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.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Them’s interesting statistics, Jen. They should be published in every news outlet in the land, then a referendum held on whether carefully regulated logging be allowed, or not.
I can’t help thinking that recent landslides in Phillipines and Indonesia, reportedly due to unsustainable logging, are due to our reduction of logging, followed, as night follows day, by an increased demand for south-east Asian timber.
I understand that we need would and I do get frustrated with environmental extremists who don’t recognise that there must be a sensible compromise made between logging and conservation.
However I would like to make the following points:
1/ Gunns has a far too cosy relationship with the state goverment of Tasmania.
2/ Gunns is effectively a monopoly and as such genuine free-marketeers should be asking whether it should be broken up or whether other measures should be adopted to enhance competition.
3/ The Tasmanian government gives Gunns access to forests for peppercorn rents and accordingly it is not surprising that Gunns makes very handsome profits.
4/ Gunns is currently (mis)using the legal system to intimidate conservationists. This is effectively a David and Goliath battle since most Greenies are skint whereas Gunns has vast financial resources.
5/ There are VERY FEW jobs in logging. Conservation and tourism are much better job providers.
6/ Pulp mills are a major source of pollutants and the pulp mill industrty has a propensity for dumping its waste into natural streams and rivers.
7/ We could make a much greater effort to recycle paper and to invest in improved recycling technology.
I note that beekeepers have complained about Gunns illegally logging Tasmanian Leatherwood.
My concerns about logging would be reduced if loggers were required to replant areas with as much vegetation as there logging operations removed.
I agree Steve – strictly regulated logging.
Several urls I can recommend for background info
The brs is backed up by state forestry info
http://adl.brs.gov.au/mapserv/intveg/nht_state.php?state=tas
TIA use the index A–Z has wads of info on forest development, particle board, pulp, tissue, newsprint manufacture , and the local struggle with hardwood pulp technology.
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/258.html
I forgot to add: click on the brs Tas map to see the trees
This info is there to support the RFA process in each state
“I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk and I use paper everyday”.
Don’t worry Jen, even though Tasmania has one of the the most protected %s on the list we are becoming a knowledge based society now.
We don’t need to live in a house, nor do we need toilet paper. Knowledge will get us through and we will prosper enormously from.. errrrrr knowledge.
while 45% may not be available for exploitation, it is worth noting that the majority of euro forests are plantation or other managed forests, not old growth – what is the stat for tasmania ?
jim
I’m sure the following facts will impress you
a. Tasmania’s land mass 6,840,000ha
b. Tasmania’s total land mass in reserve 2,935,000ha
c. Included in the total land mass is a total forest cover 3,207,250ha
d. Tasmania’s total forest cover in reserve 1,442,440ha (this is included in the total land mass in reserve)
e. Tasmania’s existing old growth forest 1,246,000ha (this included in total forest cover)
e. Tasmania’s existing old growth forest reserved 1,002,480ha (this is included in total forest reserved)
I am quite impressed by the way Europeans seem to be in touch with reality. From the statistics given here, and from personal observation of their forest industries, they obviously know that the wood they use comes from trees. In Australia, the common attitude is that milk comes from bottles and wood comes from hardware stores, or as paper from Officworks.
Europeans recreate in their forests, they drive past log landings alongside major roads without apparent concern and sawmills can be seen in country towns everywhere. They use wood more for building feature work than we do. They like wood and they understand it. The Netherlands, with its modest forest estate, cuts more wood than WA, which has more than 2 million ha of state forest.
Our national approach is the definition of hypocrisy. If about half a forest estate is in reserves, we want the other half in reserves as well, while we consume the se asian forests instead. Very few people can actually recognise a regrowth forest when they stand in it; any forester can relate anecdotes of a member of the public expressing admiration for a patch of regrowth forest, but if they were told it was regrowth, not old growth, the attitude towards that forest would be negative.
I think complaints from beekeepers are an excellent demonstration of our ignorant approach. Native bee species are being displaced by feral honey bees and feral honey bees are increasingly occupying tree hollows that are needed by native bird and mammal fauna. That industry in particular is very destructive in an insidious way. Feral bees are like a weed or disease spreading quietly and unchecked through our forests. But somehow beekeepers get to be self-righteous about logging, which has yet cause an extinction of any species in Australia, and which does not represent a threat to the occurence of tree blossom. And the public, which in my experience can’t recognise a regrowth forest when they stand in it, swallows the beekeepers’ comments without question.
Boxer; your feral bees theory is a bit of a red herring in Tasmania given the popularity and great quality of Leatherwood honey that has been taken over many decades by numerous small time private operators who lived around the bush.
European wasps; on the other hand is the issue to home in on.
Back to timber resources: Examining the BRS map detail say WA region 505 we see the same old story, a few softwood plantations around traditional pine areas, very few hardwood plantations an a lot of timber roads already developed in native forests.
Given a lot of good timber has gone from these areas, how many full harvest years are left in those native forests not in reserves, considering current cut over rates?
In my estimation, reserves in local plantations can hardly supply Perth in the short term.
Steve Munn delivered one of the silliest, most breathtakingly ignorant statements I have ever seen. “My concerns about logging would be reduced if loggers were required to replant areas with as much vegetation as there (sic) logging operations removed”.
So what the hell does he think happens now? Is there a blight of urban sprawl sprouting up in each logged coupe? Do they bitumen the coupe post harvest? Does he seriously think nature has no response to a surplus of water, sunlight and soil nutrients? Does he not comprehend that the process of replacing the cut forest takes 80 years but must start with small seedlings on disturbed soil. Does he not comprehend that one of the hardest tasks that mankind can ever undertake is to try and stop a forest from re-establishing itself.
I find it deeply offensive that a person of some literacy and lucidity can have the gall to make comments about a subject that they so clearly have failed to grasp the first 2% of the learning curve.
