Following my recent post titled ‘More Tall Tales from Jared Diamond’ there was comment that it would be useful to know the area of old growth forest remaining in Australia. I put the challenge to Ian Mott and here is his guest post:
“Professor Jared Diamond has an elliptical orbit of the truth that includes regular intersection with comet Aunty (ABC), usually when both are at their apogee. And Diamond’s appearance on Robyn Williams program, In Conversation, 23/02/06, is no exception.
He said, “Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest.” And he went on to state that Japan has a much larger percentage of its land mass as old growth forest.
Apparently this sort of pronunciamento is regarded as information to the ever decreasing proportion of ABC listeners, eager for any skerrick that will reinforce their national self loathing or entrench the party line of, humanity as original sin.
So how far from planet Veracity is this guy? I will first examine the statistics for Japan and then Australia.
Japan
A quick Google search revealed that popular Japanese magazine KATEIGAHO, in a feature on forests, reported that only 1 percent of the Japanese forest estate is virgin, what we would call old-growth.
But the best site for comparing both Japanese and Australian forests is the World Forestry Centre which tells us that:
“Japan is very heavily forested at 70 percent [67.5 pc actually] of its total land area, or 25 million hectares of its 37 m ha total. This 25 m ha can be broken down into 23 m ha of closed forest area, with 10 m ha of planted forests and 14 m ha of natural forests. Japan has one of the highest percentages of forest cover of the developed countries. However, because of the very high population density in this small country, the forest area per capita is only about 0.2 hectares, which is one quarter of the world figure.
About 40 pc of Japan’s forest area, more than 10 million hectares, consists of plantations. These man-made forests consist mostly of softwood species like Sugi (Japanese cedar) or Hinoki (Japanese cypress), and were planted during the 1950’s and 1960s.”
In summary, only 1 pc of this 25 million hectares is what we would call ‘old growth’, that is, only 250,000ha or 0.67 of 1 pc of total land area.
So even after the blatantly cheap shot of comparing a wide desert country with a thin mountainous maritime one, the real ‘old growth’ figure has come hurtling back through the asteroid belt.
The 14 million hectares of “natural forests” are what we would call “native regrowth forests” that have been continually harvested for timber production for centuries, in a cycle of harvest and regeneration. And that 1 pc of old growth works out at 20 square metres of old growth for each Japanese citizen.
Of the original 37 million hectares of Japan that was once covered in forest, a total of 23 million hectares (62pc) was cleared for agriculture etcetera while 98 pc of the remaining 14 million hectares was regularly harvested for timber over many centuries. But since the 1950’s another 10 million hectares (27pc) has been replanted, most probably to recover from excessive harvesting during and after the war years when all of Tokyo and other cities were rebuilt after allied firebombing.
Australia
It is a nonsense to compare Australian desert with Japanese forest. The only effective means of comparison is to compare what each country has done with those natural resource elements that they have in common. So we need to assess what we have done with our stock of similar forest.
The World Forestry Centre site, mentioned above, tells us that Australia’s total land area is 768 million hectares and that forests cover 20 percent of the landmass including woodlands*:
“There are about 43.7 million hectares of native forest in Australia, and four main land tenures relating to these forests. This is 5.7pc of the total area and 57pc of the original forested area. There is another 119 million hectares of woodland.”
The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI), gives more accurate figures showing that 5.7pc of the country is forest, of a type comparable to those of Japan, while 15.5pc are woodlands.
So for all the hand wringing about Australia’s supposed land clearing Armageddon, it is a fact that only 10pc (77 million hectares) of the country actually had forest on it to begin with and only 43pc of this (4.3pc of total area) has been cleared.
But to determine how much of this forest is “old growth” we need to go back to the Resource Assessment Commission’s 1990 data sets**.
These used slightly different categories but still posted a total forest area of 43.185 million hectares of native forest of which 17.4 million hectares (40.3pc) had never been logged.
This needs to be adjusted slightly as the Japanese ‘old growth’ figure is expressed as a percentage of total forest, including plantations. So the 17.4 million hectares of old growth amounts to 38.3pc of the combined total Australian forest area of 45.4 million hectares.
In Summary
Japan started with 37 million hectares of forest but cleared this back to 38pc before returning another 27pc for native species plantations to produce a current forest area of 67pc of the original. Only 1pc of total forest area is considered “old growth” and all of the remainder is available for on-going timber production in perpetuity.
Australia started with 77 million hectares of forest but has cleared this back to a point below 57pc before returning an undetermined but significant portion of regrowth, and 2pc as plantations to produce a current forested area of 59pc of the original. More than 38pc of total forest area could be described as ‘old growth’ which is not available for timber production, being in either National Park or reserved portions of State Forests. And even when our vast area of desert and grassland is considered, the 17.4 million hectares of ‘old growth’ forest still amounts to 2.2pc of our total area compared to 1pc for Japan.
When considering native forest alone, Japan has retained 38pc of its original area while Australia has retained 57pc of its original forested are. The addition of the 119 million hectares of Australian woodland to this analysis would produce an even higher retention figure for Australia.
Professor Jared Diamond’s statement that, “Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest”, and his comparisons between Japanese and Australian forests amount to a very serious misrepresentation of the facts by a person who has held himself out to the Australian public as an expert in these matters. And media entities that have reported Mr Diamond’s misrepresentations have duty to publish equally weighted corrections.
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* Woodlands are defined as forests where crown cover as viewed from above is between 20 and 50pc. Typically such forests are 10 to 20 metres in height though they may reach 30 metres. Some are managed commercially for timber production, but the primary land use for most is grazing.
** A Survey of Australia’s Forest Resource, March 1992, Resource Assessment Commission, AGPS, ISBN 0 644 24486 0 (hard copy only)”
Thanks Ian.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Ian your generous definition of old-growth produces an over-estimate. Forest that has regenerated since european clearing is not yet old-growth. It can take 1,500 to 2,500 years for a clear felled forest to regain all the structural and habitat features of the original (1). Future recoveries could be compromised by climate change.
Big, old trees (250 to 500 years old) play a special role in forest ecosystems. They supply superior food resources and contain naturally formed hollows (2). Some old-growth forest is more fire resistant. It provides fire refuges and post-fire habitat.
“There are localised extinctions occurring due to current forestry practices and there is a significant risk of future global extinctions.” (3) “It is a scientific fact that increasing the area that is logged in any region will increase the probability that forest dependent fauna and flora will become extinct.” (4)
We should conserve adequate tracts of old-growth (for biodiversity, scientific monitoring, cultural features, social values and tourism), not log 100% of forests.
(1) Norton, T.W. 1996. Conserving biological diversity in Australia’s temperate eucalypt forests. Forest Ecology and Management, Volume 85, pages 21-33. Page 23.
