Protect forests, save us from fire

Fires are worse in newly logged forests and native trees are a buffer: so stop cutting them down, says Jennifer Sanger

IAM among a group of scientists who presented an open letter to federal parliament calling for an immediate, nationwide end to all native forest logging. We wrote this letter because we are deeply concerned about the impacts that logging has on climate change and fire. Australia is still reeling from the worst bushfires the world has ever seen. The scary reality is that conditions like this are going to become the norm under climate change. We therefore need to be taking every possible step that we can to protect our communities from fire, which means putting an end to all native forest logging. Our research has shown that fires are more intense in recently logged forests. My colleagues and I studied last year’s fires in the Huon Valley region and found that the fires burned more intensely in recently logged forests and plantations. This pattern has also been found in forests in Victoria after the Black Saturday fires and in other forests around the world. We need to be taking fire very seriously and we need to plan accordingly. Logging areas often form the interface between our communities and larger tracts of forests. It is therefore extremely important that we consider the impact that logging has on fire when we plan for how best to make our communities fire resilient. There is absolutely no doubt that this year’s catastrophic fires have been brought about by climate change. Last year was the hottest and driest year on record, which has led to our forests being very dry and extremely flammable. One of the simplest ways we can address climate change is to protect our native forests. They store a considerable amount of carbon and continue to draw down carbon over time. Swamp Gum forests, which grow right here in Tasmania, are the most carbon dense forests in the world. In 2016, Tasmania was the first jurisdiction in Australia to achieve zero net emissions. The reason we were able to achieve this is that our forests absorb a massive 7500 kilotonnes of carbon every year, which was enough to offset our state’s entire emissions. The best economic use for our native forests would be to leave the forests intact and push for inclusion into a carbon trading scheme. This way our forests could provide much-needed revenue for the government, which could be used to restructure the economy, help develop new industries and revitalise our regional communities. The native forest logging industry in Tasmania is very heavily subsidised by our taxes. They have received more than $1 billion in state and federal grants over the past few decades. This is money that could be better spent on fire prevention, mitigation and planning. These subsidies could be used to create a significant amount of jobs in our regional communities in the area of fire fighting and forest management roles. Our forestry workers have the knowledge and skills to be able to easily transition into these fields. Protecting our native forests is a very simple way that we can to protect our communities from fire. It is also a very effective way of combating climate change, which is the root cause of the bushfire crisis. Dr Jennifer Sanger is a forest ecologist and co-founder of The Tree Projects. She is an honorary researcher at the University of Tasmania and a member of the Independent Science Council of Tasmania.