The seven points of concern have nothing to do with forest ecology and a tenuous association with the facts. And the new pulp mill is a response to one of the most vocal criticisms bandied about by the green movement, ie, that there should be more value adding.
For the record, not all trees are straight, and until the urban public demonstrate a willingness to build houses with randomly bent timber then the next highest use is as woodchip for paper or firewood.
And as there is no other use for bent trees, or for slower growing ones that impair the growth of straight ones, then their value, without a woodchip market, is next to zero.
So a woodchip market enables a product worth nothing, and sometimes of negative value, to be value added in the chipper and sold at about $180/tonne. A local pulp mill allows a further value adding of two or three times and a local paper mill will take that to a price of about $1000/tonne. And this value chain is much the same as the price of sawn timber.
Furthermore, the technology to produce closed water system pulp mills with zero discharge of pollutants has been fully operational in Canada for more than a decade.
So the green/left line that all these old growth forests are being wasted on low value products is pure bullshit and is akin to the familiar but equally stupid argument that cows should only be used to supply steaks, not mince or sausages.
Ian: it’s quite fair to compare large scale Australian hardwood pulp production with northern hemisphere softwood pulp production. Apart from the obvious short fibre versus long fibre web reconstruction in say the wet paper process there is still the very vexed question of how to recycle all the black liquor produced in our chip to pulp digester.
My tip; overseas producers may just loose it 🙂
For a good outline in these difficulties read “Technology in Australia” the review by Melbourne. uni “tia” again – use the paper making section from the index A-Z, or the history of APM, APPM, ANM, Papermakers etc.
Ian; its not quite fair!
I did a token amount of bush regeneration work in Borneo once.
The work I was asked to do involved using a machete to cut grass and weeds that were growing up around the newly planted native saplings. The problem was that, post logging, there was so much sunlight available that weeds and grasses were the dominant growing species. In a forest, the canopy ensures that the restricted sunlight prevents growth of weeds and grass, and allows trees and shrubs and ferns to grow. It was impossible to ensure an actual “forest” would regrow in the logged areas without continual cutting back of the weeds and grass.
I think that this is what Steve Munn was getting at Ian – once an area has been logged, then in the absense of management the most likely thing to grow back could be weeds, grass, lantana, blackberry, whatever, and not actual forest akin to the original.
Hi Steve
In Tassie they clear fell areas so that they get regeneration with Eucalypts rather than rainforest species.
There should be some links here
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000708.html .
Yes, the entire point of the clear felling is to enable a burn that will trigger regeneration of the original species. Without it you get a change in composition in favour of invasives and ferals (weeds that is). And this is better than hand planting because it uses the existing stock of seeds that have been left there from when the forest still stood.
IMHO the main reason for clear felling is SAFETY.
Older forests as see in Jennifer’s reference on tall trees have significant dead even rotten wood above the typical canopy. It’s hardly a good idea to rock one when falling a sound youngster near by. Like in mining we work best with a fresh face.
I remember an old neighbour of mine who, with his mates, totally deforested a semi tropical rainforest gully. This must have been in the 50’s or 60’s, he said that what wasnt good for saw logs went to box wood and what wasnt good for that went to pulp wood (masonite ect) – they left nothing.
The gully is now along a new road and it looks like a lush rain forest.
What went wrong?
How much of Gunns’ felling is regenerated forest? Is the cleared land regenerated/replanted/managed in the optimal way for repeat logging? This is the approach that’s recommended by the opposition to Gunns, ie not outright opposition to logging (as implied in much of the comments above) but a recommendation to substitute plantation/regenerated/younger forests and low-impact milling.
Stephen Mayne reported (in Crikey): “John Gay is a bully of the first order and aggressive conflict is the only way he knows to do business. The contrast with the way Dick Pratt got his pulp mill up in Tumut, NSW, with Green groups working as consultants is stark indeed.”
“Gunns shares fell 12c yesterday but recovered 5c to $2.83 this morning, still a long way shy of its 12-month high of $4.67. Indeed, some shareholders think the stock will recover if the project is abandoned because the risks are large when you have a company capitalised at just $950 million building a complex $1.4 billion pulp mill. Gay 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.”
Ian said “the entire point of the clear felling is to enable a burn that will trigger regeneration of the original species”. Can’t burn a remnant forest? Is that the point of clear felling? Seems like convenience and safety are more likely the reasons for clear felling.
That table above comparing the Tassie state to EU nations doesn’t tell much: Is the method of figuring out Tassie’s forested land area the same as that used in the EU brochure? The table leaves out other wooded areas which features in the original EU table and is said elswhere to be significant in Aust. It also leaves out the division between undisturbed, semi-natural and plantation forests. Also, the discussion above doesn’t address the relative importance and conservation value of different forest areas.
When Jennifer asks “How much forest should be saved” we should all see that as a fair question but then she goes in to bat.
I know the arguments from both sides well enough to be suspicious again. Gunns or the Greenies may not be the problem folks.
What’s all the fuss about? We have over used our native timbers. See this 2003 map for an overview but recall we lost some timber that year in bad fires particularly around Canberra since the data was produced.
http://data.brs.gov.au/asdd/overviews/nfi03r9abfi001/nfi03r9abfi00111a00b.gif
Let’s pick a sample RFA area say 602. By downloading the BRS Tasmania;. PDF map sector and zooming we can see enough detail to check every ones ideas on the subject of forest reserves.
The pink bits near Ridgley represent hardwood plantations that replace native forests stripped away over many decades by the APPM group of companies. At their peak they employed me and thousands of others around Burnie. Where are they all now? Two of us went to the mainland from Papermakers to make tissue in Melbourne from Victorian pine plantations at very high speed.
South beyond Hampshire the whole area is riddled with old mines and new hydro power schemes. Much old timber here is severely damaged by big fires around the time of construction. West of Hampshire is the great ion ore open cut pits at Savage River. In between is Hellyer Gorge, if clear felled it would look something like the Grand Canyon.