(2) Gibbons, P. and Lindenmayer, D. 1997. Developing tree retention strategies for hollow-dependent arboreal marsupials in the wood production eucalypt forests of eastern Australia. Australian Forestry, Volume 60, pages 29-45. Page 29.
(3) Public statement from independent forest researchers, signed by: Professor Tony Norton, RMIT; Professor Hugh Possingham, University of Adelaide; Professor Harry F. Recher, Edith Cowan University, WA.
(4) Possingham, H. (1991) The role of population viability analysis in forest management. Pages 35-39 in: D. Lunney (editor) Conservation of Australia’s Forest Fauna, Royal Zoological Society of NSW, Mosman.
BRS – Key Points
Different definitions of old growth have been used in surveying old growth forests in different states.
Seventy-one per cent of the total area of 5.2 million ha old growth forests in RFA regions is now in conservation reserves. This exceeds the nationally agreed reserve target of 60 per cent.
About 20 per cent of the area of native forest available for wood supply in Tasmania is defined old growth. Up to 15 per cent of native forest available for wood supply in East Gippsland, North East Victoria and Southern NSW RFAs is considered old growth. Smaller proportions of the native forest to be harvested in other Victorian RFA regions and the Eden NSW RFA region are old growth. Very small areas of old growth on public land are scheduled for harvesting in northern NSW, Queensland or WA.
http://www.affa.gov.au/content/output.cfm?ObjectID=2B01E7A2-3130-4A2A-99E5C9093BC97FFB
Jennifer: It
Excuse me Thinksy, that was the Resource Assessment Commission’s definition of old growth, not mine. Which part of “never been logged” do you not understand?
And that semi-coherent quote from Possingham et al, “There are localised extinctions occurring due to current forestry practices” has never been substantiated. A species is either extinct or it is not extinct and it is mindless drivel to suggest that an extinction can be in progress. A population may be in a process of decline but it is not extinct until the process of decline has resulted in the population no longer existing.
The concept of a localised extinction is also a nonsense because the person making the claim has no idea if, how, or whether the species might reoccupy a site in future. It also includes the “hillbilly assumption”, the assumption that the discrete nature of a local gene pool should be preserved. That is one thing that nature, itself, has gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid at every opportunity.
And the fourth quote is just as bad. Possingham said, “It is a scientific fact that increasing the area that is logged (does he mean, is to be logged, is available to be logged, or has been logged?) in any region will increase the probability that forest dependent fauna and flora will become extinct.” Who could not agree with him? But given that the current probability of extinction from forestry activity, as it is conducted in Australia, is somewhere in the region of a two million to one chance then all that Possingham has said is that a larger area available for harvest may change that probability to a 1,999,990 to one chance.
It is the environmental equivalent of white noise. For the record, the following data was cut from the article in the interests of brevity;
The Australian forest is found on four main tenures;
State forests (25%) or 10.9 million hectares
State Forests are owned and managed by State Governments for a multiple of uses, including wood production, water catchment protection, grazing, recreation and conservation. They are the mainstay of the native forest timber industry. 30 to 50% of this area is excluded from timber production.
National Parks (25%) or 10.9 million hectares
National Parks are owned and managed by State Governments. These are preserves, and are managed primarily for conservation and recreation. No timber is harvested.
Leasehold (10%) or 4.4 million hectares
Leaseholds are owned by State governments, but held in long term leases by farmers. These are typically not very productive forests, and although some timber is harvested, the primary land use is grazing.
Private Freehold (40%) or 17.5 million hectares
Private (Freehold) lands are owned by private individuals and companies. Management varies, but some is managed primarily for timber production, and there are extensive areas of privately owned plantation in some states (native forest only). However, most of this freehold is in Queensland, inland New South Wales and the Northern Territory, where a lot of the forest is not suitable for timber production. Hence the proportion of productive forest under freehold is much lower.
And to this we must add;
Plantation 1.7 million hectares
This represents 2.2% of the original forested area, of which some 42% (0.7 million hectares) are native hardwoods while the remaining 58% is exotic softwoods. About 57% of plantations were planted after 1990 with 34% planted after 1997.
In short, more than half of our total forest estate is either currently or likely in future to be subject to even minor harvest. And the remainder is being managed in a rotation where only 1/80th of the area is harvested in any year.
And contrary to what the Possinghams of this solar system might suggest, the wildlife actually prefer the improved food quality and volume found on regenerating sites. You can’t eat old growth.
Thanks jennifer for this information. But I think my original query still contains a grain of truth in the sense that the european landmass has been more thoroughly altered by humans than has Australia. We are still very much a frontier country and actually have significant exploitable “wild” natural resources. Just as China should not be held back from development for “climate change” reasons, nor should Australia be prevented from managing sensibly its natural resources
Australia’s Vignette
It’s interesting the some one else has picked on Japan for our comparison, I thought of it again a thread or two back on forestry but I can’t recall which blog. For me it was Japan that killed much of our local manufacturing way back.
But why should Ian be asked to focus on Japan or Tasmania for that matter? I am most curious to know how Queensland is fairing in the sustainability, self sufficiency stakes in the international framework for minding forests. Although I happen to know someone who was in several countries representing our forestry data assessment case in the international arena, let’s look at some of our government literature on the subject, and let’s have some updates state by state.
While we dally with the definition of oldgrowth I wondered who is best able to identify then say manage a typical example, a tree and its forest in all our interests, a sixth generation axeman, a scientist, a local tourist operator, a major woodchip mill owner, or a government minister?
The answer in part is here as others went before us on this journey. I was surprised by the detail in fact –
The Montreal Process: Year 2000 Progress Report
“Australia’s Vignette”
http://www.affa.gov.au/content/publications.cfm?Category=Forestry
Some extracts –
“This report highlights developments since 1997 when Australia’s First Approximation Report (FAR) was produced. Australia finalised ‘A framework of regional (sub-national) level criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management in Australia’ in 1998 after a two year consultative process between Commonwealth (Federal), State and Territory government agencies and stakeholders. The framework was endorsed by Commonwealth, State and Territory forestry and environment Ministers and released publicly in August 1998. The framework is based on the internationally agreed Montreal Process national level criteria and indicators”
“the Montreal Process Implementation Group for Australia (MIG), a Commonwealth-State body, to develop the framework of regional criteria and indicators. The MIG process has included stakeholder meetings, expert workshops, seminars and a public comment period”.
“The MIG process confirmed that the seven Montreal Process criteria are relevant to all land tenures and all forest types in Australia”.
Table 1 gives phased implementation of indicators
Some its major headings, Regional Forest Agreements, National Forest Inventory, Greenhouse, Certification and labelling –
“An Australian Forestry Standard is being developed as a basis for voluntary certification by Australian Commonwealth, State and Territory forestry ministers” This is a bit that I value as it goes strait to our QAS process under ISO 14001
Highlights of work being undertaken at State and Territory level then.
