Ben Butler
Sydney Morning Herald, January 31, 2011
ENVIRONMENTALISTS have made corporate Australia their number one target as they ramp up pressure on the producers of the top paper brand Reflex to stop using timber logged from native forests.
The battle between the Wilderness Society and Australian Paper has spilled into cyberspace: last week the company convinced Google to stop showing advertisements for the environmental organisation's ''ethical paper'' campaign.
Wilderness Society activists are planning to target Reflex stockists, including Wesfarmers' subsidiaries Officeworks and Coles and new US entrant Staples, which took over Corporate Express last year.
The organisation is also considering legal action against Australian Paper under the Trade Practices Act because a company website appears to endorse allegedly misleading fact sheets created by the Victorian government-owned logger, VicForests.
Luke Chamberlain, the Wilderness Society's Victorian forest campaigner, said woodchips from state-owned native forests received a government subsidy worth hundreds of millions of dollars, creating an unfair price advantage over plantation-sourced chips.
''It's not an even playing field here - this is corporate socialism whereby VicForests is acting as a middleman handing over a public asset for private profit,'' he said.
''The question to Australian Paper is why do we continue to rip out a public resource, extinguish a public asset, when [there are] perfectly good alternatives?''
He said the Wilderness Society had sent letters to corporate social responsibility officers at 2500 leading companies, and on Thursday began a phone campaign to follow up with the top 400 companies.
Fund managers will be the campaign's next targets, and the organisation is considering a print media advertising campaign.
Feedback from corporates so far had been ''incredibly positive'', Mr Chamberlain said. ''Obviously we're dealing with some of the major distributors of Australian Paper,'' he said. ''They don't want to have environment groups on their back - they spruik their environmental credentials and I think their branding is potentially at risk if we target them.''
Wesfarmers, Australia's eighth biggest company, already bears the scars of an earlier battle with the Wilderness Society. After a long campaign that included embarrassing protests outside its Bunnings hardware stores, the chain switched from native forest timber to plantation wood.
Mr Chamberlain said the Wilderness Society had been talking with Australian Paper about moving away from native forests for ''probably five to six years''.
''So far Australian Paper has buried its head in the sand,'' he said. The stoush flared up online last week with Google pulling down Wilderness Society advertisements that appeared above search results for Reflex, after a complaint from Australian Paper. The company, a subsidiary of Japan's Nippon Paper Group, has hit back with a website entitled ''Ethical paper - the facts'' that mimics features of the Wilderness Society's ethical paper campaign site.
On that website, its says more than half its total fibre needs come from plantation timber and recycled paper. ''The remainder is sourced through VicForests which is a Victorian government enterprise responsible for the sustainable harvest and commercial sale of wood from state forests,'' the company said.
In a separate statement issued on Friday, Australian Paper said it ''welcomes open discussion from all stakeholders about our performance''. It said it employed about 1200 people and the industry had been hit by the closure of two Tasmanian mills last year at a cost of 300 jobs.
''Our plight is not unlike that of Kimberly-Clark whose Millicent tissue mill in South Australia faces closure and the loss of 170 jobs in May,'' the company said. ''Our statements and claims are independently checked and comply with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission guidelines.''
Mr Chamberlain said VicForests fact sheets on the company's ethical paper - the facts website were ''mythology and propaganda''.
''We'll be taking that up now with the ACCC as part of this campaign.'' He said it was practical for Australian Paper to use only recycled paper and plantation-sourced timber.
''We're looking for Australian paper to show leadership in true sustainability and create a much greater recycled paper industry.''
31 January, 2011
Grand ash forests face destruction
Jill Sanguinetti, Narbethong
The Age (letter), 31 Jan 2011
VICFORESTS' misleading claims have been swallowed whole by the government. According to VicForests' website, 66,000 hectares of merchantable timber is available to it in the Central Highlands and 2500 of this is being clear-felled there annually. At this rate, it will all be gone in 26 years.
Yet the minister plans to grant security of access at the current rate for 20 years. By then there would be nothing left of our grand ash forests but regrowth (depleted of tree ferns, hollow-dwelling fauna and countless floral species) outside of national parks. With predicted climatic instability and the likelihood of increasing droughts and bushfires, even the survival of regrowth is uncertain.
