A new book was launched at the recent Australian Environment Foundation Conference. ‘Saving Australian Forests and It’s Implications’ by Mark Poynter is an important book for anyone wishing to make up their mind about the native forests question free from the emotional rhetoric that invariably accompanies its elevation onto the political stage prior to each state or federal election.
In particular, the book raises concerns that considerable and lasting environmental damage is resulting from the refusal of a fanatical core of activists to view the future of Australia’s forests from a holistic perspective.
For decades, the major focus of the Australian environmental movement has been ‘saving’ public native forests from timber harvesting. This continues to be a high priority for environmental activism despite Australia now having one of the world’s highest rates of forest reservation, while wood production in our public forests is sustainable and is acknowledged as having very low environmental impact.
Today’s campaigns to ‘save’ Australia’s forests have far less to do with genuine environmental need than with serving an ideological ‘lock-it-up-and-leave-it’ approach to forest and woodland management. This rejects the need to obtain any wood products, is at best ambivalent about active bushfire management and views government and business as impediments to environmental preservation.
This book charts the recent history of uncompromising and largely unprincipled ‘save-theforest’ activism, and examines the complicity of the media in shaping an ill-founded community view that is at odds with the reality of contemporary forest management. Written from the perspective of a long career caring for and managing forests, it challenges the conventional wisdom that ceasing local wood production and placing huge swathes of forest in national parks is the best way to protect the environment. It examines the implications of this in terms of climate
change, bushfire management, biodiversity conservation, water production and the rising level of rainforest timber imports.
Copies are available at $29.95 (including GST) from selected booksellers in Victoria and Tasmania, or can be obtained through the Institute of Foresters website, www.forestry.org.au, for $39.95 (including gst and postage and handling).
Mark Poynter has been a professional forester for 30 years and has extensive experience in all aspects of native forest management, fire management, plantation development and management, and farm forestry. Like most foresters, he has been frustrated by the public misrepresentations of forest management associated with the enduring conflict over wood production and forest fire management, particularly in southern Australia. He is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the Association of Consulting Foresters of Australia.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
If someone cares to forward a copy, I can guarantee to review it all with an open mind.
Gavin,
You get to read heaps at this blog for free.
What about coughing-up just $30 for not only a great read on one of your favourite topics, but also in support of an Australian writer.
Q. You know what we call old trees here in California?
A. Fuel.
James: A.Fuel is such a disappointing lightweight pass.
Resource management is the issue here. Other contributors on this blog; Boxer, Davey, Peter, Roger etc probably spent half a lifetime on the question of forest regeneration after harvests, bushfires, neglect an so on. The serious side is about the measurement of our capacity to rotate these natural assets.
Sustainability is the key to having wood as an important fuel. This must involve knowledge of the carbon cycle and soil fertility.
Our ABC ran a classic “Time Team” story last night on early UK blast furnace design as it replaced the Bloomery process. I noticed the whole region had lost their once vital forest. We could say AGW began here.
“A cellar in Leighton could take us back nearly 400 years. Based in a pub, it contains the remains of a blast furnace – used for making iron. What more can be discovered about the story of Leighton’s lost furnace?”
More on wood conversion for early industry.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/MTAH/essays/ome/charcoal.html
James: I would be most interested in what species burns best in California and how much blue gum you have left. This is about the net balance of your natural forestry.
The harsh truth is that the majority Australian community can no longer be trusted to act in good faith to any landowner with any form of non-exotic tree on his land.
After very close examination of both the process and outcomes involved with the respective “Codes of Practice” covering forestry activities in private native forests in NSW and Queensland, it is now a matter of record that the respective governments and their administrative arms have afforded greater consideration to the principles of justice, equity and due process to paedophiles than they have to forest owners and regenerators.
Forest owners are now the victims of an abusive dysfunctional relationship with an ignorant, disinterested majority community who have exhibited zero concern for the gross malgovernance in their midst.
It is the equivalent of allowing one’s children to be raised in a community that not only ignores but actively condones paedophilia. It is such a fundamental breach of trust that no fully informed and cognisant landowner could foresee any circumstance when he could allow native forest to expand on his land.
