old-growth forest logging

[wayno]

so this is still allowed in tasmania? i'im surprised in a place the size of tasmania, its such a finite slow growing resourse
it's all but banned in nz on public land. only limited selective logging of trees is allowed no more than 20% of a private forest. only 1% of trees logged are natives

[photohiker]

so this is still allowed in tasmania? i'im surprised in a place the size of tasmania, its such a finite slow growing resourse
it's all but banned in nz on public land. only limited selective logging of trees is allowed no more than 20% of a private forest. only 1% of trees logged are natives

Careful, but yep, you bet. It's still allowed.

More info here --> http://observertree.org/

Got to take my hat off to Miranda, she's been up at the top of that tree since December 14, 2011.

What species is native in NZ?

[wayno]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tr ... ew_Zealand

[Drifting]

no comment

[Strider]

What species is native in NZ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tr ... ew_Zealand

Damn Wayno beat me to it!

[Son of a Beach]

My uncle used to lecture on Forestry in NZ. He didn't believe me when I told him that in Tasmania we clear fell native forests.

[wayno]

even limited felling of trees can be a cop out. once you open up the forest in the mountains, wind throw can start knocking over mature trees in storms.
question is at what point do eco tourists get put off by seeing forests being felled.

[highercountry]

It ain't just Tassie. Clear-felling of old growth still happening in Victoria.
But it's "world's best forestry practice" a Vicforests man told me not so long ago.
The tragic thing is that they actually believe their own BS.

[highercountry]

....at what point do eco tourists get put off by seeing forests being felled.

They're pretty cunning here in Vic. Not allowed to log along a ridge top or within sight of a main road. Keep it hidden from Joe public on holidays.

[highercountry]

If more people saw the absolute desolation and destruction after a coupe has been clear-felled things might change. It really is an outrageously barbaric practice.
Vicforests and their contractors are the only organisation or people exempt from cruelty to animals law, everything once living in a coupe dies, apart from one or two pathetic "habitat" trees left behind, that more often than not either die in the post-logging burn or else fall over in the wind.

[wayno]

down westland in the south island , one land owner was told he couldnt fell his rimu next to the main highway, so to spite them he did anyway even though he couldnt sell them he just left the carnage for all to see....
most jobs in westland are in forestry fishing and coal. , forestry and coal are in decline.... a lot of people arent happy. thing is nz gets marketed as pristine. so what do you do if thers clear felling in the middle of the pristine landscape. look at chile, you're admiring a glacier and theres an open cast mine in operation next to it.....

[ILUVSWTAS]

....at what point do eco tourists get put off by seeing forests being felled.

They're pretty cunning here in Vic. Not allowed to log along a ridge top or within sight of a main road. Keep it hidden from Joe public on holidays.

They dont give a *&%$#! here. You cant go anywhere without seeing it.

[Strider]

thing is nz gets marketed as pristine.

So does Tassie. What a joke!

[highercountry]

The saddest thing of all is that most of the enormous old logs aren't much good for anything but wood chip. Not sure of the latest figures, but not so long ago 85% of the timber was going to chip. Appalling and disgusting waste, that props up a heavily subsidised and often corrupt industry that doesn't really employ that many people. Just makes a few rich.

[wayno]

at one of the world environmental summits, the nz govt presentation was to push for covering the planet in plantations of pine and eucalypts..... awesome coming from a country with one of the few decent temperate podocarp forest in a world already full of pines.... every year volunteers have to pull out pine seedlings populating the slopes of mt ruapehu...

[north-north-west]

....at what point do eco tourists get put off by seeing forests being felled.

They're pretty cunning here in Vic. Not allowed to log along a ridge top or within sight of a main road. Keep it hidden from Joe public on holidays.

But the track from Dom Dom to Acheron's been closed for the last year or more because of logging on the sides of Vinegar.

[walkinTas]

If more people saw the absolute desolation and destruction after a coupe has been clear-felled things might change. It really is an outrageously barbaric practice.

Clear felling a plantation is the only sensible approach to harvesting the resource.

I strongly agree that the time has come to put an end to virgin forest logging. Even some previously logged areas - old-growth / regrowth forests - should arguably never be relogged. However, this doesn't equal putting an end to forestry practices. For the past 20 plus years forestry industry has recognises the need for Australia to move away from a dependence on native forest timbers and develop an industry based on viable hardwood plantations. The foundation work began almost 50 years ago. So did the bickering.