North is fresh water catchments for town water supplies.
On the Smithton end is a huge area under agriculture. One of my uncles drained all the rich lowland swamps under government supervision for Dairy farms during the 1950’s.
Green map areas south side, have been riddled with logging roads for years. Another uncle also helped with new timber roads in the Mawbanna, Dip Falls area east of Smithton in the 1950’s.
Note now the vast white area in this map 602, no government data was tendered because there is nothing there, no farms, no timber! Some of the remaining free flowing rivers in remaining green areas are in very rugged wet country. But there is more, an ore pipeline runs from Savage River to a private port on the north coast right through those old forests.
What’s left?
One obvious problem with wholesale woodchip export; there are too few small & independent timber millers left today. My house in Canberra was built in the 1970’sentirely from timber sawn in a mill at Sulphur Creek near Burnie We have polished hardwood floors.
This quality timber only comes from old eucalypts, in fact E oblique which was dominant in farmed areas takes hundreds of years to reach the size of timber felled on our hobby block back in about 1920. We are keeping the condemned re-growth thank you forest Rangers. My neighbor once operated a spot mill up the farm using his logs, mine and theirs for private house lots.
I watched many logs go to pulp that may have been milled today. However I suspect everyone’s practices have improved a bit since then.
What is the value of original forests in reserves? Priceless! like our abalone in the right market place.
Some small forest reserves in BRS map 602 NW Tasmania: Lake Chisholm 181ha, Wes Beckett 29ha, Milkshake Hills 290, Dip Falls 100ha. Piddling.
http://www.deh.gov.au/parks/nrs/capad/1997/paaust/tas.html
Wood splitters started cutting forests as far back as 1855 around Smithton home of arguably Australia’s largest sawmill today, owned by Gunns, not Kauri who struggled hard with state rangers for log access from chip wood trains several decades ago. Their manager had me watching government log trains on my rounds.
Let’s detail the other two Tasmanian RFA areas another time.
Ian Mott says: “Steve Munn delivered one of the silliest, most breathtakingly ignorant statements I have ever seen. “My concerns about logging would be reduced if loggers were required to replant areas with as much vegetation as there (sic) logging operations removed”.
So what the hell does he think happens now? Is there a blight of urban sprawl sprouting up in each logged coupe? Do they bitumen the coupe post harvest? Does he seriously think nature has no response to a surplus of water, sunlight and soil nutrients? Does he not comprehend that the process of replacing the cut forest takes 80 years but must start with small seedlings on disturbed soil. Does he not comprehend that one of the hardest tasks that mankind can ever undertake is to try and stop a forest from re-establishing itself.”
Oh please. Spare me the faux outrage. You are overgeneralising and making yourself appear foolish.
Your comment about forests automatically regenerating is utter nonsense. Often it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ll give three examples.
(1) Cleared areas in the Amazon do not automatically regerenerate. Instead the soil “bakes” and attains a sparse coverage of tough grasses and sclerophyll shrubs
(2) Much of the forested area in Vietnam that was destroyed by Agent Orange is now covered in what the locals call “American grass”. Succession isn’t possible becuase the grass burns readily and regenerates subsequent to burning.
(3) Farmland in Europe that has been abandoned has mostly converted to shrubland, even though prior to farming it was forest. Through sucession these areas may again convert to forest however this will take many decades or possibly even a century or more.
I’m not aware of how successfully clearfelled areas in Tasmania reconvert to forest. My point in any case was about tying revegetation to logging so that a sustainable plantation system could be built up.
In spite of your bluster you have furnished no empirical evidence to rebut any of my points.
On the other hand you are right about one thing. Introduced bees can displace native animals and this happens with black cockatoos on Kangaroo Island.
However I am not aware of any native bird or mammal that has suffered significantly as a result of the introduced honey bee in Tasmania. If you know of any please let us know.
Steve Munn, Thinksy, et al, effective regeneration after harvesting has been one of the core elements of effective forest management practice for more than 400 years. It has certainly been part of the Tasmanian Code of Practice for at least 75 years.
I was one of only 5 private forest owners to attend the CSIRO workshop on regrowth management in Orbost Vic in 1999. The entire procedings dealt with updating the knowledge on regrowth management.
And Evan Rolley, Managing Director of Forestry Tasmania made it crystal clear to both the gathering and in private discussion that effective regeneration was the core of management intent. And he was a refugee from Satanic Forests NSW where the same core intent prevailed. In Queensland it was called the “Cardinal Principle” (Sec 31.1) of the Forestry Act, passed into law in 1959.
And all this totally irrelevant anecdotal crap from the Amazon, Vietnam and Borneo merely betrays a complete ignorance of what has been going on in forestry practice here in Australia for almost a century. Lets get this straight fellas, soaking a mountainside in 245T and sending in the B52’s is not forestry. And it certainly is not forestry in Australia. You guys have formed your opinions in total ignorance of the facts on the ground. You are a disgrace.
Whoa Ian; for several hundred years we had cut down trees and done something else with much of the land.
Have a look here at the cross boarder detail for some differences in state policy –
http://data.brs.gov.au/asdd/overviews/nfi03r9abfi001/nfi03r9abfi00111a00b.gif
Then here for an estimate from your mates down south on how much is their regen ready to go again, compared to what we had say in the 60’s –
http://adl.brs.gov.au/mapserv/intveg/map.phtml?map_file=/data/wwwroot/htdocs/mapserv/intveg/intveg_map.map¤t_extent%5B0%5D=1096766¤t_extent%5B1%5D=-4885601¤t_extent%5B2%5D=1423976¤t_extent%5B3%5D=-
Try this and expand – 603
http://adl.brs.gov.au/mapserv/intveg/nht_region.phtml?state=tas®ion=603
Taz
I don’t have all the statistics for hardwood plantations and native forest harvesting to hand in WA, but the cut was sustainable. Harvest over the whole forest was less than the total growth rate so the cut could have been sustained indefinitely.