A sample –
“Queensland has initiated and is further developing research and monitoring projects for Category B and C indicators. Queensland is considering expanding the forest monitoring plots to regions outside the RFA area, and to include privately owned forests and reserve systems”
Table 2 gives forest sustainability indicator research and development projects
A sample –
Tasmania –“Procedures for the measurement of changes in soil physical properties following logging of wet E. obliqua forest, and the subsequent effect on site productivity”
Since I know how much good stringy bark forest went in favour of farming in the best country and more recently how some of those soils are returned to plantations I am particularly concerned about the remnants of E. obliqua as a major timber producer in both oldgrowth and regrowth forests.
BTW. I liked Ian’s slant on Jared
The early question I asked was the remaining old-growth as a proportion of original forest. I did some digging: given the lack of certainty, the answer is between 5% and 20%.
Less than 10% (perhaps 8%) according to the Wilderness society (using NFI BRS figures). (They say 20% of remaining forests have been selectively logged or not logged: RAC 1992)
According to the WRI, 82% Percent of Original Frontier Forest Lost; 63% Percent of current Frontier Forest Threatened. Australia’s remaining frontier forests are confined largely to Tasmania, Cape York, and the northwestern region.
Sources quoted by the UNEP have estimates of remaining old-growth at 5% and 21% of original area.
“It is a scientific fact that increasing the area that is logged in any region will increase the probability that forest dependent fauna and flora will become extinct.”
However, increasing the probability does not preclude the contrary outcome.
Associating “scientific fact” with “extinction” in the context of undefined population probabilities is unfortunately typical of populist environmental impropriety.
Back on the Asian deforestion issue -> if Aust increased its logging quotas in an attempt to reduce demand for Asian forests, it could have either no effect or a converse effect.
Reduced international demand -> lower prices -> log more Asian forest to earn the same income.
I have walked at length through some of the Japanese countryside, including significant areas of softwood plantation forests. These areas are a disappointing experience. They were planted in the 1950s and 1960s, but they have been neglected ever since and have never been harvested and never will be. They offer a vista of a tangle of fallen trees among the ones still standing, although the regular lines of plantation are still visble. Clearly the monoculture does nor support any diversity of wildlife. The reason for them not being harvested is that Japnese wages growth over the decades has meant that it is far cheaper for Japan to import wood chips than to harvest its plantations. The end result is a terrible waste of original forest areas. So, mere statistics of areas under afforestation do not always tell the whole story – but I do not need to tell that to most readers at this site.
A good source of figures relating to forests and woodlands is the National Vegetation Audit by the Department of Environment and Heritage.
http://audit.deh.gov.au/ANRA/vegetation/vegetation_frame.cfm?region_type=AUS®ion_code=AUS&info=veg_type
This shows
Rainforest and vine thickets covered 4,349,300 ha prior to European settlement with 3,023,200ha remaining in 1997, eg 70%
For Eucalyptus tall open forests the two figures are 4,481,700 ha and 3,012,900 or 67%.
Eucalyptus open forest 34,096,800 ha with 24,048,400 ha or 71% remaining
Eucalyptus low open forest was 1,506,600 ha nd still 1,292,300 ha or 86%
These figures completely dispute claims by Diamond that we are mining our forests. In fact the major decreases in forest cover have occured due to urban development, clearing for agriculture and water impoundment, NOT forestry.
Not sure about the market theory there Thinksy. Normally, when prices fall for a commodity, a proportion of the producers drop out and invest elsewhere for a higher return. Production falls and prices pick up again. Not many producers increase production in a falling market to maximise their losses, or at least not for long.
Agreed that with China sucking in so much wood, the effect of little Aus reducing its demand for imported wood would be modest. However your argument is tending towards the rip ’em off principle again; “our consumption (or CO2 production or whatever variable you like) is small on the global scale, so we can consume/pollute and pillage to our heart’s content”. What happened to think globally and act locally? It takes more than putting out the recycle bin.
I suggest we should produce more of our requirements at home and provide assistance to the Solomon Islands and the like for the development of their own properly managed commercial native forest industry. Demand for wood and wood values are growing in real terms and have done so for several decades.
I’m not directing this next comment at you Thinksy, because you are in here debating the real issues and looking for pragmatic alternatives. And making me re-examine my own thoughts. But – I would find the “pillage someone else’s forest” approach less disturbing if it didn’t come with so much high minded rhetoric about saving the planet, which actually means “preserving the forest I personally like where I go bushwalking”. Let’s face it, my mid-life crisis toy is a customised 30 year old V8 (the fuel consumption is nearly as bad as a modern 4×4!). I live in a nice 4×2 house and our kids have left home. None of us actually reduce our consumption, but we should try to bring the impacts of this comfortable life back to our shores whenever possible.
An admirable post Ian. Demonstrates how the simplest fundamentals sometimes escape the attention of the most apparently capable academic minds.
Well said Cinders, And Thinksy, kindly do us all the common courtesy of supplying the actual areas before and after so we can check the percentages supplied by the Wilderness Society for ourselves.
And as for the claim, “(They say 20% of remaining forests have been selectively logged or not logged: RAC 1992)”, I have RAC 1992 right beside me now and there is no such data that would support that statement. What page is it on?
And this statement, “According to the WRI, 82% Percent of Original Frontier Forest Lost; 63% Percent of current Frontier Forest Threatened” is a classic. What is the WRI? And this term “original frontier forest” has no official status or definition, and again, do us the courtesy of providing detail so we can check for ourselves.
And the term “Percentage of current Frontier Forest Threatened”, begs the question, threatened with what? Sunburn? Invasion by tree molesters? Negligent fire management policy?
The only “lack of certainty” associated with forest management in Australia is the deliberately created uncertainty resulting from the green/left’s use of vague, imprecise terminology and statistics that hang in space like a dog’s scrotum attached to a duck. We know what it is, we know what it is trying to say, but what the hell is it doing there in the first place?
Falling resource prices are known to be a significant cause of increased natural resource exploitation and environmental degradation in LDCs. Money in LDCs, particularly in primary resources, isn’t very mobile. Resources tend to be under-capitalised, loans high and economies not very resilient so if/when resource prices recover, the economy and real incomes have fallen further behind and need to export more resources to catch up. (I can provide some references if you want, but would rather not have to).
I’m simply pointing out that LDC deforestation alone doesn’t provide a valid argument to increase our logging. If we want to address Asian deforestation then we need to address all of the complex factors involved.
I too would like to see forests etc conserved in LDC’s and would like to see developed nations provide adequate assistance as you say. I do minimise my own consumption, however I laugh and challenge anyone who boasts that phrase “saving the planet” – not only is it generally narcissistic, but the planet doesn’t need saving, it will survive with or without people, whales or forests. However, someone smarter than me pointed out that hypocrisy is often the first step towards real change.
Of Australia’s remaining forests .. 20% has either been selectively logged or never logged. Only half (51.3%) of these unlogged or selectively logged forests are protected in conservation reserves.