Urban non-forest owners may find this view a little dramatic but it is an almost universal view held by those who have actually expanded native forest onto previously cleared land.
The urban majority will never, ever, be given the opportunity to betray our trust again.
When I say fuel, I’m not talking the good kind, harnessed for human use and selectively harvested.
I mean the part that is nearsightedly worshipped and allowed to fester until a spark sets the whole darn thing up, blue gums, saplings, crown forest, the works.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/ Like happened here in the Los Padres NF.
The best burning wood is valley oak, but the hottest buring is the manzanita scrub.
Here’s a good write up on the variety of trees in California.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/about/resources/botanical/
Our forestry management parallels that of our fisheries. In both instances we have the highest level of protection and lowest harvest rate in the developed world. The consequence is high levels of imports for things we have in abundance and an economy increasingly dependent on the export of non-renewable resources. The resource bureaucrats call this sustainable management.
What we actually have is a travesty of the very concept of management with dictatorship of the proletariat taking precedence over what were long considered fundamental rights. In place of genuine management we have adopted political pandering to the green vote and bureaucratic empire building in accord with populist eco-ideology. Justification is then provided by unsubstantiated appeals to scientific authority, un-verified computer models and generous servings of vapid technocratic waffling about “biodiversity”, “ecosystem management”, “sustainability”, “precautionary measures”, “threatened species”, “impacts”, “stakeholders”, etc.
We now have the smallest manufacturing sector in any developed nation, the highest foreign debt growing at twice the rate of GDP, exploding imports and an economy increasingly dependant on raw commodity exports. However, commodity prices are notoriously volatile and the world seems poised on the threshold of a double whammy from a credit squeeze combined with an increasing oil supply/demand shortfall. A slowdown in the global economy appears immanent. The resulting slump in commodity prices would hit this economy especially hard and continuing to service the foreign debt, pay for imports and maintain a bloated bureaucracy would be very difficult if not impossible.
When urban voters find they can no longer afford fuel, food and house payments perhaps they might begin to consider how much “pristine environment” they really want and government facing large deficits will have to reconsider the value of bureaucratic management which delivers lower and lower productivity at ever increasing cost.
Mark Poynter seems to be one of a select band of writers on environmental topics who look at the facts, not what some imagine the facts to be, or would like them to be. Another honest intellect is Tim Low, with his “The New Nature” (2002), although Tim gets it wrong, in my opinion, on the cause of tuart forest decline. Even so, both authors are a refreshing, positive read after wading through the Swamp of Ecodoom, and the Bog of Biobabble.
The Japanese have found out what happens when you try to turn forests into museums.
Gee one wonders how these systems survived before Europeans turned up to “manage” them. I wonder how the Reef managed to get through.
Walter might invest some time in reviewing the state of grazed lands in Australia – i.e. the bulk of the land area.
You might also ponder the effect of “environmental pressure” on a progressive industry like cotton growing – they now have GM cotton, tailwater return, reusable chemical bulk chemical containers, irrigation scheduling, precision agriculture, increased water efficiency etc.
Perhaps some industries are just inefficient whingers? All couldn’t be done the critics said.
What a sea of negative “can’t do” this blog is.
Luke’s standard topic shift and the usual vacuous opinionating from a departmental drone with no enduring stake in the issues.
But what would one expect from someone who has built a career out of defending systematic scientific fraud and deception.
The difference between the so-called progressive industries like cotton is that there are no real attributes of a regularly ploughed paddock that the green scum want to set aside for public amenity. This is not the case in either forest or fishing industries where the only tool that is ever used by the so-called guardians is to exclude the existing participants from more and more territory.
And if he really wanted to see a “sea of negative can’t do” then all he has to do is buy a forest with his superannuation funds and get his tiny brain around the real issues. Then he will discover that he and his kind have turned a splendid natural asset into nothing more than the major vector for dead$hits and incompetent nutters. Until then he is just another day tripper seeking cheap thrills at others expense.
Luke,
I don’t know about your side of Australia, but Nyoongar people definitely managed the forests and woodlands of southern WA for thousands of years before whitefella arrived. They used fire to shape the landscape to their needs.
The late Rhys Jones used the term ‘firestick farming’. Perhaps ‘firestick forestry’ would be a better term in our case.