Now that the area of native forest in reserves has increased, I don’t know whether what’s left available for harvest is being overcut at present, because the demand has not slackened off with the prolonged housing construction boom. There have been a number of mill closures, so there must be more wood imported now to make up the shortfall.
I agree that there are not many softwood plantations relative to demand. The bulk of the soft wood resource is government owned and dates back to the sixties and seventies. Most pine planting is second rotation on logged plantations. A major Pinus pinaster plantation just north of Perth is being felled and removed over the next couple of decades because the government has decided it should be reverted to native bush, so I would guess that the pine estate won’t increase for some time.
The hardwood plantation estate is mostly private, destined for chipwood and much of it owned by overseas paper companies. I think planting of these resources (virtually all Tassie bluegum) peaked at about 20,000ha per year but it has fallen back a bit as investors move on to other places. The hardwood plantations pretty well took the wind out of the private softwood plantation sails because the rotation of 8-12 years for woodchip is shorter than 20-30 years for pine and most investors, quite understandably, want to see a return in their own lifetime.
Safety is not the main reason for clearfelling. In some forests clearfelling gives the best regeneration. In other forests a selection cut is better, but safety doesn’t result in clearfelling those forests.
Steve
You can’t take an experience from one forest and transplant it to another. The main cause of seedling mortality in many forests is competition from remaining trees, and also native understorey species in some cases. So to get maximum regeneration, you may need to remove all the overstorey. It is also a mistake to take an experience of one short interval in a forest regen cycle and draw conclusions about the whole life of the forest. And in the absence of management, yes, you may not get a result you want, but generally as Ian says, the forest will triumph over the early colonising species. Proper forest management is about reproducing the tall forest you harvested with another tall forest as quickly as possible.
Thinksy
Ask Gunns how much of their harvest is in regen. I think you will find opposition to logging regen (and even plantations of exotic species in some cases) can be just as strong as logging old growth.
Regeneration in some forests is more successful following clearfelling – there is science behind modern forest managment. WA karri, a wet scherolphyll forest like mountain ash, was logged selectively for a period but new seedlings can’t establish under the remaining trees and heavy undergrowth. Selective logging just results in fewer trees, and they are the less productive individuals at that.
If convenience and safety are the main reasons why aren’t all forests harvested by clearfell?
Steve Munn
If you are not aware of the success of regeneration or otherwise in Tasmania, chase up the appropriate forest agency and Gunns and ask them to show you. I am sure you will be surprised. Forestry is not intuitive in many respects because the process of harvesting and regeneration takes place over human generations. We inevitably leap to conclusions based upon what we experience now, but now is too short. Look at the evidence, but you will have to talk to foresters to find it. Commercial hardnosed native forestry is about growing the next generation of trees. It’s unfortunate that all this debate is about the very fleeting moment of harvest. Logging without regen is not forestry, it’s mining.
Ian said “effective regeneration after harvesting has .. certainly been part of the Tasmanian Code of Practice for at least 75 years.”
As evidenced in Queenstown, for eg?
Jennifer said the opposition to the pulp mill is really about cutting down tall trees. This isn’t accurate.
Some concerns about the pulp mill (source: Crikey) relate to Gunns’ ability to deliver and manage the mill, particularly as a company capitalised at just $950 million building a complex $1.4 billion pulp mill.
Environmental opposition arises because the proposal specifies the need for 30-year access to Tasmania’s native forests, so there are concerns about increased rates of deforestation and conversion of native forests into eucalypt plantations, more habitat pressures in areas with vulnerable species (esp. in the NE), more use of 1080 and aerial spraying in domestic water catchments, and a reduction in beauty and tourism value.
Also, Gunns’ proposed pulp mill is not Totally Chlorine Free as first promised, but will use outdated technology and use chlorine dioxide. Concerns are:
* gaseous emissions affecting surrounding communities;
* the consumption of 26 billion litres of water each year when water catchments are already under pressure (current annual usage of water in the Launceston City, George Town, West Tamar and Meander Valley Council areas, including industrial customers, is 15 billion litres).
* liquid effluent containing toxic persistent organic pollutants discharged into Bass Strait in an area with limited water movement where it can take up to 160 days for flushing of water to occur. This is only a few kilometres from the biodiversity hot spot of Low Head.
Source: the Wilderness Society who point out that 3 proposals for new plantation-based pulp mills in Victoria and a mill proposal in WA are broadly supported by the conservation movement, as they are plantation-based and totally chlorine-free.
(PS: ignore my quip about Queenstown, it’s not an eg of forestry practice)
Boxer the opposition that I’ve heard is mainly against logging old growth, instead recommending the sustainable logging of plantations and restrictions on the conversion of native forest to simple eucalypts or exotic plantations.
What is Gunns’ regeneration success and how pro-actively and effectively have they used cleared land? Achieving regrowth requires good management (why else hasn’t the forest magically regenerated in Maleny, Springbrook, Beechmont, around Byron and Nimbin, or the Big Scrub up to SE Qld?). It appears that Gunns might be starting to yield to pressures to make better use of plantations and manage for regrowth.
Gunns owns 175,000 ha and also manages/logs other areas. Between 65,000 and 90,000 ha (depending on source) has been cleared and converted to eucalypt plantations. This conversion is expanding and now they’re threatening going offshore so they can expand their access to log other areas.
According to their own report, on “appropriate management of significant biodiversity and conservation values across Gunns Permanent Forest Estate”, Gunns has only, in the past year developed “the first property management plan for a freehold property”, covering a 1,449ha property (1% of the Permanent Estate). The area covered by special value specific management plans is (only) 4246 ha. Chickenfeed.