RAC (Resource Assessment Commission). 1992. Forest and Timber Inquiry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia. AGPS, Canberra. Page 85.
WRI = World Resource Institute
Frontier forests being relatively undisturbed natural forests, range of seral stages, primarily forested; of sufficient size to support viable populations of indigenous species.
Threats: Grazing by feral and domestic animals poses a major threat, and fire management practices are also a major concern in some areas. Logging’s toll within many non-frontier areas is a serious problem. Temperate rainforests, now largely fragmented, are still cut in Tasmania and southeastern Australia — fodder for woodchips for export to Japan, which converts them into paper, packaging materials, and other products.
THE LAST FRONTIER FORESTS, WRI
Ian why do you continually discredit your comments with a petty rant? You say the only “lack of certainty” is deliberate activities of the greens etc. It’s stated in a number of academic publications that there’s imprecise data on Australian forests. The UNEP says “Australian figures vary widely”. Even the 2003 State of Forests Report says “About 70 per cent of these old-growth forests are now in conservation reserves. There has been little assessment in forests outside these regions.”
Something we should all look at Thinksy when considering international demands for wood and alternatives to oil, the demise of conventional plastic bases must require an even greater woodchip output somewhere soon.
Trouble is, I don’t see CSIRO up there with the likes of JTEC yet.
http://www.treeplast.com/treeplast.htm
Ian Mott – “So for all the hand wringing about Australia’s supposed land clearing Armageddon, it is a fact that only 10pc (77 million hectares) of the country actually had forest on it to begin with and only 43pc of this (4.3pc of total area) has been cleared.”
This is interesting in the defence of forestry. As I use timber, as does everyone in Australia, I cannot really say that I am against logging. However I am concerned that the statement that we have cleared ONLY 43% of our forests is seen as a good thing. The fact, by your own statistics, that we have so few real forests compared with our land area, some of them totally unique as Australia flora and fauna has been isolated for so long, means to me that we should value them more than other countries. I see no problem with plantation timber or very selective logging of less sensitive old growth forests. However such unique timber should be value added by Australians not clear felled and chipped up and sent to other countries for us to buy at a premium price.
Also nothing in your figures for clearing of the millions of square kilometers of land that is not classified as forest however is still important native vegetation. This was cleared by agriculture however still can be considered a “land clearing Armageddon”. With this you can be considered to be using figures to suit your own conclusions like Diamond. By limiting your discussion to forest, not woodland or scrubland the clearing that has occured does not look as bad. I am sure that if you included all native vegetation that has been cleared the figure would be much higher. True not all of this has been cleared for forestry however it was cleared by Europeans.
Ender, If Ian Mott extended the analysis to include woodland and scrubland – well, I think you might find there has been a significant increase in the area of these vegetation types since European settlement. This would almost certainly be the case in western Queensland and NSW – but perhaps not in WA.
Do we have a volunteer – to extract the figures and do the sums? What has been published on woodland thickening and regrowth additional to Bill Burrow’s work?
Aahaah, Thinksy is refering to the political document written by the Hawke/Keating government. I was refering to the actual data collected in ” a Survey of Australia’s Forest Resource” and Table 3.2 P18 clearly states that total native forest was 43.185 million hectares, of which 12.231 Mha was unavailable and 17.396 Mha (40%)was unlogged.
Funny how how political statements (ie 20%, with selective logging added), masquerading as scientific reporting, can manage to present an entirely different picture to what their own data tells them. Don’t you think?
Table 3.2 showing 40% unlogged also explained that the term ‘unlogged’ meant it had never been logged or logged only before records were kept. How this managed to become only 20%, after adding the selectively harvested resource as well is a mystery.
And that was no rant, Thinksy, I was just having some fun. The fan mail enjoyed it too and we like to take our pleasures when they come along.
And let me get this straight, Ender. You claim that because we have a large area of desert then we shouldn’t harvest the trees in our forests?
Thats a very interesting thought process. So if my neighbour no longer has sex with his wife, then I should curb my conjugal enthusiasm with mine? Hmmmn, reads like a ‘four cone’ conversation to me.
You have obviously been reading too many statistical comparisons, or have dwelt too long at the urinal where “mine’s bigger than your’s” is an important issue. The fact that we only had 10% of our total area covered by forest is because the other 90% didn’t want to be a forest. And the animals in that woodland and desert didn’t want to live in a forest. They are all perfectly happy not being a forest so why should their presence influence what goes on in the forest?
But you do raise a valid issue in respect of clearing of woodland and grassland. And I did put in a piece on this issue but it, too was cut for brevity. It went;
“PS. The clearing statistics for Australia (mostly Qld) are evenly split between woodland and non-woodland (ie grassland with encroaching trees) and according to the satellite surveys, see http://www.dnrm.qld.gov.au/SLATS/ , some 32.3% of all clearing in 2001-02 was on land that was not even mapped as woody vegetation in 1991, it was regrowth. Of the remainder, only half was woodland while the other half was natural grassland on which trees have grown or low shrubs. No Tall Forest (>30m & 30-70% foliage cover) was cleared and Medium Forest (10-30m & >70% foliage cover) accounted for 0.2% of total clearing”.
And this is highly relevant in respect of the government’s mandate for imposing the clearing ban in Queensland. For the general public were under the impression that they were giving a mandate for measures that would protect forests. But the clearing figures that were used to justify the measures had nothing to do with forest clearing.
And the small amount of actual forest clearing was dwarfed by the rate at which new remnant forest was being converted from regrowth.
Ian has commented twice now about ‘information cut [from his guest post] for brevity’. I am responsible for that. The post was about twice as long, more informative, but I wondered how many readers would have the staying power to make it to the very end.
Ian reluctantly let me edit. I am pleased he is now adding the additional information as comment.
But, I am also prepared to post again, from Ian or someone else, on the related issues.
Yep – we’re all committed to checking Motty’s envelopes out – give us the works Jen ! A pleasure to proof read it and correct his logic.
🙂
Did you say fan mail ??
Ender says; “As I use timber, as does everyone in Australia, I cannot really say that I am against logging.”
Is that principle applicable to all commodities?
Phil
I think Ian has done what you some times describe as some of the ‘heavy lifting’.
And I think he has done a good job.
But what I was trying to say in the previous comment is,not that you/or anyone else should be limited to checking his logic, but rather, if you have a different point of view on the issue of old growth forest or woodland thickening or clearing of shrub – then, do some analysis and send it to me as a potential guest post.
PS I am actually suprised noone has challenged the 1% old growth figure for Japan.
Ian Mott – “And let me get this straight, Ender. You claim that because we have a large area of desert then we shouldn’t harvest the trees in our forests?”