Moreover, the claim that the annual harvest is "less than .01 per cent of Victoria's native forests" is a furphy: this is a percentage of the total forestry estate of 78 million hectares, including dry, open woodland forests in the north and west, degraded forests that are past logging, forests on private land and in national parks.
So the 0.01 per cent figure is irrelevant to the sustainability of logging in particular locations but is intended to deceive us into accepting the intensive logging of remaining old-growth, species-rich forests in the Central Highlands.
The Age (letter), 31 Jan 2011
VICFORESTS' misleading claims have been swallowed whole by the government. According to VicForests' website, 66,000 hectares of merchantable timber is available to it in the Central Highlands and 2500 of this is being clear-felled there annually. At this rate, it will all be gone in 26 years.
Yet the minister plans to grant security of access at the current rate for 20 years. By then there would be nothing left of our grand ash forests but regrowth (depleted of tree ferns, hollow-dwelling fauna and countless floral species) outside of national parks. With predicted climatic instability and the likelihood of increasing droughts and bushfires, even the survival of regrowth is uncertain.
Moreover, the claim that the annual harvest is "less than .01 per cent of Victoria's native forests" is a furphy: this is a percentage of the total forestry estate of 78 million hectares, including dry, open woodland forests in the north and west, degraded forests that are past logging, forests on private land and in national parks.
So the 0.01 per cent figure is irrelevant to the sustainability of logging in particular locations but is intended to deceive us into accepting the intensive logging of remaining old-growth, species-rich forests in the Central Highlands.
26 January, 2011
Forestry is solution
Shaun Ratcliff, Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Melbourne
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
MURRAY Barson is right (Letters, 25/1): our public forests should be managed on a scientific basis. However, Peter Walsh is correct: Victorian forestry is conducted on a sustainable scale. About 5000 hectares of native forest was harvested last year: 0.07 per cent of the 7.8 million hectares of public native forest in Victoria. Areas are also reserved to protect endangered or threatened species.
The greatest threat to our forests is fire, not forestry. The three landscape-scale fires of the past decade - 2002-03, 2006-07 and 2009 - burnt about 3 million hectares of land. Much of this was native forest.
Forestry is not the problem but part of the solution to managing fire risk. Forestry workers, particularly those in the native forest sector, are based on-location and are skilled and experienced in fire management (thinning, and maintaining fire breaks and roads to ease access to fires) and suppression, and most forestry equipment is useful in firefighting.
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
MURRAY Barson is right (Letters, 25/1): our public forests should be managed on a scientific basis. However, Peter Walsh is correct: Victorian forestry is conducted on a sustainable scale. About 5000 hectares of native forest was harvested last year: 0.07 per cent of the 7.8 million hectares of public native forest in Victoria. Areas are also reserved to protect endangered or threatened species.
The greatest threat to our forests is fire, not forestry. The three landscape-scale fires of the past decade - 2002-03, 2006-07 and 2009 - burnt about 3 million hectares of land. Much of this was native forest.
Forestry is not the problem but part of the solution to managing fire risk. Forestry workers, particularly those in the native forest sector, are based on-location and are skilled and experienced in fire management (thinning, and maintaining fire breaks and roads to ease access to fires) and suppression, and most forestry equipment is useful in firefighting.
Numbers add up
Sarah Rees, Healesville
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
IN THE article ''Minister challenges logging advice'' (The Age, 24/1), Forestry Minister Peter Walsh gives a welcome commitment to examine the status of endangered species in areas exposed to logging.
While the minister appears unaware of the Department of Sustainability and Environment's science up until his appointment, basic skills in maths should make light work of this investigation. Mr Walsh says he ''find(s) it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact''.
Some 70 per cent of the ash forests in this state - the wood the chippers are after and home to many of Victoria's endangered species - is available for logging. Logging is taking out between 2 and 3 per cent of these forests each year.
Given that intensive ash logging has taken place since the 1950s, how many years of logging will it take to reduce 70 per cent of the old ash forest to young saplings incapable of housing hollow-dependent mammals?
Couple this with fires in an average of 40 per cent of the ash forest in national parks and, bingo, you have an extinction crisis.
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
IN THE article ''Minister challenges logging advice'' (The Age, 24/1), Forestry Minister Peter Walsh gives a welcome commitment to examine the status of endangered species in areas exposed to logging.
While the minister appears unaware of the Department of Sustainability and Environment's science up until his appointment, basic skills in maths should make light work of this investigation. Mr Walsh says he ''find(s) it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact''.
