmania and Victoria;

2. Weaken the acknowledged link between the strength of the rural sector and the capability to manage fire, which is by far the greatest threat to the ecological integrity of Australian forests and its associated values, such as water; and

3. Increase demand for substitute products such as steel, aluminium, and concrete whose production and manufacture involves greenhouse gas emissions up to hundreds of times greater per unit.

On Australian Story, Richard Flanagan drew a close to his active opposition to Tasmania’s forest industry citing personal and family stress. However, it is difficult to feel much sympathy given that he has played such a major role in helping to create a grossly distorted negative view of Tasmanian forestry and, some would say, Tasmanian life in general. This has provoked considerable insecurity among those thousands of people who work in jobs that are threatened by little more than false premises. They stand in stark contrast to the secure and relatively luxurious lifestyles of those celebrities who continue to be ill-informed, but outspoken critics of Tasmanian forestry.

The media’s preoccupation with celebrity activism will always feed ill-informed populist views that ignore proportionality and lack perspective, and will ensure that natural resource conflicts are resolved by media opportunities focused on conflict rather than facts and achievements. The merit and morality of shaping critical environmental policies in this way is a theme that the media really should explore.

********************************

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 30 years experience. He is a member of the Institute of Foresters and the Association of Consultant Foresters, and author of the book ‘Saving Australia’s Forests and its Implications’.

This article was first published on the ABC Unleashed website on November 24, 2008, then at On Line Opinion on December 2008.

The photograph was taken in the Huon Valley in May 2005 by Jennifer Marohasy.

The forest has historically been grazed and the Barmah locals believe this is important to reduce the fire risk. 

Max Rheese explains:    

Hi Jennifer,   

Today, the first day of summer, with 80 residents of the tiny Murray River community of Barmah I helped to drive cattle into the Barmah forest in defiance of a Department of Sustainability and Environment [DSE] ban on cattle grazing in the forest.  The cattle were purchased last week by individuals in the community as part of the Barmah Community Cattle Company to be put into the forest to reduce the serious fire risk from chest high grass along the river.

On October 23rd the Barmah Grazing Advisory Committee met, as it usually does at this time, and recommended to the department that 420 cattle in total be placed in the 29,000 hectare red gum forest to graze for 2 -3 months subject to review in January 2009.  In particular, 70 cattle were recommended to be placed on the 1500 hectare part of the forest adjacent to the Barmah township for 8 weeks to reduce the fire threat to the town.  This was refused by the department who stated that no grazing would be allowed for ecological reasons.

This is a ludicrous statement as the chest high grass and weeds consist of wild oats, rye grass, Scotch thistle and Patterson’s Curse – not a native grass amongst them.  No self respecting forest manager would tolerate infestations of these species but in Barmah there is hundreds of hectares of these grasses and weeds.  Grazing should be required for ecological reasons.

DSE are required under the Forests Act to carry out fire prevention works in all forests under their control.  This year they have carried out two fuel reduction burns of less than 50 hectares in total in a 29,000 hectare forest and none of those closer than 10 km from Barmah township.  In effect, there has been no fire prevention work carried out within 10km of Barmah township this year.

Victorians have suffered badly in recent years from public land management decisions made by DSE and this can be read here in the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Impact of Public Land Management Practices on bushfires.  This decision has all the hallmarks of more bad public land management.  No fire prevention work as required under legislation, no allowance for controlled cattle grazing and nothing has been done to reduce the fire risk to Barmah or other small communities that are adjacent to public land.

The Alliance wrote to the Minister for the Environment two weeks ago asking him to direct the department to reverse their decision and advising him that cattle would be put into the forest if no action was taken.  I phoned his office last week seeking a response.  We wrote to the secretary for the department a week ago pointing out his obligations, particularly in light of the parliamentary inquiry recommendations that were very critical of his department’s fire management practices.  There was no response to any of these communications.

The community were driven by this apathetic attitude to collectively act illegally in driving the cattle into the forest – but we did get a response today!  The DSE Manager for Land and Fire stated on ABC Radio that he was disappointed at the actions of the community in putting cattle into the forest.  He then went on to say how the department had a duty of care to the community – but they have not done anything to mitigate the fire danger. 

Part of the lack of confidence at a local level in DSE’s fire management skills were highlighted on ABC television news out of Melbourne tonight where they were described as incompetent fire managers.  This was because of a poorly managed fuel reduction burn on October 16th that is highlighted on the Alliance website.

Despite this badly run burn for which the Alliance has provided the Premier’s office with a detailed report, despite the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry which are critical of the department’s land management practices, despite the support for the Alliance position of grazing as a fire mitigation tool by University of Melbourne fire ecologists, the department still does not seem to grasp that they are the problem not the solution.

Until there is a change in the public land management paradigm as outlined in the Alliance  Conservation & Community Plan Victorian’s will continue to suffer sub optimal environmental outcomes from public land managers.  

Max Rheese
Secretary, Rivers & Red Gum Environment Alliance