No where the hell do you get that from? What I am saying is that because of the tiny amount of land area that is densely forested compared to what is not it makes the areas that are all the more worth preserving. A more apt analogy that does not involve sex is not many people wear dirt on their fingers however many people pay a lot of money to wear a special pieces of crystal carbon that are more valuable because of their rarity. Some of our rainforest is rarer than diamonds and should be treated as such. Not many valuable stones are crushed up and used for industrial abrasives.
Seems pretty clear to me???
Ender,
I reckon there is a lot of rainforest in Queensland – it is beautiful, but so abundant and robust, and regrows such that foresters could log a large percentage of it responsibly and sustainabily.
Also, I am not much interested in diamonds. But I do find items made from wood very beautiful. And table and chairs and things are more useful than diamond rings.
Louis may be of a different opinion – given he is a diamond geologist?
Hmmm, all this talk about diamonds sure gets my attention.
One frosty Saturday morning a very large gentleman living in a posh area of Melbourne, still in his slippers tipped half a flower bag of funny looking amber and brown bits across my shoes onto of his copy of the “Age” all fanned out in his car compound.
The pile completely covered the ‘as new SLR camera’ add and everything else, then he produced a brand new Hassablad and a Minolta and plonked them both down on another piece of the Age. Did I know what I was looking at? Which of the three did I want?
Our man had just returned from Singapore.
I knew they were uncut Australian diamonds because a fossicking mate had previously found a couple in his travel but why so many so cheap? And I knew how hard they were to cut since my mate was also a gemmologist. To convince me out came half an oatmeal bag of fine pale bits. Know all still reckoned no one would handle them.
This chap had a team panning up creeks and 5 percent in Argyle and was desperate to sell and pay wages. I bought his Minolta with my pocket full and left the rest.
Next week his Northern Mining Ltd went from penny dreadfuls to beyond two dollars but Argyle slumbered till De Beers worked out how to break them up.
Sorry Jennifer
Attempt at humour Jen – did you notice the 🙂
Sorry.
But in a world context, Ender, we have a very large area of forest. And try as you will to wriggle out of it, you are attempting to define rarity in terms of the forest in proportion to our area of desert.
The area of desert has absolutely nothing to do with the values present in the forest and has zero impact on the survival of forest dwelling species. If you are taking non-relevant considerations into account then what is to stop Indonesia from justifying its removal of rainforest on the basis that it has abundant supplies of sea water?
Our 43.7 million hectares of native forest amounts to 2.18 hectares for each person. Our 17.4 million hectares of old growth amounts to 0.87 hectares for each person.
Japan has 14 million hectares of native forest for 127.4 million people which comes to 0.11 hectares each and their 250,000 hectares of old growth amounts to 0.00196 ha or 19.6 square metres each.
So if we are to think globally and act locally then we can hardly claim that our forest is rare.
But the real issue here is the assumption, on the part of the green movement, that old growth forest provides the lowest risk, highest return option for protecting and enhancing biodiversity. It isn’t, and the species of the forest also know it isn’t. They consistently vote with their feet and concentrate in areas of regrowth forest. And it will become more so if only a fraction of the global warming predictions come true.
They need good food to survive a drought and old, half dead trees are OK for shelter but produce much less leaf, sap, buds, seeds and pollen than regrowth.
The real question of ecosystem health and species survival is, how much of the forest is managed in a way that contributes most to the well-being of the dependent species?
And the answer to that question is, a forest that maximises food volume, food quality, food diversity and food reliability whilst ensuring that every dependent family has the shelter they require and maintains the risk of predation parameters that they have evolved to deal with.
Old growth, and by implication, most of the national park in which old growth is found, and is “protected” from assumed impacts of harvesting, just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Ian – “And try as you will to wriggle out of it, you are attempting to define rarity in terms of the forest in proportion to our area of desert.”
So therefore diamonds are worthless because the dirt they come from is also abundant and worthless?
“Our 43.7 million hectares of native forest amounts to 2.18 hectares for each person. Our 17.4 million hectares of old growth amounts to 0.87 hectares for each person.
Japan has 14 million hectares of native forest for 127.4 million people which comes to 0.11 hectares each and their 250,000 hectares of old growth amounts to 0.00196 ha or 19.6 square metres each.”
This is only an illustration of our low population and absolutely nothing else.
“But the real issue here is the assumption, on the part of the green movement, that old growth forest provides the lowest risk, highest return option for protecting and enhancing biodiversity. It isn’t,”
So what studies are you citing to back this statement up or are we just to take your word on this?
“They need good food to survive a drought and old, half dead trees are OK for shelter but produce much less leaf, sap, buds, seeds and pollen than regrowth.”
As our houses are just dead old brick or wood boxes that have very little food in them so we really should knock them all down as they are so obviously useless.
Logging activities, unless it is very carefully done, introduces roads, weeds and plants that do not normally grow there to an old forest. The animals that vote with their feet may be taking advantage of the reduced cover to predate on their normal prey more than is balanced to the detriment of both species. Not all the relationships in old growth forests are obvious or even studied and your glib statements do not cut the mustard in my opinion.
C’mon Phil, give Ender a hand, he’s sinking fast.. .. ..
Ian: “Table 3.2 showing 40% unlogged also explained that the term ‘unlogged’ meant it had never been logged or logged only before records were kept.”
How long do the records go back?
How extensive and thorough are the records (ie: how certain the stats?)
These figures aren’t informed largely by recent RFAs reports are they?
Is there no source as to the p85 20%?
Jennifer asked about woodland and scrubland area. I had the following summary on hand from the Aust state of forests report 2003. It says “net forest cover in Australia is decreasing”:
How much forest does Australia have?
164 million hectares, or 21 per cent of Australia’s land area, are classified as having forest cover (that is, land with trees with an actual or potential height greater than 2 metres
and 20 per cent crown cover). Of this total, 102.5 million hectares are woodland forests, 45.6 million hectares are open forests, 4.6 million hectares are closed forests (mainly rainforest) and 1.6 million hectares are plantation forests. Thirteen per cent of Australia’s native forests are formally protected in nature
conservation reserves, 70 per cent are privately managed, and seven per cent are available for timber production in multiple-use forests.
Net forest cover in Australia is decreasing, due largely to the clearing of woodland forests for grazing and cropping. The annual rate of clearing is now much lower than in the 1970s and 80s. In the most recent estimates, 240,000 hectares were
cleared in 1998 compared with 546,000 hectares in 1988. Losses in forest cover are made up, to some extent, by regrowth on previously cleared land, by plantation establishment and by conservation plantings.
Again from Australia’s State of the Forests report (overview) 2003:
Since 1788 .. “a reasonable estimate may be that about 33 per cent of the originally forested area has been cleared and another 40 per cent has been affected by harvesting at some stage.”
Ian – help ! I’m lost. I’ve been doing an English assignment with my daughter. Anyway ..
What are we defining as rainforest, fair dinkum other sclerophyll forest and what as woodland, and what as shrubland?