BTW Gunns claim to do 50/50 clear cutting and selective logging. According to Forestry Tas, clear cutting is used (wet euc) for 3 reasons: regen, most cost effective and safe.
Boxer says:
“Steve
You can’t take an experience from one forest and transplant it to another. The main cause of seedling mortality. . .”
THat makes sense, thanks. The purpose of my comment was more to try and calmly explain to Ian why SteveM might have commented the way he did, to prompt him to offer a more constructive response, not to argue anything about the way Tasmanian forests are actually managed.
You need to wade through the typical IanM bitterness and bile, but finally he has contributed some actual content on forest regrowth management, so I guess it was worth continuing the discussion.
Thinksy: Ian is right about one thing, he got his 75 year timescale near perfect. I reckon there was 75 years of solid Australian research behind getting our hardwoods into Reflex but none of it came through the Tasmanian Forestry Commission or Gunns. As I recall it there were no paper mills or a decent pulp plant in their territory during my entire working life.
Ian: I just happen to have some 1-100,000 Topographic sheets maps produced from 70’s data that clearly show forestry work in one of the two major Tasmanian Pulpwood concession areas, Hellyer (APPM), also St Patrick’s and Tamar which is Gunns old country. I can see all the pines beyond Mt Arthur which is what all the early government forestry work there was about. Lets look at the southern maps later.
Ian is also correct about the importance of bushfire in the eucalypt cycle but that is just the easy bit. But there are other valid ways.
Steve; We won’t find a youngster at CSIRO or DoFAT who can recall this but our Tasmanian Blue gums E.goblus for example will grow in far away places like Ethiopia in rocky mountain holes deliberately dug in advance for dust collecting with a pick, the seedlings were then plucked from boxes and watered in by relief. Blue Gum is very fast growing in almost any conditions but it’s not a good timber except for firewood that must be split green or perhaps chipped and converted to “export” pulp.
Let’s coprice all the blues in plantations an turn them into ethanol
Without checking the big operations critical to research on managing timber reserves, pulping operations, paper and particle board production were based at Ipswich, Petrie, Botany, Shoalhaven, Millicent, Maryvale, Fairfield, Box Hill, Boyer and Burnie. We could add Albury, Wesley Vale and Broadford to complete my round up of technology centres. At APM Broadford I saw papermakers using raw straw though. This leads me to recall our groundwoods.
I wonder who still uses crude groundwoods in their newsprint etc?
Back in this thread I noticed comments about sub species and forest purity. Our forests were never pure but mixed tall trees growing quickly on wet slopes tend to look the same. Ancient myrtles make lousy pulp and were often deliberately smashed in clear felling operations as were other minor species to avoid more recent mandatory pick up.
Myrtle used as a fine timber though is another story. Ron the engineer from Papermakers had big slabs cut for our flat top suction boxes under the wire on the wet ends at Bowater-Scott in Melbourne. Other people there have myrtle kitchens.
It’s not in “TIA” but at Papermakers we did a lot of research on early kiln drying of fine timbers for APPM in our drive to fill the demand on the mainland during the post war housing boom. Note blackwood was too scarce by then to work on a large scale. Private mill operations at Wynyard and Smithton still had reserves. Pines were the replacement forests where ever private land was cleared. For a long time our mills imported long fibre pulps from around the world. Resource raiders managed to close that complex down over time, North Broken Hill, Amcor and Gunns.
I had access to a lot of research, from forestry, heavy haulage, chipping, digesting, chemicals and their manufacture, web processes, drying and conditioning to energy production. In regards to this heritage I know we have lost it along the way but APM our old rival may yet save the day. They now own that bit of Burnie that produces 700 sheet packs of Reflex.
Its Australian made and comes with an Australian guarantee under an Australian quality assurance system. Isn’t that something in this day and age?
For the record, Thinksy, the Big Scrub in Byron hinterland was cleared for agriculture, not for forestry. The conversion of this forest to agriculture was a condition of the grant of title and the failure to convert 1/3rd to pasture in the first 5 years, and the second 3rd by year 15 meant the forfeiture of the title and the waste of best 15 years of the settlers life.
It was a cruel and hideous burden set by outsiders who thought they knew better. It was borne by both sets of my own grandparents, and my parents as children, because they knew full well the value of the timber. But the policy produced such a glut of logs that they were worthless. My paternal grandfather, after a whole afternoon haggling with millers over the price of logs in his log dump, set fire to the lot rather than accept a price that was lower than the basic wage for the time he spent cutting and snigging. And then came the Great Depression.
And it is a fact, fully verified by the 1942 and 1953 aerial photographs that of the shire area of 55,000ha some 50,000ha (90%) was cleared for agriculture. The last old growth clearing was done at the top of the catchment, by tenant banana growers, on my own family property in 1949.
Those same photographs prove beyond any doubt that regrowth had already commenced on previously cleared land in 1942 with the regrowth area being more than the remnant area at that time. And since that time the total native forest area has trebled, consistent with an annual expansion rate, net of all regrowth clearing, greater than 1.5% per annum.
And also for the record, it took 70 years from 1880 to 1950 to clear the whole shire and this amounted to an annual rate of 1.4% so the current regrowth rate exceeds the original clearing rate. And that doesn’t include the alarming rate of expansion in Camphor Laurel.
You and Steve Munn appear incapable of distinguishing between clearing for a change of use to agriculture and harvesting of trees as part of a continuing use of a forest in perpetuity.
They say the Inuit of the Yukon have more than 30 words for snow while we have 2, powder and sludge. And you wouldn’t dream of passing judgement on how they get by in their winter but you pass judgement on our forestry with only a one word vocabulary. And me and my kind have a right to be offended.
And Taz, I take issue with this typical BRS stuff for the treatment of the unknown (white) in a way that is highly misleading. And which you, as a (former) Tasmanian, should have picked up.
