This article relates to ongoing debates on Australian Rural & Regional News into Bushfires, Logging, Burns and Forest Management and Koalas.
The ongoing and thorough debate on Australian Rural & Regional News on native forestry in 2022, highlighted directly and indirectly a few myths on the subject.
Without any order of ranking, these are:
1. Native hardwood should be harvested from hardwood plantations.
An admirable idea BUT it takes 40 to 60 years to grow a hardwood tree. To replace the current NSW State forests means finding the same area of land in the same climatic zone with similar soil type. This amount of land is not available. If it were it would mean clear felling the land to establish the plantation. This is untenable and certainly the timber industry is not advocating this approach. Oddly, by inference, the campaign by Environmental NGOs is urging a transfer to plantations.
2. Deforestation means clear felling an area and using it for another purpose.
This is quite common claim made in YouTube presentations or indicated in pictures used to call for the cessation of native forest harvesting. Clear felled sites in NSW are not a native forest harvesting event for two reasons. The EPA‘s Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (IFOA) does not permit clear felling of native forests. But practically, the type of timber harvested, such as blackbutt, spotted gum and other commercially hardwood timbers, grow in small clumps spread across the forest. Clear felling would be impractical and destructive to rotational selective harvesting using silviculture principles. Truth in promotion is a serious issue when the word deforestation is flung about with such abandonment. What is a closer association with the word “deforestation” is hardwood timber from South East Asian rainforests, South American rainforests and forested areas in Africa.
3. Native forestry and koalas. Criticism of field work methods used by Dr Brad Law debunks the validity of his work.
Firstly, the assertion that his work is funded by big business belies the fact he is a NSW public servant and his work is conducted in this capacity. He is a respected Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society and on its NSW Council. Secondly, the suggestion that the acoustic methodology is questionable is false. The NSW Government Natural Resource Commission has used the methodology. Thirdly, the methodology is being applied to other research relating to different species to assess population numbers etc. None of this suggests that acoustic surveys are questionable as has been mooted.
4. Native forests timbers are good for building multi storey buildings.
A recent article praising the steel timber construction of the new Atlassian headquarters in Haymarket Sydney as climate change positive failed to mention the mass timber (cross laminated timber – CLT) would have to be imported. All the CLT timber being used in the construction of the new Sydney Fish Markets is being imported from Austria. The myth is that native timbers are used.
5. Old Growth Forests.
The accusation is repeatedly made that the native forest industry logs old growth forests. In NSW this accusation has one problem. Thirty years ago, the ALP Carr Government put up an industry package to restructure the native forest or hardwood industry. This was aimed the hardwood sawmillers who received the harvested logs and cut them down for commercial use. This package was used to re-engineer mills to take smaller logs and not the large old growth logs. The result today is that there is not a market for very large harvested logs for commercial processing. Most mills do not have saws that can handle them. When the Carr ALP Government restructured the industry there was a crazy dash to lock up as much forest as possible, and particularly old growth forests, using maps without ground proofing. The native forest industry has been calling ever since to carry out a review of this work using the more modern tools and technology, so that regrowth forests currently classified as old growth and old growth forests that are unprotected and identified on maps as working forest are scientifically identified and reclassified. The NSW Coalition under Premier Gladys Berejiklian started this work, but the NSW bureaucracy stopped the project. People who seek the maintenance of old growth forests would do well to push for the reactivation of this project under the next incoming NSW Government.
6. The major difference in Silviculture and ecological principles.
The main point of contention between forestry and ecology is tree health and productivity. Foresters seek to manage tree health and productivity by ensuring the best performing trees have room to grow and develop. They do this by removing non-performing trees. Ecologists don’t care about these things. Ecologists like to see diversity in both structure and species. Ecologists like forests with well-developed understories and a range of oddly shaped trees of different sizes. Ecologists would like to see these forests transformed into more complex ecosystems and they see forestry and grazing as an impediment to this. The aim of the ecologists can be achieved over time by letting nature take its course but the weakness in their thinking is that unmanaged forests are more susceptible to wildfires and wildfires destroy diversity! If climate change and decarbonisation of the national economy is a national goal then timber as a sustainable commodity in comparison to steel, cement and aluminium then working forests are required within Australia. No one is suggesting that hardwood needs of Australia should be imported. To do so fails to recognise the sea freight costs and the environmental costs of clear fell harvesting where such timber is obtained.