Some 70 per cent of the ash forests in this state - the wood the chippers are after and home to many of Victoria's endangered species - is available for logging. Logging is taking out between 2 and 3 per cent of these forests each year.
Given that intensive ash logging has taken place since the 1950s, how many years of logging will it take to reduce 70 per cent of the old ash forest to young saplings incapable of housing hollow-dependent mammals?
Couple this with fires in an average of 40 per cent of the ash forest in national parks and, bingo, you have an extinction crisis.
Extinction state
Phil Alexander, Eltham
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
YOU have to admire Ted Baillieu's environmental credentials: a climate change denier, he puts cattle back in sensitive Alpine habitats and appoints an Agriculture Minister who holds the view that cutting down forests has minimal impact on plants and animals. Maybe our number plates should read: Victoria, the Extinction State.
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
YOU have to admire Ted Baillieu's environmental credentials: a climate change denier, he puts cattle back in sensitive Alpine habitats and appoints an Agriculture Minister who holds the view that cutting down forests has minimal impact on plants and animals. Maybe our number plates should read: Victoria, the Extinction State.
25 January, 2011
Mind the habitat
Murray Barson, Hurstbridge
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
AGRICULTURE Minister Peter Walsh ''find[s] it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact'' on state forest biodiversity (''Minister challenges logging advice'', 24/1). (One wonders if he is a climate-change sceptic too.)
The man admits his ignorance and should take the scientific advice offered, not hide behind the wasteful procrastination of a departmental study. Habitat destruction is not an easily reversible process.
If the state's timber industry is indeed financially unviable, ''20 years' access … to timber'' only prolongs the agony, but may irrevocably damage the forests.
Vested interests, factional pressures and marginal electorate sensitivities must not be allowed to warp the decision process.
The Age (letter), 26 Jan 2011
AGRICULTURE Minister Peter Walsh ''find[s] it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact'' on state forest biodiversity (''Minister challenges logging advice'', 24/1). (One wonders if he is a climate-change sceptic too.)
The man admits his ignorance and should take the scientific advice offered, not hide behind the wasteful procrastination of a departmental study. Habitat destruction is not an easily reversible process.
If the state's timber industry is indeed financially unviable, ''20 years' access … to timber'' only prolongs the agony, but may irrevocably damage the forests.
Vested interests, factional pressures and marginal electorate sensitivities must not be allowed to warp the decision process.
24 January, 2011
Minister challenges logging advice
Adam Morton
The Age (article), January 24, 2011
VICTORIA'S new forestry minister has challenged scientific warnings that the timber industry is putting endangered species at risk of extinction, arguing that only a fraction of the state's forest habitat is logged.
Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, whose portfolio includes responsibility for state forests, denied claims the forest industry was in crisis, but said it was ailing, after years of gradual cuts to timber allocation from state forests stymied investment. The Coalition has promised to restore industry confidence by guaranteeing access to current levels of state forest timber for up to 20 years.
The commitment comes amid warnings from scientists led by David Lindenmayer, an Australian National University ecologist who has worked in Victorian forests since the 1980s, that the combination of bushfires and aggressive logging in the central highlands is putting threatened species such as Leadbeater's Possum, the state faunal emblem, at risk. But Mr Walsh said he was not persuaded the timber industry was a significant threat.
"I find it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact as some people are saying when you consider the totality of the forest area that's never ever touched,'' he said.
''The Department of Sustainability and Environment has never carried out any survey work on threatened species outside of these small areas of production forest. It's difficult to quantify the impacts of the timber industry if you don't actually know against what you are making a comparison. We have asked the department to do this work.''
Professor Lindenmayer said Mr Walsh's comments were those of a minister still getting on top of his brief, and offered to give him a briefing and a tour of central highlands forests.
He said dozens of books and hundreds of scientific papers had been written showing the threat that clear-fell logging in the state's 171,000 hectares of mountain ash forest posed to endangered species.
''We're logging in a way that is very intense and sets back the forest many centuries,'' he said.
Coalition support for state forests logging was a point of difference with Labor, which had promised to sponsor Tasmanian-style "peace talks" between the industry, unions and environmental groups.
Environmentalists say logging in state forests is economically unviable and being propped up by government subsidies.
Mr Walsh said he had no problem with talks being held over the industry's future, but the government should not be involved.