Note, for example, in the NW Tas Region, the “Total Native” category, made up of native forests and woodlands (42.2%), native shrubs & heath (2.3%), and native grasslands and minimally modified pastures (3.1) is reported as only 47.6%. But this, conveniently, leaves out the “Unknown/not reportable (white) area of 34.4%. But look where it all is. Most is in the wilderness area between Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour where there can be very little room for doubt that, whatever it might be, forest, heath or grassland, it is most certainly native. And this would bring the “Total Native” category up to 82%.
The same applies to the South Tas Region where the “Total Native” category is reported as 61.7% but with a large Unknown (white) area of 18.9%. Most of this is to the East of Port Davey and in the central mountains where, whatever it is, forest, heath or grassland, it is most certainly native. And this would bring the “Total Native” category to 80.6%.
And the same, to a lesser extent, applies to the North Tas Region. Reported “Total Native” is 54.8% with the Unknown (white) area of 12.8%. And most of this, whatever it is, forest, heath or grassland, is still most certainly native. And this brings the “Total Native” category up to 67.4%.
This is the now familiar BRS “accidental” understating of the real picture on native vegetation in a way that leaves the viewer to imply that disturbance is much greater than is actually the case.
And Taz has said, “Note now the vast white area in this map 602, no government data was tendered because there is nothing there, no farms, no timber!” And this has clearly implied that it is all failed regeneration.
Not good enough and highly misleading.
Boxer; Jennifer summed you up in “there is an old fellow who comments every so often” but I reckon this is another time you can’t sit back. Jennifer asked about our reserves.
In my view there is very little quality fast growing timber anywhere. We must exclude P radiata and E globulus as any one who dresses timber knows. We don’t grow Oaks or Redwoods, we don’t grow rainforest, and we don’t regrow our native hardwoods from the mountains in enough places yet.
Our government agencies don’t plant forests, they can export them though. However this resource mapping in all its detail forces us to each look at reality for the first time regardless of our private agendas. Anyone can zoom in on a block and find open or closed canopies with a high degree of certainty. Tall timber or grassy woodlands the resource is not endless.
Methods of extraction and milling change according to manpower and money just like offshore fishing. We have a bi-catch on land too at various stages in the tree cycle. I doubt native farmers any where using hand tools clear felled and logged say %65 of the solids before they fired the trash.
After half a century of observation I conclude minor species, sub species etc are all part of the forest fertility cycle and we would be wise not to rush in with any mono culture, pines, E nitens or otherwise for our sustainable timber industries. However in recovery and restoration of small and perhaps quite difficult areas almost anything will do in the first stage. Nature like me I hope is tolerant and changeable. Let’s say purists should sometimes try art as an alternative to science.
Ian: you have responded well. Getting others probing brs maps is precisely what I wanted. Use this is a tool when we probe the figures in tables and statements further back in this thread. Lets ask questions of the brs map creators too. But in regard to white “blanks” that appear to litter otherwise valid information, be assured we are not missing blocks of milling timber. For example the big patch in 601 NE Tas. was the site of a recent ice cap and has an altitude around 5000 ft like much of the interior.
Stony country between snow falls.
Ian, discussions like this would be much more pleasant for everyone if you used your manners. Insults and swearing are simply childish.
I specifically said that I have no great insight into the regeneration of clearfelled areas in Tasmania.
The examples I gave of unsuccesful forest regrowth are amply studied in the peer reviewed scientific literature so they are not just “anecdotal”. You can check if you like using Google Scholar.
Let me also re-iterate that I am not a rabid anti-logger. I realise that even with recycling of wood products and a good plantation system native forestry logging will always be necessary. Provided it is on a small scale and well managed I have no problem with it.
Good info Ian. Steve’s right though, it’s easier to get your points and persist with reading your comments if you can leave out the insults – all unnecessary and often wide of the mark.
What was the early regrowth in the pics of the shire? Can you point me to any existing areas where rainforests or softwood scrubs have regenerated well by themselves (without mngt)?
This sentence from Taz: “Our government agencies don’t plant forests, they can export them though.” I reckon gets to the heart of the issue.
Steve Munn and Thinksy, here we go again with the accusations of insults and swearing. I described a statement as “silliest” and “breathtakingly ignorant” Where did I direct any statement at an individual, let alone swear at anyone. The nearest thing to an insult was your assertion that my alleged insults were childish.
WITHDRAW THE STATEMENT NOW OR THIS THREAD IS ON ITS OWN!
Taz
I’m not ignoring your comment, I’m just a bit busy at the moment and I will come back to this later. You guys seem to have been getting stick into it. I particularly would like to follow up an the comment about govts don’t grow forests?
Several comments along the thread had me digging through old photo albums for evidence of forest regrowth from the ground up. I found some interesting stuff re Ian’s doubts about white patches in BRS maps and Boxer’s intention to take me up on governments growing timber or other wise.
Readers must know by now that I have lived and worked around the place in question over the years. I am on my home ground in this one, however I need to re learn some lessons too. After the flooding of Lake Pedder in the South West I went back mid 70’swith my family to be close to the action as other huge hydro schemes developed prior to the construction of the giant Pieman Hydro Scheme.
Remaining timber in those river reserves had been my interest over a time starting long before highways were planned. My school age children were close to the family of the project engineer through our local library. They were keen bushwalkers and canoeists. At weekends we all went scouting the wilderness in the wet. I was amazed to see how much of the great ancient forests were already gone or severely damaged after a hundred years of persistent mineral exploration and mining. But note some of it was still glaciated quite recently 15,000-8,000 years ago.
After the three power projects were completed I went back again to see how my friend’s interest and influence had changed the outcomes in regards to other issues like tourism.
Note too this was my young cousin’s business in another arm of government. He worked very hard in my absence. I kept just enough prints revealing the region’s recovery. See and make your own pictures on your next visit.