A strong forestry industry is essential, unless the citizens all intend to stop using timber based products and stop using paper. ...And what is the environmentally friendly alternative - (not IT technology, not plastics, or any petrol chemical industry derivative, not even slate and chalk mining, and iron ore mining for steel framed houses is hardly environmentally friendly). Australia's should be encouraging the growth of a healthy, vibrant, responsible forestry industry. All political parties would do well to stop arguing around the issue and actually lay down conditions for the growth of responsible forestry practices. Australia has a huge shortfall between the amount of paper we use and the amount we produce. We also have a shortfall between the amount of pine woods, veneer woods and particle boards we use compared to the amount we produce. Australia isn't even the largest grower or producer of Eucalyptus timbers.

If we end logging in the temperate forests of the world, that will only leave the tropics. If we end managed forestry practices in countries that are able to legislate and control forestry practices, that will only leave unmanaged illegal logging in countries that are unable to combat such practices.

The loss of our Forestry Industry in Tasmania will be keenly felt by bushwalkers in the coming years when forestry tracks fall into disrepair and there is no on-going maintenance. To my way of thinking the environmental movement has failed miserably to distinguish between the need for sustainable, viable forestry and the need to put and end to old growth harvesting. The end result is confusion and division. Some people see every fallen tree and every logged coupe as a bad thing.

[Ent]

Wow WalkinTas I might actually agree on something with you.

Old growth is like more than a few term rather hard to define. The original idea was to have a harvest cycle with forest practice been eighty or more years for some species. This timeline seems rather extreme compared to a human life cycle but the large amount of land for very few people it made perfect sense to the governments that are there for ever.

Then the taxation issues took over forestry and numerous companies sprung up or expanded to cater for "tax effective" investments driven by personal superannuation funds of high earning professionals. Here the emphasis was on taking a person's peak earning potential and creating a tax offset with a return scheduled for retirement. I am not writing about industry superannuation funds but individual and family ones. The number of funds is huge as if you earn over $200,000 most financial adviser will ask you consider setting up your own.

This growth industry then caused a few problems itself.

1. Only fast growing species were required and despite the hype most of material produced would be only suitable for pulp production. Yes, good work was started on developing standards for structural timbers from rapid growth plantations but this process was and will take a long time but has now largely stalled at the money is not there for research. Furniture grade timbers would still have to come from old growth forest.

2. Tax incentives meant higher price could be paid for land so farmland was converted to plantations. The good side was farmers had the ability to realize their "superannuation" held in land and retire. Bad side was the destruction of small communities, closure of local schools, and houses surrounded by potential infernos.

3. Large plantations on mono culture that is not friendly to bio diversity so some species may of have benefits while others do not.

4. You had an industry heavily dependent on stability in the taxation laws. This just did not happen as rules were made and then revoked creating financial conditions that made sensible planning extremely hard. A boom of bust mentality took over depending on the latest court case or Tax Office ruling.

5. Concerns over toxicity in water ways.

The global financial crises and the resulting panic attack by the banks has caused many players in the plantation industry to go under. Increasing areas of plantations have been sold to USA pension funds at fire sale prices by the banks. They will then reap supper profits.

Forestry has too long been a play toy between political ideologies so for an industry with long time production cycles the planning has been very sporadic. Economically this means big trouble and the global financial crises has brought many chickens home.

What people are now starting to understand is Forestry is one of the three main road authorities in Tasmania so with the reduced demand, major disruption caused by uncertainty, road maintenance has been pulled back as the money simply does not exist. Yes, there is a push to hand the roads over to councils but that means small regional councils will face massive maintenance bills so naturally will push back hard to avoid this. It is one of the most frustrating situations for citizen is where a road is "owned" by nobody. People in councils are rather familiar with this issue. Now people built in areas using forestry maintained roads are finding their local council rather disinterested in their plight.

I will not pretend that any mutually agreeable solution can be achieved but Tassie has encountered a major disruption to a significant industry. The flow on affects are finally hitting areas that thought themselves isolated from this. You can not lose thousands of well paying jobs and then expect the services industry feeding of this to feel no ill effect.

What this means for bushwalkers is roads and bridges when they fail will not be replaced unless an economic quantity of timber can be harvested. The freebie infrastructure will become a thing of the past unless like boating ramps (used to be a social obligation of the port authorities) gets pushed to local councils to maintain. Yeap, higher rates for rural councils.

It is hard to argue that a forestry operation is a thing of beauty. After eighty years an area can look rather pristine so you can easily believe that its protection is vital. But the result of this protection is redundancy notice for people, social upheaval as people leave friends and family, and higher carbon footprint as steel framing for houses becomes cheaper plus increasing imports of timber. I would hope that commonsense would reign and long term planning could be done but long since lost faith that will be achieved. Instead the swing of the political pendulum from election cycles will play out. Yes, one side might win for a short-time but then loss. Not a great way to plan for an industry than raw material can take hundreds of years to reach maturity.