"If the unions and the industry and whatever want to sit down and have discussions I think that's appropriate that they do it, but by government being in there when we've said what we want to do would not necessarily be the most productive thing,'' he said.
He said his office was considering results of a Treasury review into the state's logging agency VicForests, which received a multimillion dollar bailout from taxpayers last financial year. But he was dismissive of a Brumby government plan to replace the agency with a body that had a broader remit also to allocate water and carbon rights.
"I really think they [Labor] were trying to be all things to all people and I really don't know how it was going to actually have a meaningful role - it just seems such a broad brush thing with no detail," he said.
The Age (article), January 24, 2011
VICTORIA'S new forestry minister has challenged scientific warnings that the timber industry is putting endangered species at risk of extinction, arguing that only a fraction of the state's forest habitat is logged.
Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, whose portfolio includes responsibility for state forests, denied claims the forest industry was in crisis, but said it was ailing, after years of gradual cuts to timber allocation from state forests stymied investment. The Coalition has promised to restore industry confidence by guaranteeing access to current levels of state forest timber for up to 20 years.
The commitment comes amid warnings from scientists led by David Lindenmayer, an Australian National University ecologist who has worked in Victorian forests since the 1980s, that the combination of bushfires and aggressive logging in the central highlands is putting threatened species such as Leadbeater's Possum, the state faunal emblem, at risk. But Mr Walsh said he was not persuaded the timber industry was a significant threat.
"I find it hard to understand how such a small area of logging can have such a big impact as some people are saying when you consider the totality of the forest area that's never ever touched,'' he said.
''The Department of Sustainability and Environment has never carried out any survey work on threatened species outside of these small areas of production forest. It's difficult to quantify the impacts of the timber industry if you don't actually know against what you are making a comparison. We have asked the department to do this work.''
Professor Lindenmayer said Mr Walsh's comments were those of a minister still getting on top of his brief, and offered to give him a briefing and a tour of central highlands forests.
He said dozens of books and hundreds of scientific papers had been written showing the threat that clear-fell logging in the state's 171,000 hectares of mountain ash forest posed to endangered species.
''We're logging in a way that is very intense and sets back the forest many centuries,'' he said.
Coalition support for state forests logging was a point of difference with Labor, which had promised to sponsor Tasmanian-style "peace talks" between the industry, unions and environmental groups.
Environmentalists say logging in state forests is economically unviable and being propped up by government subsidies.
Mr Walsh said he had no problem with talks being held over the industry's future, but the government should not be involved.
"If the unions and the industry and whatever want to sit down and have discussions I think that's appropriate that they do it, but by government being in there when we've said what we want to do would not necessarily be the most productive thing,'' he said.
He said his office was considering results of a Treasury review into the state's logging agency VicForests, which received a multimillion dollar bailout from taxpayers last financial year. But he was dismissive of a Brumby government plan to replace the agency with a body that had a broader remit also to allocate water and carbon rights.
"I really think they [Labor] were trying to be all things to all people and I really don't know how it was going to actually have a meaningful role - it just seems such a broad brush thing with no detail," he said.
02 January, 2011
State-owned VicForests logging firm 'non-viable'
Ben Butler
The Age (article), 2 Jan 2010
TAXPAYERS have been forced to fund a multimillion-dollar bailout of VicForests, with severe financial pressure putting the future of the government-owned company that logs state forests under a cloud.
VicForests' operations are now being reviewed by the new Liberal-National coalition government, which says it will explore ''all management options'' for the Victorian native timber industry.
Set up by the former Labor government six years ago, VicForests bled out more than $16 million in cash over the the 2009-10 financial year.
To cover the shortfall, VicForests needed an extra $16.6 million in the form of a low cost loan from the Victorian Treasury, according to the logging company's latest accounts.
VicForests would not have been able to declare a profit of $3.6 million if not for a $10.8 million government grant to cover the costs of salvage logging after the Black Saturday bushfires, and made a complex change to the way it accounts for logged areas that are returned to the state.
A senior analyst with a major financial institution, who asked not to be named, said VicForests was ''very much running out of cash''.
''It's a business that's completely non-viable and if it was a business that was standing on its own two feet without government support it would either be long-gone or guilty of insolvent trading,'' the analyst said. ''Notwithstanding their cheap access to forests, there's not enough cash flow to keep this merry-go-round going.''
