Timber facts

I see there are moves to protect trees and strengthen our local laws for that purpose.

For the trees that are worth saving, I do not have a problem with that.

When modifying the rules, one hopes common sense will prevail and the rules are not drafted by a person who does not live here and consequently, has no local knowledge.

I don't know anybody who would like to live in a landscape completely bereft of trees.

However, let let us not forget the devastating fires of February 2009 and before and since.

Picture another 5000 houses in and around Drouin, picture no thought given to species, highly inflammable and combustible types, and size. California?

Picture an environment whereby farmers are prevented totally from maintaining the scrub along the roadsides and outside their boundary fences.

Picture 300 human deaths, 500 dead pets, 400 dead dairy cows, 1000 houses burnt to the ground, millions of flora and fauna and insects lost forever.

What's that you say? Can't happen here.

Ian Honey, Warragul

My priority has always been to ensure that threatened species and timber harvesting can sustainably coexist. I was an industry representative on a working group that developed and implemented a Leadbeater Possum Timber Harvesting Management Plan in 1996.

Our Toolangi Harvesting Crew worked with David Lindemayer in the mid 90s to trial a system of retention harvesting that set aside groups of trees that were left to grow on and create habitat for the possum.

The timber industry and threatened species have coexisted since the 1939 fires when 90 per cent of its habitat was burnt. Since then the industry has adapted often, by reducing harvesting or implementing new methods to protect these values.

That is why the amount of sawlog quality timber available to industry this year is only 250,000 cubic metres compared to 900,000 cubic metres in 2003. Not one species of animal has become extinct because of yimber harvesting in Victoria.

The latest Leadbeater Possum and Greater Glider surveys by DEWLP and VicForests have found that the more you look the more you find. The Possum has been found in good numbers in the 37 year old regrowth of the 1983 fires in Powelltown.