OK Jen – woodland thickening of eucalypt woodlands – in Qld probably not an increase in area so much (unless you want to add in Pricky Acacia taking over the natural Mitchell Grass plain or mesquite scrub in the Gulf or Gidgee “invasion”). Not an increase in area – thickening up of existing sparser woodland from overgrazing by bloody yaks and not an adequate fire regime.
Woody weed patch and goats near Cobar – overgrazing and fire again. Good for defence games and pig shooters.
Pilliga Scrub thickening up – lack of fire – looks nicer and good for cypress pines.
“Thirteen percent of Australia’s native forests are formally protected in nature conservation reserves, …”
I disagree.
Thirteen percent of Australia’s native forests are reserved to provide the public with the illusion of protection.
Through budgetary inadequacies and bureaucratic ineptitude, native forests are invariably subjected to a variety of degradations including infestation of feral animals, weeds, fires and bureaucracies.
Of course the Mulga in western Qld has definitely thickened too if we haven’t knocked it all down in the latest “clearing for drought fodder” frenzy. What’s thickening and what’s regrowth is pretty blurred in this community. More overgrazing and lack of fire.
Well,
Now that most of the numbers are in, I suppose we can finally answer the central question: How much forest is a nation morally obliged to have, and how old must the forest be?
Schiller.
Does “protection” only mean quarantined from man? if so, the bush needs to be returned to a state pre Aboriginal time.
Are we using ‘slang’ words here, old growth and thickening?
When it became obvious that BRS maps and other Government sources don’t outline old growth forests I Googled on old-growth and another dirty word, “thickening”.
It leads to Cooperative research for greenhouse accounting – the annual report 2003 2004 a whole 183 pages doc. and “Global Carbon Project”, collaboration with the CRC, CSIRO BRS etc on uptake of new remote sensing data products from NASA to give terrestrial carbon models for green house accounting and the CRC on tropical savannas management.
In particular the AGO has developed the National Carbon Accounting System NCAS. Interesting; in supporting participants were Alcoa and Shell.
The Annual report 2004-2005 apart from the who is who in collaborative linkages here leads me to a item on decomposition of wood and paper products in land fill. What about natural recycling in old growth forests?
Ian; everyone is suddenly interested in your woody regrowth but coming from Tasmania where all regrowth is thick I remain curious about the origins of thickening.
Land – State of the Environment 2001, a doc with many vegetation maps, 151 pages including a bit on Antarctica also has this word “thickening.”
http://deh.gov.au/soe/2001/land/pubs/land.pdf
Jennifer, I reckon it’s all part of the new rhetoric in a big power game.
Taz – “thickening” refers more to savanna woodlands where with the exclusion of fire through lack of fuel or management – the woody trees/shrubs components start to dominate the pasture and out-compete it – i.e. the bush thickens up in stem density and basal area. Also happens in southern USA and South Africa. Can be called shrub encroachment and other terms. Not sure the term works for tall Tasmanian forests – defer to experts.
Regrowth is the resprouting from seeds or lignotubers after clearing. In land clearing terms it means that the clearing was not completely effective. Regrowth I guess could be termed regeneration in a forestry sense.
So I guess it matters whether we are talking forestry or land clearing for pasture or cropping.
This is why I ask about definitions of a forest.
Thinksy
Sorry to be trailing behind here, but back about 3 weeks ago, actually 2 March 9:47am, you said this in relation to timber markets.
“Falling resource prices are known to be a significant cause of increased natural resource exploitation and environmental degradation in LDCs. Money in LDCs, particularly in primary resources, isn’t very mobile. Resources tend to be under-capitalised, loans high and economies not very resilient so if/when resource prices recover, the economy and real incomes have fallen further behind and need to export more resources to catch up.”
I don’t want the references, but can you explain what a LDC is? I would have thought that a dodgy logging operation which takes native forest and pays very little for it, other than pay a few bribes, has a very low finance requirement. Machinery is minimal and labour is local and cheap. They can turn logging on and off readily as log values go up and down. Analogous to small gold mines which start and stop according to the price of gold. A plantation resource would be the opposite because the capital for establishment all goes in a decade or three before logging and so the pressure is on to log the plantation as soon as possible.
I expect paper pulp mills or large saw mills and processing factories would be the opposite to dodgy logging as well: heavily capitalised and need to maintain throughput to service the capital.
Let me first say that I have yet to see a “state of the environment report” that, if it were presented as a financial document for a listed company, would not land the entire board of directors with a long stretch in stir. For the essence of corporate reporting is the obligation to make all material matters known to the shareholders/public. And this includes detail on the actual changes, both positive and negative, that are taking place, with sufficient notes to enable those statements to be cross-checked. SOE’s are awash with generalities, omissions and over emphasis, and with a dearth of specific data to enable confirmation of views.
Ender seems irretrievably stuck in a bog but will need to come back (with rifle) on another post to put him down humanely.
Thinksy, records go back to 1910-1920’s for State Forests, some private records go back further but access limited. Since the 50’s detailed site data was taken for every property that was converted from Leasehold to Freehold. This counted all “commercial” stems (>20cm DBH) and the value of these trees became the price of the freehold title. In effect, freehold title paid out the annual lease and bought the trees from the state. That is why so many farmers feel really ripped off by the state, because they paid full price for the trees that they can no longer remove. This data is in private hands and QDNR still has some records but others were disposed of in recent years. I would get very grumpy if these records were still being thrown out. They don’t tell us what was cut after freeholding but many farmers still have their sales records. The RAC data preceded the RFA process. The area figures and logged/unlogged data are reasonably accurate but the volume data was guestimated and inconsistent.
The big problem, as is apparent here, is that the definition of a forest as >2m height and >10% crown cover came out at a later date. So the RAC and the RFA process dealt only with the kind of forest that most of the public regard as forest (ie,>20m and >50% canopy) while the BRS Data and recent SOE reports use the wider definition that includes woodland.
But the underlying story is still there. RAC identified 43.185 Mha of open and closed forest with 17.4 Mha of old growth while BRS/NFI list 164 Mha of total forest of which “102.5 million hectares are woodland forests, 45.6 million hectares are open forests, 4.6 million hectares are closed forests (mainly rainforest)”. The latter two categories come to 50.2 Mha which includes some 7 Mha that was regarded as non-forest woodland in the past but which has thickened over the past 15 years.
The BRS/NFI figure of 13% in conservation reserves is of the total 164 Mha of all forest and this 21.3 Mha comprises the 10.9 Mha of open and closed forest that I mentioned above and a similar area of woodland.
The practice of identifying the proportion of old growth ceased with the wider definition of forest because the term lost meaning in situations where the original tree cover may have been 15% but is now 35% due to the growth of younger stems. There was essentially two forests, an old and a young one, on the same site.
But when the issue is Tasmanian harvesting then it is appropriate to look at old growth portions but to treat it consistently we need to limit the discussion to forest , not woodland.