The forests are adapted to that management, and are suffering badly now it has been withdrawn, based on muddle-headed urban ‘environmentalist’ notions about ‘wilderness’, which completely ignore long human presence. Terra nullius thinking?
I have heard that the forests of NSW are suffering too, from a similar cause.
P.S. Don’t forget, I’m a sort of left-wing greeny, but I do value the truth. Truth is beauty, beauty truth, that’s all ye need to know.
The reality is that the cotton industry has plenty of detractors – water use, pesticide drift, genetic technology, catchment impacts. But they’ve been proactive in innovation, practically addressing environmental concerns, and public relations. A lot of those ploughed paddocks weren’t ploughed paddocks 20 years ago.
Davey – totally agree. So how have these “pseudo-environmentalists” been allowed to carry the debate. Lack of knowledge of fire ecology would make them ecological ignorami?
Luke,
Some of them hold high academic titles, and have many impressive (refereed) publications on fire. They still know bugger all about the subject. Like flying instructors who have never been off the ground. They need to try putting some wet stuff on the red stuff a few hundred times. They might then understand the reality.
Dave, Luke; In my view seeking academic titles is a waste of time in this debate over our fire ecology or for that mater the lack of fire use as a tool for determining outcomes at ground level.
Yesterday I wrote in response to Dr M on the question of government decisions bound in eco rhetoric. At the beginning of this personal campaign, I wrote about my experience in smoke watching since smoke is the key to understanding the intensity of fire in any fuel.
Sure, I also used sophisticated instruments to sniff the stuff way back but we depend essentially on developing our brain in the craft as wood smoke has both colour and perfume. This is what the early charcoal burners in my link above did.
As far as I know there is no degree in smoke watching, but I wondered if Mark Poynter mentioned it in his new book. Smoke is an essential part of forestry and land care.
Have other contributing factors to the death of the red gum forests been addressed in this book or elsewhere?
I’m referring to the post about the unchecked possum population decimating the red gums from Nov last year-
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001724.html
I haven’t found any study or follow up about this and would be interested if it has.
You want forests? Simply adopt native tree food crops where we have already cleared. Food and habitat? Who would have thought man could get so logical?
Nuts for breaky, nuts for lunch, nuts for tea
Nut wine, nut beer
nuts galore
Hi Jayne
I checked the index for river red gums in “Saving Australia’s Forests and it’s Implications” by Mark Poynter. The possum issue is not addressed. In fact there are no indexed references to possums in the book.
On page 215 is a clear summation of the situation – “Victoria’s River Redgums are arguably not as threatened by fire as other forest types. However, they are unquestionably the State’s most stressed forest community due to lack of water resulting from changed flooding regimes. By comparison, activities such as wood production and grazing are insignificant, and removing them by creating futher parks and reserves will not improve the forests unless accompanied by substantially greater allocations of water – a point that was at least acknowledged by the VEAC.” (Victorian Environmental Assessment Panel).
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about Australia’s forests, I am finding this book very informative. Well worth the buy.
Sorry, typo. VEAC Victorian Environmental Assessment Council.
Pinx sounds a little too nutty though its no different to the current affinity we have with wheat…
Wheat for breaky, Wheat for lunch, Wheat for tea
Wheat spirits, wheat beer
wheat galore
In anycase theres more to the suite of low input crops that exist than just sandalwood nuts though it would be prudent to focus on those providing staple foods since they are the ones we are finding it increasingly hard to produce and I’ve never yet found a culture that doesn’t have a staple base to their dietary needs …
Saving forests is simple – keep the land already cleared productive and then there is the need to stop population growth … All comes down to crop choice! Farmers now need to take ownership of the crop choices they make and accept the future will involve them growing crops they may not have even heard of before.
If you think farmers will ever get sucked into covering perfectly good land with planted native trees again, Aaron, then you clearly have not spoken to many recently. All this silly distinction between plantation and native forest is the product of non-farmers. Any farmer will know that planted native trees drop seeds, and dropped seeds produce seedlings which will eventually become native forest due to the fact of them not being planted.
And native forest is THE major vector for every kind of drop-kick, moron and departmental veg-nazi thug on the planet.
Native = Risk = Cost = Never.