Dr Judith Ajani, a resource economist with the Australian National University, said state-owned loggers such as VicForests had been left behind by a structural change caused by a move from native forests to plantation timber. ''What we're dealing with here is state governments that simply won't deal with an industry problem,'' she said. ''They are propping up a fundamentally dead business.''
VicForests' annual report shows that it has removed millions in expenditure from its operating statement by changing the way it accounts for regeneration - the cost of replanting logged coupes with seedlings. While, in 2008-09, replanting cost $4.8 million, the latest set of accounts list regeneration expenses as $0.
But the company's summary of financial results note ''substantial regeneration activities'' among factors that ''contributed further to the negative cash flow from operating activities''.
''It is anticipated that this will return to a positive level in 2011,'' the company says. The report, one of more than 200 tabled by the former Brumby government on the same day in September last year, also shows that borrowings from the Treasury Corporation of Victoria blew out from $2.3 million to $19 million.
All of the money is payable in the current financial year, but the terms of the loan can be extended by the Treasurer.
Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, the National Party member for Swan Hill, said the government was ''committed to providing long-term security to the timber industry within a framework of world standard forest management practices''.
He said the Coalition would carry out its pre-election promise to reduce from three to one the number of government departments to which VicForests reports.
''The government is committed to implementing these promises and to exploring all management options that lead to an efficient and sustainable future for the timber industry,'' he said.
''The government will review VicForests' operations and it would not be appropriate to pre-empt the outcome of that investigation.''
Armed with a critical Treasury report into VicForests - which is yet to be made public - the former Labor Party had promised to abolish the company and replace it with a new entity.
Under the ALP plan the new body would have retained a commercial focus, but in addition to logging timber it would have been responsible for allocating water and carbon rights.
The Age (article), 2 Jan 2010
TAXPAYERS have been forced to fund a multimillion-dollar bailout of VicForests, with severe financial pressure putting the future of the government-owned company that logs state forests under a cloud.
VicForests' operations are now being reviewed by the new Liberal-National coalition government, which says it will explore ''all management options'' for the Victorian native timber industry.
Set up by the former Labor government six years ago, VicForests bled out more than $16 million in cash over the the 2009-10 financial year.
To cover the shortfall, VicForests needed an extra $16.6 million in the form of a low cost loan from the Victorian Treasury, according to the logging company's latest accounts.
VicForests would not have been able to declare a profit of $3.6 million if not for a $10.8 million government grant to cover the costs of salvage logging after the Black Saturday bushfires, and made a complex change to the way it accounts for logged areas that are returned to the state.
A senior analyst with a major financial institution, who asked not to be named, said VicForests was ''very much running out of cash''.
''It's a business that's completely non-viable and if it was a business that was standing on its own two feet without government support it would either be long-gone or guilty of insolvent trading,'' the analyst said. ''Notwithstanding their cheap access to forests, there's not enough cash flow to keep this merry-go-round going.''
Dr Judith Ajani, a resource economist with the Australian National University, said state-owned loggers such as VicForests had been left behind by a structural change caused by a move from native forests to plantation timber. ''What we're dealing with here is state governments that simply won't deal with an industry problem,'' she said. ''They are propping up a fundamentally dead business.''
VicForests' annual report shows that it has removed millions in expenditure from its operating statement by changing the way it accounts for regeneration - the cost of replanting logged coupes with seedlings. While, in 2008-09, replanting cost $4.8 million, the latest set of accounts list regeneration expenses as $0.
But the company's summary of financial results note ''substantial regeneration activities'' among factors that ''contributed further to the negative cash flow from operating activities''.
''It is anticipated that this will return to a positive level in 2011,'' the company says. The report, one of more than 200 tabled by the former Brumby government on the same day in September last year, also shows that borrowings from the Treasury Corporation of Victoria blew out from $2.3 million to $19 million.
All of the money is payable in the current financial year, but the terms of the loan can be extended by the Treasurer.
Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh, the National Party member for Swan Hill, said the government was ''committed to providing long-term security to the timber industry within a framework of world standard forest management practices''.
He said the Coalition would carry out its pre-election promise to reduce from three to one the number of government departments to which VicForests reports.
''The government is committed to implementing these promises and to exploring all management options that lead to an efficient and sustainable future for the timber industry,'' he said.
''The government will review VicForests' operations and it would not be appropriate to pre-empt the outcome of that investigation.''
