Don’t believe new oldgrowth spin
AT last, Sustainable Timbers Tasmania has conceded oldgrowth forests are far less flammable and do not suffer the destruction of even age eucalypt regrowth forest when fire occurs. Oldgrowth forests recover quickly with many species surviving and the moist ground cover and soil prevents the massive carbon loss from soil in a clearfell hot burn.
Yet STT continues with its archaic management practices. They still clearfell and convert oldgrowth to eucalypt regrowth. They have changed the name of this to “aggregated retention”, but the result is virtually the same. The big reason they still hack into oldgrowth is to get at premium-grade eucalypt sawlog, world-class timber. Their regrowth eucalypt does not yield better than secondor third-grade timber, much unsuitable as a structural timber.
Rather than using site specific low impact harvesting for all oldgrowth timber production areas that could enable sustainable yields of all species, STT destroys Tasmanian beekeeping, boatbuilding, furniture making, and high quality construction businesses.
STT has recently changed its definition of oldgrowth. Previously an area with 10 per cent of tree area being over 100 years old would be oldgrowth, and harvested selectively. The new definition raises this to 25 per cent. This means small stands of oldgrowth can be clearfelled. Also, if a coupe is less than 25 per cent oldgrowth, it does not count and can be clearfelled. This enables STT to clearfell oldgrowth which they somehow claim they don’t.
WALKING BACKWARDS
Ian Johnston Tinderbox
THE building and forestry industries seem to be a bit muddled in wanting to plant more trees to fix today’s timber shortage (Timber shortages hammer builders, Mercury, October 6).
Since the 1980s, I’ve watched the Boyer pulp mill successfully make the switch from hardwood native forests to plantation softwoods. Meanwhile, the rest of Tassie’s logging industry keeps walking backwards into the future, fretting about retaining access to native forests when it should focus on securing a sensible transition to plantations. It’s been painful to watch decades of costly bungling and it’s no surprise Tasmania now finds itself bereft of imports when it should be awash with exports.
Resources Minister Guy Barnett said, “we continue to support a viable and sustainable forest industry because if you lock that up you won’t have any timber for the building and construction sector. It’s a bit of a no-brainer.” The Minister would seem to be pioneering a new meaning of the term, nobrainer. Whether or not you lock up any native forest needn’t make any difference to today’s building and construction industry.
This disconnect illustrates why the industry can’t find its way out of a paper bag when it comes to making the transition to plantations, regardless of how much public money successive governments rain down on them. Why would anyone throw more good money after so much sustainable incompetence. Alistair Graham
West Hobart
THE SCIENCE
IT’S time to shred the old line the “for every tree harvested, one is planted”. (Resources Minister Guy Barnett, Mercury, September 10, and Forests Products CEO Nick Steel, Letters, October 2). Sustainability Timber Tasmania manager Chris Brookwell’s variation (Letters, May 28), “we sowed 160 million seeds to regrow forests for future generations” is equally misleading. These remarks are clear attempts to reassure Tasmanians that by logging native forests we are doing the right thing by the environment and for the climate. The opposite is true.
Even considering carbon abatement from long-term wood products, there will be net loss of carbon to the atmosphere with native forest logging in the vital decades of climate action ahead. Regrowth forest must be allowed to mature fully and develop its intricate biome. It certainly should not be harvested at the 25 to 30 year mark, many decades before its carbon storage capacity begins to plateau.
The up to date IPCC Climate Change and Land Special Report of 2019 states: “Maintaining and increasing forest area, in particular native forests rather than monoculture and short-rotation plantations, contributes to the maintenance of global forest carbon stocks (Lewis et al 2019) (robust evidence, high agreement)”.
The science supports saving native forests for future generations.
Craig Brown Eaglehawk Neck
PEER EVEN DEEPER
STUART Harris on behalf of the Tasmanian Forest Products Association (Letters, October 7) stated that “in Tasmania our managed forests have regenerated trees of varying ages, some that have been harvested multiple times”. Actually, you can only cut a tree down once. Unless you let it coppice (regrow from the stump), which doesn’t happen in our managed forests due to clearfelling and burning at harvest. The replanting of each coupe is monoculture and all the same age, effectively plantation of its dominant species, even if its understorey is more spontaneous. The only variant is the dominant species chosen by forest managers to replace the naturally selected ecosystem destroyed at harvesting.
Andrew McMahon Ulverstone