Regards

[photohiker]

Clear felling a plantation is the only sensible approach to harvesting the resource.

For monoculture plantations, yes. For old growth and mixed species plantations, I have my doubts.

I strongly agree that the time has come to put an end to old growth logging. Even some previously logged areas - regrowth forests - should arguably never be relogged. However, this doesn't equal putting an end to forestry practices. For the past 20 plus years forestry industry has recognises the need for Australia to move away from a dependence on native forest timbers and develop an industry based on viable hardwood plantations. The foundation work began almost 50 years ago. So did the bickering.

And yet, Tassie forestry is still depedant on old growth logging most of which lands up as woodchip. Miranda is highlighting the fact that Old growth is being marketed as 'eco friendly' plywood in Japan

A strong forestry industry is essential, unless the citizens all intend to stop using timber based products and stop using paper. ...And what is the environmentally friendly alternative - (not IT technology, not plastics, or any petrol chemical industry derivative, not even slate and chalk mining, and iron ore mining for steel framed houses is hardly environmentally friendly). Australia's should be encouraging the growth of a healthy, vibrant, responsible forestry industry. All political parties would do well to stop arguing around the issue and actually lay down conditions for the growth of responsible forestry practices. Australia has a huge shortfall between the amount of paper we use and the amount we produce. We also have a shortfall between the amount of pine woods, veneer woods and particle boards we use compared to the amount we produce. Australia isn't even the largest grower or producer of Eucalyptus timbers.

If we end logging in the temperate forests of the world, that will only leave the tropics. If we end managed forestry practices in countries that are able to legislate and control forestry practices, that will only leave unmanaged illegal logging in countries that are unable to combat such practices.

The failure is not in the recognition of the need for timber. The failure is in the inability to move to a wholly plantation based forestry industry. It's the reliance on old growth logging and the massive autumn forest burns that gets up people's noses (literally and figuratively).

The loss of our Forestry Industry in Tasmania will be keenly felt by bushwalkers in the coming years when forestry tracks fall into disrepair and there is no on-going maintenance. To my way of thinking the environmental movement has failed miserably to distinguish between the need for sustainable, viable forestry and the need to put and end to old growth harvesting. The end result is confusion and division. Some people see every fallen tree and every logged coupe as a bad thing.

Balance is needed, yes. But if forestry does not have a plan to grow as much or more plantation than the plantation they log, and to stay out of old growth, then we are going backwards.

[walkinTas]

The failure is not in the recognition of the need for timber. The failure is in the inability to move to a wholly plantation based forestry industry. It's the reliance on old growth logging and the massive autumn forest burns that gets up people's noses (literally and figuratively).

And yet, the same people who protest old growth logging can often be found protesting plantation forestry. Forestry is the big bad wolf and big business the worst of ills. Its the government that appears completely rudderless (no, not that government, the state one), and their vision of the future does not seem to include a viable forestry industry (as much as I hope I'm wrong). Different Federal governments have support plantation forestry through a range of measure including tax breaks (even if these were at times misguided), but I have never notice where the Greens have come out strongly behind plantation forestry as a preferred option to old-growth or re-growth forest harvesting.

"Monoculture" is one of the old attacks from the environmental moment's rally against plantation forestry. It was first raised in the late 1980's. Plantations were suppose to be at the exclusion of all other species of flora and fauna. Plantations, because of their "limited" gene pool were suppose to be highly susceptible to disease. All poppy-cot! But still the accusation lingers. The truth is that a seed raised plantations (the majority) are hardly less genetically diverse than some native forests where a single species of Eucalyptus occupies a niche environment. Even asexually propagated plantations are not a single tree cloned over and over again, but a collection of trees that exhibit a desired phenotype (but yes a more limited gene pool).

[photohiker]

Sure, there will always be people who don't want a single tree cut down. That group don't have the numbers to stop forestry, but if you add them to the group who don't want Old Growth forests pillaged then you have yourself a problem. I think this is where the forest industry has misjudged their position and their business plan. Given the knowledge that our planet is under stress from many angles and tree cover/species extinction/diversity/land use are core issues rarely helped by cutting down native old growth forests, what do they expect?

The forest industry in Tas seems to be emphatically based on significant old growth logging. How is that sustainable? If the whole industry's size and output is already based on consuming a non-replaceable resource, at what point should it be wound back to a sustainable output?

[Strider]

The forest industry in Tas seems to be emphatically based on significant old growth logging. How is that sustainable? If the whole industry's size and output is already based on consuming a non-replaceable resource, at what point should it be wound back to a sustainable output?

Perhaps this is why the Forestry sector has recently suffered such a large downturn? Even the state government is now opting to support other industries instead.