Perhaps I will send Jen the three I used from the other regions in our lead up the last federal election when all that money was promised to Tasmania for their forestry.
Folks
for those of you that questioned how well forests return after clearfalling? perhapes a first class example is from staements made by the anti forestry activits them selves,
I guess you all have heard of present Meander Dam project in Northern Tas (the dam is under construction and is a win-win for the environment and farmers alike.
The Tasmanian Conservation Trust campaigned against the dams development, one of their claims to stop its development was that the dam site was high quality critial habitat too valuable to be flooded.
The fact is the dam site was clearfelled 13years ago when the dams was first put forward for development.
Another good example is the Styx Valley much of these forests saw clear falling commence for news print around the late 1930’s, and people today see the same (man made regrowth) forests as magnificent old growth that should be in a national park.
So I will arguee that the anti forestry activits themselves are always promoting how well our forests return after clear falling.
I like proud tazzie’s comments. There are many anecdotes along the same lines.
Regarding governments growing forests; in the forests I have worked in, the government agency regenerates and manages the forest and then either sells the wood by a royalty system, or has the logs extracted and sold by public tender. Forest that is harvested for the first time involves selling the wood by the same methods, followed by first regneration. Govt also establishes and manages plantation forests on state land and freehold land. Perhaps it is different in your experience Taz?
There are also private forests on freehold land but the bulk of the native forest estate is state forest which is public land.
Taz, I’m not sure what your point was about the reserves that Jennifer mentioned. How much is enough perhaps? If so, it very much depends upon the forest; how much is there of that type, how well does it regenerate, what are the risks to other forest values. And at the back of all of this, the same old issue, how much forest do we keep in it’s unharvested condition just to know it’s there, when we continue to consume other nations’ forests?
The latest from ABC Online :
The Tasmanian Greens have released their environmental protection policy, promising to create more forest reserves if they win power.
Party leader Peg Putt says protected forests attract tourists and boost the economy.
“We’ll create new national parks and reserves to make sure that all of the Tarkine is protected, and that threatened forests fringing the World Heritage area, including places like the middle Weld, the Styx and the Great Western Tiers are looked after,” she said.
“And we recognise the need to protect the Blue Tier and north-east highlands, Wielangta, Leven Canyon, Black Bluff and Ralphs Bay.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1578610.htm
So how much forest should be saved?
I know what you mean Jennifer, but the question is loaded by the use of the word “saved”. If a reserve “saves” a forest, then forest outside the reserve is presumably “lost”. It is also logical that if a forest is lost when it is logged and regenerated, then it is no longer fit to be reserved, because if it is lost, it must lack fundamental values that exist only in forests that have never suffered massive disturbance. There are no old growth forests that would meet this criterion if you include natural cataclysmic events, but it is understood that people are worried about human induced disturbances and they ignore the existance of natural disasters. That’s another topic on it own; we are talking here about feeling good about ourselves.
As proud Tazzie’s example demonstrates, a regenerated forest may contain all the qualities of the original forest. So if you look at this issue over a period of, say, a century, and the forest does regenerate well (not all forests do) then none of the forest is destroyed if you harvest and regenerate it.
If a regenerated forest recovered all the aesthetic values of an uncut forest in say 50 years (a reasonable guesstimate value for a wet schlerophyll forest such as mountain ash or karri) and if you harvest 1% of the forest a year, then at any time about 50% of the forest is in a condition that even a green person would describe as “high conservation value”. This term covers forests that are regenerated and the greens now want to include in a reserve. So in this simplistic model, you could harvest all the forest on a 100 year rotation and suffer no loss of all the original forest values over 50% of the forest.
Granted, at any one time, some of the forest would lack some values. About 1% of it would look like a total mess, another 1% would be covered in regrowth a metre high, and so on. I have listened to a deep green friend make complimentary remarks about a forest which I could see had been logged about a decade before. It was a selection cut in a dry schlerophyll forest, but we had driven through several log landings before the remark “this is nice piece of bush” was made.
Now if you exclude from this available forest buffers around private property and along main roads, around special tourist features and stream reserves, you are more likely to be talking about actually harvesting about 80% of the forest on a 100 year rotation. The 20% is never touched, other than managed to control tourist impacts, and all the 80% is harvested, of which 50% is in “high conservation value” condition at any time. To my mind, this would be a better model than locking up large slabs of forest in reserves, most of which almost no one ever sees, and then treating other large slabs of forest as commercial resource. One of the downsides of the current approach is that it becomes a never-ending fight over whose share of the forest is the biggest. This creates uncertainty in the industries that want to operate in the commercial forest, which discourages investment. I suspect it even discourages investment in plantations and private native forest, because the investor can never be completely confident that when harvest time comes around, a neighbour who has become attached to the vista of someone else’s plantation from their kitchen window will attempt to prevent harvest. There are already examples of this.
If we use wood, and while this nation remains a net wood importer, we are morally obliged to bear the environmental consequences of our consumption as much as possible. Locking up forests in reserves just to make us feel better and consequently consuming other people’s forests seems like a difficult moral postion to adopt. We are placing our feelings above other people’s forests, because it is well understood that much of the logging in other nations’ forests is illegal and/or is followed by conversion of old growth forest to palm oil and rubber plantations.
Although I come from a long line of wood cutters, forest surveyors and cellulose processors when I see places like Blue Tier, Black Bluff, Leven Canyon, even Ralphs Bay come into question I say some one is fiddling with the last bits of my heritage. These places for one reason or another are like Cradle Mountain and further forest exploitation here is extreme.
Piss off everyone and leave it alone.
And the forest from West Papua that goes into my roof – what of its fate?
A smart question for a proud Tassie could be; if we are so good at old forest regeneration down south, why are we still marching on seeking more? But I know the answer is too complex.