Armed with a critical Treasury report into VicForests - which is yet to be made public - the former Labor Party had promised to abolish the company and replace it with a new entity.
Under the ALP plan the new body would have retained a commercial focus, but in addition to logging timber it would have been responsible for allocating water and carbon rights.
25 November, 2010
24 November, 2010
Broken forest promises
Labor has broken their 2006 election promise to protect the last significant stands of old growth forest available to logging. Only 11,000 hectares of the paltry 40,000 hectares they eventually protected this year is actually old growth.
Brown Mountain and other old growth forests have subsequently been logged with the government actually in the logging business via their agency VicForests. Most of the forest logged ends up as low value woodchips. not timber.
Logging in Melbourne's water catchments also continues despite clear scientific evidence it is decreasing Melbourne's water supplies and the logging industry is still keen to keep logging native forests despite dwindling jobs in the sector (Age 22/11).
The best John Brumby can do is to offer to facilitate "peace talks", while the Liberals have committed to continued logging that will destroy our remaining forests. Labor and the Coalition have both abdicated responsibililty to save our remaining native forests and protect their biodiversity, despite overwhelming community support for this.
Its no suprise then that support is rising for the Greens, who have committed to an immediate logging industry transition to plantations. We need a referendum on protecting our native forests, not more broken promises and subterfuge from our governments.
22 November, 2010
Native forest logging doomed, says industry boss
Adam Morton and Royce Millar
The Age (article), November 22, 2010
VICTORIA'S most senior timber industry figure has declared that an end to native forest logging in Victoria is "inevitable", regardless of who wins the state election.
Bob Humphreys, president of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries and owner of a sawmill at Cann River in East Gippsland, said it was "fairyland" to think timber companies, unions and environmentalists could reach agreement under Tasmanian-style peace talks proposed by Labor.
But he said years of cuts to the amount of native forest timber allocated to the industry meant it could not continue on its current path and have a viable future. "The writing is on the wall - we are not going to survive," Mr Humphreys said.
"For the 30 years I have been involved in this we have sat around the table at various times, and every time we have gone to the table we have walked away with less than we arrived. That will just continue to happen until there is nothing left."
Mr Humphreys said he preferred the Coalition's forestry policy - guaranteeing the industry long-term access to current levels of native forest timber - but described it as "almost palliative care" and not the expansion of native forest harvesting needed.
"I don't see what is going to invigorate us," he said. "I don't see anyone coming along and saying this industry is worthwhile and supports a lot of small communities and does more good than harm."
He said it was unlikely that he could negotiate with environment groups over the industry's future. "I don't believe that I could bring myself to sit around the table with the Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation and all those other environment groups and try to thrash out an agreement between us because we don't agree," he said.
The environment movement and forestry industry lobby are split over how quickly a transition could be made from native forests to plantations.
An analysis released by environmentalists last week found at least 70 per cent of timber from native forests - the low-grade timber for woodchips, pulp and paper - could be sourced completely from plantations in the state's south-west within five years. It found most sawn timber could be drawn from plantations by 2020.
Mr Humphreys said there was no such thing as a "plantation panacea" for the Victorian hardwood industry.
He said a shift out of native forestry would inevitably kill Gippsland forestry communities such as Cann River because the replacement plantations had been grown near ports in the west of the state, hundreds of kilometres away.
Wilderness Society forest campaigner Luke Chamberlain said policy direction in Victoria had not been good for jobs or forest protection for decades.
''The only secure future is to utilise the existing plantation estate and then grow smaller but high-value sawn timber plantations for the appearance-grade wood that has historically come from native forest,'' he said.
The Age (article), November 22, 2010
VICTORIA'S most senior timber industry figure has declared that an end to native forest logging in Victoria is "inevitable", regardless of who wins the state election.
Bob Humphreys, president of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries and owner of a sawmill at Cann River in East Gippsland, said it was "fairyland" to think timber companies, unions and environmentalists could reach agreement under Tasmanian-style peace talks proposed by Labor.
But he said years of cuts to the amount of native forest timber allocated to the industry meant it could not continue on its current path and have a viable future. "The writing is on the wall - we are not going to survive," Mr Humphreys said.
"For the 30 years I have been involved in this we have sat around the table at various times, and every time we have gone to the table we have walked away with less than we arrived. That will just continue to happen until there is nothing left."