[stepbystep]

There seems to be an obsession with pulp for paper from wood.

A massive hemp industry could be sustainable and supply paper for 90% of our needs, then timber would only be required for the finest grade paper. Add to that some plantation resource, selective logging and legislation built around recycling solutions and we could find some answers surely..??

[walkinTas]

It is a real pity that hemp has never enjoyed better support by governments. Especially when we have such a huge imbalance between imports and exports. We are a net importer of manufacture timber products and an exporter of raw products. Ever wonder where China gets the timber to make the products we import - this might interest you.

2010 Australia imports of wood products $4.2 billion, exports $2.3 billion. Major imports, Paper & paper board, $2.175 billion, manufactured paper products $563 million, sawn wood $429 million, panels $250 million. Major exports, woodchips $856 million, paper and paperboard $650 million.

[Strider]

And what is the environmentally friendly alternative

Aquaculture. Which in Tasmania is already worth nearly 4x the value of the Tasmanian forestry industry.

[walkinTas]

??? How does that provide housing, timber, packaging or paper? I meant environmentally friendly alternatives to timber framed houses or paper based products. A lot of people touted the dawn of computing as the beginning of the paperless office. It never eventuated and IT Technology itself is fast becoming an environmental problem.

[Strider]

:? ??? How does that provide housing, timber, packaging or paper?

It doesn't, and it doesn't need to. Google "comparative advantage".

A couple of unrelated points though:

How much of the local vegetation harvest goes to producing timber? Not much - only a small forestry industry would be needed to satisfy this demand.

As for paper and packaging. Is what we are using produced from Tasmanian vegetation anyway? Or is it imported from cheaper sources elsewhere?

[wayno]

:? ??? How does that provide housing, timber, packaging or paper? I meant environmentally friendly alternatives to timber framed houses or paper based products. A lot of people touted the dawn of computing as the beginning of the paperless office. It never eventuated and IT Technology itself is fast becoming an environmental problem.

the improvment in printing technology has meant it's easier than ever to print faster than ever at home as well as at work. paper is being printed i higher volumes than ever.
not sure if i'd agree taht it is only creating more problems, electronic books are reducing even more paper from being required, ebook sales are greater than paper book sales.

[walkinTas]

It doesn't, and it doesn't need to. Google "comparative advantage".

Comparative advantage is fine if Tassie is looking for alternatives - but really why can't we have both.

A couple of unrelated points though:

How much of the local vegetation harvest goes to producing timber? Not much - only a small forestry industry would be needed to satisfy this demand. As for paper and packaging.
Is what we are using produced from Tasmanian vegetation anyway? Or is it imported from cheaper sources elsewhere?

My point entirely... If we excuse ourselves from processing the timber we need and use, then where does the product we use come from. If we just export the woodchip for cash and buy some inferior cheap product because we can't/won't agree to process the raw material here, then where do those cheap alternatives come from. Aren't we just passing the buck. 'Accessories after the fact' to forest rape, pillage and plunder somewhere else because we can't manage our own abundant resource.

Yes, we should have stopped old-growth logging years ago - it was only ever an opportunistic industry. Sure it served some people well in the early days of European settlement. There once was a time when nearly ever town along the Northwest had a least one sawmill. The much lauded valuable farming land in this locale was once all virgin old growth forest.

My point isn't to debate old-growth logging. It was to question why we feel the need to throw the baby out with the bath water. And yes, I am critical of the environmental movement here because I believe that if the movement had been single minded about stopping old-growth logging then that would have happened now. Instead they have issued a mixed pot-pourri of emotional misinformation more intent on destroying the forestry industry than on stopping old-growth logging. (IMHO)

[photohiker]

I am critical of the environmental movement here because I believe that if the movement had been single minded about stopping old-growth logging then that would have happened now.

We've watched these battles between government backed industry and people who stand up for the environment in Tas for decades. The environment movement has no choice but to represent multiple issues, they cannot drop all for one single goal, they'd be swamped with losses on every front.

And yet, the forestry industry is and always has been oversized for the available non-old growth resource. No change will happen without tears in that regard. That's not something you can hang on the environmental movement. People have PLANNED for the industry to be sized and structured way it is, with scant regard (total disregard really) for old growth forest. If the environmental movement had won that battle, the forest industry would be a fraction of it's current size.

When was the last time you heard an industry volunteering to reduce output and downsize? You do hear companies doing this though when they move up the quality scale, they reduce output, increase quality and increase prices. Given the ultimate destination for most the harvested forest, it's about time the industry woke up and moved away from the lowest common denominator of wood products: chips and pulp. They're playing at the wrong end of the market. Until they fix that, they'll always be eyeing off 'cheap' native old growth forests they didn't have to grow.