Show us Tassie on those maps where we are ready to mill again some quality timber like we once had.
Note: I clearly recall the vast northern forests my uncle first surveyed for the government in the 1950’s from their B & W aerial photos in stereo format. There was almost no canopy damage in that big area now covered by the Mersey Forth Hydro schemes.
I may yet find some early slides of the forestry extensions on the Arm River road network beyond Mt Claude looking towards Clumner Bluff in the Great Western Tiers. The rest of this country was under ice too.
Readers may be interested to know my uncle was also searching with his vast knowledge of other things natural, hidden deep in the bush; privately but in great haste with a government Geiger counter, around old Balfor and Blue Tier. We even looked at rocks on Grandma’s table under that stereoscope.
Boxer; this whole bloody industry world wide is driven by one thing, greed at every level. Part of the answer to your last question lies in all logging operations sending less of the good stuff to the chip mills as we did.
You may all ask, but what do I know about logging practices deep in any private or state owned forest? I could respond with another question, can you guess where most of the export wood chip came from?
It’s deeper than that.
Trash clean up including pine forests in Australia has been abysmal. Some of the wasted solids can be harvested too. Around 35% is left on the ground as “normal” fire recycle but in many places it goes much higher than that, with well established mall practice back in the bush and in the log selection yards at any mill associated with the chip export business.
However I must say this, things may have improved a bit since the 80’s when I last detailed trucks on the run and various log yards. Note too cheap plantation pine was available everywhere in this part of the world from places like NZ.
This last comment is important relative to the above, although I did not see all the machinery in use at this time, Burnie had a huge reputation in the export of locally built and highly modified equipment for mining and forestry. I don’t recall seeing much head wood or minor species on our trucks nor do I recall seeing any built to pick it up.
If you mean that the industry could operate more efficiently and utilise more of its residues, I am sure you’re right Taz. There’s always room to do things better.
I’ve spent a bit of my working life looking at the costs of harvesting and extraction. Unfortunately the costs of collecting and forwarding the less valuable bits of a tree are much greater than the cost of handling the more valuable straight logs, so the residues are generally left behind. Practices in Europe are different to some extent because the value of residues is comparativly high. Wood residues burnt to produce electricity in Europe are worth about the same as chip for particle board manufacture in Australia. This is a result of very substantial subsidies for renewable energy and the higher price of wood in general in Europe.
I think an important weakness in our industry is that most technological innovation is left to the logging contractors. As small business people, they can’t afford to do much to improve efficiency and so long as they are as good as their competion and they all use the same machinery, the technology is pretty much only what we can import. In the current political climate it is difficult to get much support from governments because they see forestry as an electoral liability in all the mainland states.
I n regards to forestry on the mainland we must fix all the problems in Tasmania forestry first because their industry is so huge in terms of everything including federal subsidies. Also there is enough depth there in other services such as home grown engineering to produce better technology across the board.
It may mean we have to accept say more hardwood laminations from Tasmania in all traditional mainland building practices depending on wood, in both our structural and finish grades of timber. Random selections in timber packs delivered to building sites riddled with finger joints may become the norm, from milling much shorter logs or best ends delivered to chip mills. This requires some overview and the establishment of a sawmill priority multi point flitch selection process.
This brings me to this conclusion, at the elite end of the timber business we need a national authority that is independent of outside influences enough to be trusted by the public at large to poke right into the vexed issue of managing timber assets in reserves over very long time cycles.
The federal government could quite easily do this through the existing RFA process and probably will under extreme pressure from industry heavies or green lobbies at critical times for political parties at election times. By this I mean it could swing either way depending on the winds of change. But I want something more than these crazy battles every time there is a federal or state election imminent.
Let all the interested parties devise another system that is completely independent of any whims or extremes and form themselves round a peer group examining best practice in every direction and authorising appropriate people where they have demonstrated ability over time. I can recommend the principles we incorporated in NATA some fifty years ago. This voluntary peer review process recognises people and practices in many important industries today.
Finally; I see our parks and reserves co existing with long term forest and land management practices where wild fire and controlled bushfire sees no legal boundaries.
Timber extraction could be likewise seamless provided it improves both the reserve and the resource in the broadest terms.
Mosaic burning should commence now in each branch of every administration including public and private sector to achieve our aims. The big question is where to start, are we protecting the old growth or thinning the young crop planted around the outskirts?
You hit a lot of nails on the head there Taz. I think I agree with all the main points on first pass. But the politics is a nightmare. Now if I ran the world things would be different.
Not better, just different.
Jennifer Marohasy claims: “With 45 percent of Tasmanian forests not available for wood supply because this area is reserved..”
This is the lie repeated over and over again by pro-industry groups.
I’ve lived in a forested area of Tasmania since 1984 and personally witnessed the ‘reserve’ system in action. The vast majority of these ‘reserves’, although they might only comprise 10 metres around streams, are clearfelled. In addition, subject to: (i) aerial spray drift of toxic pesticides, (ii) the dead carcasses of 1080 poisoned wildlife (they head to water before they die), council roadside scrub cutters (because 5 metres on the sides of roads are also ‘forest reserves’), heavy siltation and compression from forestry bulldozers and other vehicles that drive right through rivers and creeks, browsing animals when young seedlings try to regenerate and/or replacement with industrial tree monocultures. And more.
The word ‘reserve’ itself is one chosen by spin doctors to deceive. What is the definition of the word, Marohasy? Certainly ‘not subject to logging, tourist development, road building, chemical drift.’
And remember that the text of the RFA has been changed so that the word ‘protect’ now has only a meaning allocated to it by the Federal and State Governments. It can no longer be subject to interpretation by pesky federal court judges anymore, after the shock ‘Wielangta’ served on the business-as-usury crowd.
http://braidwood.nsw.greens.org.au/2007/02/24/regional-forest-agreement-change-is-alice-in-wonderland-nonsense/