Your quote from the Aust’n State of the Forests report is less than my estimate of original clearing because they include woodland. We currently have 57% of the original native closed and open forest area but in NSW there has been at least a million ha of regrowth between the Hunter and the Tweed, alone.
My guesstimate is that about 50% of closed & open forest had been cleared but about 7% has regrown. The ASOF includes the woodlands, and as most of these are in Qld, NT and NSW, and where clearing did not really get started until the 60’s, we have made a smaller impact on this resource. The high proportion of regrowth clearing is also understated because more advanced regrowth is likely to be mapped as “remnant vegetation” and then be assumed to be old growth woodland. It isn’t.
Much of the alarming clearing stats from Qld were nothing more than pasture maintenance that had been postponed until it got to the point where it could be detected by satellite.
And so began the tyranny of the pixel. If it was detected it was reported and once reported demanded a response, and the sensible response of saying “so what” was out of the question.
An interesting by-product of the new definition of forest (>2m & >10% canopy) is that large tracts of weeds are now being mapped as rainforest. On my own property, some sites have 85% lantana with a few young Blue Figs (Blue Quandong)poking out. These are higher than 2m and cover more than 10% of the area and are then wrongly recorded as rainforest. Rainforest normally has 90 to 100% canopy closure so the point at which a site is more forest than non-forest is 45% canopy and this should be used as the mapping threshhold. If the practice is ever challenged then the courts will have no choice but to apply the is-or-isn’t test.
And good to see you finally getting educated, Phil. Don’t ask about about classifications because there are a number of officially accepted methods and a new one, like “frontier forests” every week. I suppose a frontier forest would be one adjacent to a national or state boundary, but would that include LGA boundaries?
Types of regrowth? The Guru of Eucalypt Forests, RG Florence in “Ecology and Silviculture of Eucalypt Forests” identifies three forms in which a harvested forest can regenerate. They are;
1 From seed, either from the fallen trees that rapidly advance seed maturity when fallen, from seeds that are already in the ground from earlier seed fall, from sown seed spread by the forester and from retained seed trees that are left on site for this purpose.
2 From ‘Advanced growth”, these are existing small trees that have survived under the canopy of the fallen trees. Included in this category are tiny seedlings and trees up to 20cm in DBH that are all capable of restoring athe natural canopy. It includes lignotubers, lumps of root base that have grown under dryer forest species in readiness for their chance to claim their place in the sun.
3 From “Coppice growth”, these are new shoots that form on the stump of cut trees and shoots that also form on broken stems and includes root suckers etc. This is the fastest method of restoring a canopy and is the most productive and economical forest management technique. The better the site and the younger and more vigorous the tree that is cut, the higher the probability of effective coppice growth.
Blackbutt on a high quality site will have a better than 50% probability of coppice on a 60cm diameter stump and a 90%+ probability on a 30cm stump. Because the original tree is still alive with entire root system intact, the growth of coppice stems will outperform the very best plantation stock every time. A twin stem coppiced Flooded Gum on a 30cm stump, with 1/3rd of its root ball removed by excavation for a house site on my place, hit 14 metres and 11cm DBH in 24 months.
One stump on the Barns property on the Qld Sunshine Coast had provided two sawlogs and five poles from four harvests within a 35 year period. And the original genetic material is still there. Coppice management has been a feature of private forestry but public forestry has ignored it in favour of the slower, more documentable methods. It is no overstatement to describe it as the sleeping giant of Australian forest ecology. Most people simply cannot comprehend how effective nature can be when it is given a helping hand.
In contrast to continued old growth wood chip exports, a new industry is well under way based on yet another Tasmanian tree, hardy old Blue Gum.
Ian; this tree will coppice like nothing else!
http://www.forestry.sa.gov.au/privateforestry/FS_06_PFG21A_Second_rotation_bluegums.htm
http://www.ffp.csiro.au/nfm/fbm/plantation/fuel.html
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/nreninf.nsf/LinkView/C08259045E9641E7CA256BCF000BBDFA5F35DFAFEA9EE75E4A256DEA00276C0F
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/pub/shortreps/sr99.html
http://www.wabluegum.com.au/project.php
http://www.plantationsnortheast.com.au/keytrees.htm
Boxer LDC = a Less Developed Country. It was about our exchange about deforestation in Asia etc. The mention of limited capital mobility in LDCs was in response to you suggesting that if prices fell they could move their money into other ventures. Similarly as you say, if they have machinery and easy cheap access, then they could easily increase logging output to earn the same amount of income, hence more deforestation.
There’s research showing that falling resource prices and falling demand commonly lead to increased environmental degradation (& falling living standards) in LDCs. It’s a general observation as it manifests in a number of different ways, eg exploit more resources to earn the same level of income; change land-use patterns (eg revert to palm, sugar, banana or now, biomass plantations); loss of income and flow-on repercussions from worse terms of trade in an economy that’s not resilient can increase subsistence living pressures in already vulnerable areas.
Point being that there’s no straightforward linear cause and effect relationship from which we could claim that increasing logging output in Aust would reduce pressures on forests in LDCs.
Ian I was aware that 33% of original forested area cleared + 40% harvested included woodland, I should have clarifed it was a follow-up comment on the wider forest/woody areas.
Can you provide any proper studies/references for your earlier claim (paraphrased) that wildlife can fare better in younger forests?
Did you see this comment by me on earlier thread?:
Ian, if Jennifer agrees, it would be interesting to read a guest post by you on your land and forestry practices. ie a short case study/story: a bit of the history, perhaps a photo or 2 to illustrate your points about how (and how not) to manage the land, the trees and native habitat in your neck of the woods, and what you think is the solution to the cluster of forest-related issues.
On bioplastics and plastic substitutes Taz, yes, likely to need more chips. A surge can be expected in engineered superfast growing grasses too. In answer to your implied question, I’d rather see well-managed, logged native forest (in any country) than exotic grasses replacing forest, if that’s the trade-off. Fuel companies are moving into engineered grasses and biomass plantations (some want to convert African land to biomass). Bamboo has jumped in popularity so now plantation (‘ethical’) bamboo is an issue as declining habitats are being stripped of bamboo. The issues are ever-changing, so our mindsets need to keep up.
Thank you for that Thinksy.
I am okay with the general principle that you describe where loss of income leads to increased production and decreased environmental standards in an attempt to tread water economically. This is realistic at the national scale and may apply equally to many individual industries.
A logging operation is heavily dominated by variable costs, and a comparatively crude operation using hand-falling (chainsaw falling) and old machinery would be more so. To lay off workers and mothball a few skidders and loaders would be the best response to falling prices for logs. The profit margin per tonne for harvesting is small and I doubt that increasing production would be a practical response, as the margin vanishes and the variable costs drive you into the ground very quickly.