Mr Humphreys said he preferred the Coalition's forestry policy - guaranteeing the industry long-term access to current levels of native forest timber - but described it as "almost palliative care" and not the expansion of native forest harvesting needed.
"I don't see what is going to invigorate us," he said. "I don't see anyone coming along and saying this industry is worthwhile and supports a lot of small communities and does more good than harm."
He said it was unlikely that he could negotiate with environment groups over the industry's future. "I don't believe that I could bring myself to sit around the table with the Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation and all those other environment groups and try to thrash out an agreement between us because we don't agree," he said.
The environment movement and forestry industry lobby are split over how quickly a transition could be made from native forests to plantations.
An analysis released by environmentalists last week found at least 70 per cent of timber from native forests - the low-grade timber for woodchips, pulp and paper - could be sourced completely from plantations in the state's south-west within five years. It found most sawn timber could be drawn from plantations by 2020.
Mr Humphreys said there was no such thing as a "plantation panacea" for the Victorian hardwood industry.
He said a shift out of native forestry would inevitably kill Gippsland forestry communities such as Cann River because the replacement plantations had been grown near ports in the west of the state, hundreds of kilometres away.
Wilderness Society forest campaigner Luke Chamberlain said policy direction in Victoria had not been good for jobs or forest protection for decades.
''The only secure future is to utilise the existing plantation estate and then grow smaller but high-value sawn timber plantations for the appearance-grade wood that has historically come from native forest,'' he said.
Chipping away
Royce Millar and Adam Morton
The Age (article), November 22, 2010
BOB Brown could have scripted John Brumby's passionate address to an adoring anti-logging rally in Treasury Gardens in 1995. ''An end to native forest woodchips, the protection of our high-conservation value forest areas and an industry which is based in the future on plantations. That's what we want.''
Standing on stage with a head-banded hippie, Brumby, then Victoria's opposition leader, slammed the ''bizarre'' policy that allowed state-owned native trees to be sold for peanuts, chipped, shipped to Japan and sent back as expensive paper. ''It's bad economics, it's bad industry policy, and it's appalling environment policy.'' There is a widespread view, including within the government, that little has changed.
In 2010 the total take of wood from the state's native forests is almost as much as it was 15 years ago - about 4000 Melbourne Cricket Grounds worth. What has changed is that the proportion of that timber sold for woodchips has increased dramatically. Of the 1.8 million tonnes of timber logged in eastern Victoria each year, more than 70 per cent is sold as export woodchips for as little as $2.50 a tonne.
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Labor's plan to address the problem did not match the rhetoric of 1995. Instead, warring parties - industry representatives, unions and environmentalists - will be brought together for peace talks.
Modelled on this year's breakthrough Tasmanian forestry peace process, Brumby's stakeholder forum is a major disappointment for some environmentalists and scientists. Australian National University ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer, dismisses it as a ''Clayton's'' forest policy that ignores the biodiversity crisis facing the forests after the bushfires of the past decade.
But government insiders insist the policy is no cop-out. The Tasmanian draft agreement represents a serious breakthrough on a national scale, they say, and Brumby is keen to exploit it.
Despite the mixed response, industry and environment groups have welcomed the proposed Victorian talks. To that extent, they acknowledge that Brumby may mean business.
But if progress in the 30-year Victorian forest conflict is in the offing, it is likely to be driven more by economics than concern for the endangered Leadbeater's possums or the potential value of the bush as a carbon sink. The timber industry is struggling and keen for help.
Seasoned commentators warn that if real change is to flow from the forum, it is unlikely to come cheap; taxpayers will be asked to foot a substantial part of the bill, and environmentalists will likely be held responsible.
In Tasmania, the controversial Gunns timber firm was the key industry player in the Apple Isle draft agreement to move out of native forests and into plantations. The Gunns' announcement followed a 98 per cent collapse of profits in the second half of 2009, and a push by large institutional shareholders for a withdrawal from forests.
Gunns also faced pressure from Japanese paper makers who boycotted woodchips that lacked forest-stewardship accreditation or were taken from high-conservation-value native forests. The company's Swedish finance partners also demanded it use plantation timber in its proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill.
The ''pot of gold at the end of the Tasmanian rainbow'', as one senior industry figure describes it, is a $2.2 billion pulp mill and probably a big lick of Commonwealth money to ease the transition. ''My personal view is that Tasmania may not have gotten to this point without a pulp mill underpinning the transition,'' says Philip Dalidakis, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries.