However, we should not take action which has unintended negative consequences – this is the very accusation I level at the opponents of forestry in Australia. So if we were to increase our forest industry in an attempt to displace imports from LDCs, we should simultaneously sponsor improvements in forest practices in LDCs. There is after all a growing market globally for wood, and if we could move the LDCs to sustainable commercial forestry practice, the market would not be so influenced by cheap (often illegally logged) wood.
There was an analogous system in operation here for a while. Exported karri (native forest) woodchip was levied a modest amount per tonne and that money was used to directly sponsor the development of a plantation bluegum resource. It worked, the private sector moved in and the bluegum plantations took off. Some say it was too successful because it drove the price of farmland up due to competition between plantation companies for suitable land and there was significant change in landuse in some districts.
Boxer said “..if we were to increase our forest industry in an attempt to displace imports from LDCs, we should simultaneously sponsor improvements in forest practices in LDC”. I agree. It would have to be an essential condition for expanding logging though, and could be prone to the usual bureaucratic/multilateral failures. It would also have to consider the full range of social and institutional issues in the recipient forest area. Perhaps a carefully chosen, specific partnership (ie with a certain LDC programme) would make it more effective.
Related note: you might be aware there have been some debt for nature swaps, where NGOs etc bought LDC (bad) debts from MDC Lenders at a discounted rate, with agreement from the LDCs to then convert the value of the debt into a protected natural land area (ie the effect of the 3-way agreement is to cancel some debt in return for conserving a natural area in the LDC). But then of course there are contentious issues if impoverished locals want to exploit that same natural area to survive, but developed (MDC) nation values and/or govt agreements over their natural resources are depriving them of the opportunity. And further problems protecting the conserved area. Hence efforts, some successful, to involve the locals so deeply that they ‘own’ the outcome.
Thinksy,
If the conservation of the natural area was so valuable that it sustained an unprecedented economy, which simultaneously invigorated traditional associations with natural values, contradictory exploitation would surely be interpreted as sabotage by landholders and flannihilated with the unambiguousness of natural justice.
OK Motty – are you prepared to accept ftp://ftp.brs.gov.au/outgoing/longterm/lw/lcc_report.pdf as a basis for discussion.
“Landcover change in Australia ” Michele Barson, Randall, and Bordas. BRS.
“Prior to European settlement about nine percent of Australia’s land cover was forest i.e. woody vegetation dominated by single-stemmed trees where foliage cover of the tallest stratum was greater than 30 percent.
By the 1980s only five percent of the nation remained forested, and the area of woodland had decreased from 21 to 14%. Thinning of forests and woodlandsm plus some invasion of grasslands by woody species, have resulted in a 4% increase in the area of open woodlands.”
See Figure 1 for changes in woody vegetation !!
Thinksy and Ender, the issue of wildlife preference for regrowth needs a good cover but I was holding off because it looked like it might drift into an adversarial exchange again, mostly from my response to Boxer’s egging of Ender. There is some research that skirts around the topic but it would be a very brave young researcher who tried to carve out a career niche in disemboweling such a sacred cow.
But there is a humungus smoking gun of basic ecological links and relationships that make this pretty clear. But it is probably best to set it out as a lead post with all the issues rather than do it on the run at the end of a trail.
But as a little teaser, we know that regrowth forest uses much more water than old growth and we know that the use of water by a forest is directly linked to the leaf area of that forest. The greater the leaf area, the higher the water requirement and we must then conclude that a regrowth forest will have more leaf area than an old growth forest at every stage of a climatic cycle. And this means that the entire leaf based food chains are greater in regrowth than in old growth forest.
But there is a stack more to it than this so best to wait and do it properly.
And the early history of all things Mott and the navel of the universe is in train but the hard part is cutting back the “long and winding road” to the size of a blog post.
Phil, those numbers are in the ball park, the only problem is that the maps of original cover are still being updated with similar degree of change to the remnant maps. And I am not certain about the extent of ground truthing the original cover maps have had. Some of the current remnant maps were still getting 50% revisions as recently as 2003.
The other problem with these categories is the fact that canopy cover or “foliage projective cover” can vary by about a third from wet season to dry season so the numbers change significantly. I think it was the year before last that Qld gained 7 million hectares of open woodland that had previously been excluded. Part of this would have been because of thickening while some of it would have been an increase in foliage due to a better season. From memory, NSW lost 7 million in the revision while NT & WA had larger revisions that almost cancelled each other out.
Its a jungle out there.
So Thinksy, say an Aus company knocks over a tree hereabouts and that log is valued at $x. Some proportion of x, say 2% (let’s not get hung up on the number, just off the top of my head), is then levied for use in an off-shore development project. Canberra matches it dollar for dollar from Ausaid because there’s going to be some touchy-feely stuff involved and private companies shouldn’t be compelled to do that other than via the tax system.
The off-shore development fund is then applied to develop commercial native forestry in a specific area in a LDC. Improve the skills of the local forest owners, help them receive payment for the logs they’re losing now, help regenerate the next rotation of the forest, determine what proprotion of their existing forest should be retained as uncut and so on. Biodiversity is non-negotiable.
This is a compromise for people who want logging banned outright everywhere and forever, and also is not appealling to people who think every one of god’s creatures has a value equal to themselves, but if something isn’t done, with 2% of the world’s rainforest in LDCs is disappearing every year, in 50 years a lot of today’s indigenous forest owners won’t own much forest any more.
Now if the company who knocked over said tree in Aus elects to do so, they can provide the forest management expertise and training directly to the forest owners in the LDC. So the 2% levy could be provided in kind, because there’s nothing better than meeting people personally and discovering that they have real needs like us. The company may elect to secure some rights (but never full and exclusive rights) to the regnerated forest resource in the future and this could be (but not exclusively) in the form of annuities paid from now until harvest of said regenerated forest. There are lots of plantations run on a similar system. By developing this association with the indigenous forest owners, the company may also gain rights to harvest that proportion of the existing forest resource that is designated commercial native forest. Careful auditing required here.
Something along these lines means that after the imposition of the levy on the Aus log, the system starts to run itself by giving the skills to the indigenous people to manage their forest and linking them with a commercial partner who will give the forest owners access to a market. The commercial partner is also doing the forestry thing of establishing access to a future resource.
Not only is it a jungle out there, but that’s the way we want to keep it.
On wildlife responses to logging, which is not my field, I had an interesting conversation with a young researcher several years ago. He was observing bird populations in a small clear-fell area in the jarrah forest and there seemed to be several responses. Some species stayed back in the uncut bush and didn’t change, some increased in number in the clearfell (which had young regrowth a couple of metres high in it)and some increased around the boundary between the two. I was left with the impression that it really is a pretty complex field.
I sometimes wonder why species like the chuditch (western quoll?) and the numbat, once found across much of the western half of southern Australia, have found final refuge in the SW forests. Regenerated forests.
this bonus 😉