However, Victorian timber companies are quick to point out that the industry here is a different beast. Gunns operates in Victoria, but is focused on producing timber for housing, not woodchips. The international customers of Victorian woodchips have not applied the same pressure to the state's big exporters, Midway and South East Fibre Exports. And the Victorian talks will not have a pulp mill on the table, removing the key ingredient that gave environmentalists leverage in Tasmania.
Gunns has flagged its intention to eventually move out of native forests in Victoria, but chief executive Greg L'Estrange says this is difficult because most of the state's plantation timber is in the far south-west, a long way from its mills in Alexandra in the Central Highlands and Heyfield in Gippsland.
Distance, however, is not the only disincentive. Timber from publicly owned native forests is much cheaper. Environmentalists say forestry in Victoria remains a classic example of old-fashioned feather-bedding. The government provides the land, grows the trees and contracts the workers to cut and cart the timber. The price paid for publicly owned trees does not factor in the true long-term capital cost of managing the forest and producing the trees.
A state parliamentary committee report shows that government timber agency VicForests, was paid between $2.50 and $6.50 a cubic metre for its trees in 2008. This compares with about $50 from commercial plantations.
In a report for environment groups released last week, the National Institute for Industry and Economic Research estimated that if Victoria's public forests were run on the same basis as commercial plantations, the state would receive income of $200 million per year from the sale of wood. In the five years to 2010, VicForests made a total loss before tax of $627,000.
Government support for forestry is not a new phenomenon. Commonwealth and state governments have played an active role for 100 years, initially by setting aside forest reserves to protect the industry from advancing land-clearing for agriculture and later, under former prime minister Robert Menzies, by encouraging dramatic clearing of native forests for softwood plantings.
When this policy ran foul of the environment lobby, tax breaks were introduced for private plantations, prompting the creation of managed investment schemes, including the now troubled Timbercorp and Great Southern - the companies behind the bulk of blue gum farms in south-west Victoria.
The upshot was that the state's major timber export companies enjoyed profits that were the envy of other industries. In more recent years, however, returns have been in a tailspin. Victoria's timber industries have taken a pounding from the global financial crisis, the depressed US housing market, declining Japanese demand for pulp, and lower than expected uptake of timber products by the surging Chinese economy.
Earnings per share for South East Fibre Exports for the year to December 2009 were one-third of the year before, and before-tax profit was down from $15 million to $5.3 million. Victoria's traditional mills are closing as the industry rapidly consolidates and shifts focus from high-end sawlog products to woodchips.
As in Tasmania, jobs are haemorrhaging out of timber - so much so that the forestry division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union last month described the industry nationally as in ''crisis''.
Nationals leader Peter Ryan last month said there were 19,500 workers in the Victorian timber industry, a figure that includes plantation labour. Green groups claim the true native forest workforce is in the hundreds.
CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor is a central and controversial player in the forestry debate. He made a watershed concession after a dogged 20-year defence of native forestry workers. Commenting on Tasmania's draft peace agreement, he said it signalled a way forward for the industry in other states. ''We want the best possible future for our members and their families and if that can be achieved by peace, not war, then let's talk, not fight,'' he said.
These words may well prove pivotal as warring parties sit down to negotiate John Brumby's proposed peace plan.
O'Connor belongs to a small but influential left grouping within the ALP faction that includes Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, as well as senior advisers to both Premier Brumby and Victorian Agriculture Minister Joe Helper.
His change of heart has given Labor the cover it needs to propose Tasmanian-style peace talks for Victoria.
Also important to both the economics and politics of the Victorian industry's future is Labor's announcement last week that it was scrapping its timber trading arm VicForests, and replacing it with a body with a broader forest management remit than just selling wood.
VicForests has few friends, having been widely criticised for its logging practices and lack of economic viability. Judith Ajani, a Victorian government forest policy adviser turned Australian National University academic, says the abolition of VicForests is crucial if real change is to be achieved.
Ahead of this week's state poll, the industry association made clear that it prefers the unapologetically pro-forest position of Ted Baillieu's Coalition.
A Baillieu government would maintain the current level of native forest logging and change contract arrangements to give the industry longer-term certainty.
But, after determined lobbying, forestry industry leaders are also relieved that Labor has opted for peace talks over the preference of some others within government - a unilateral decision to end logging in Melbourne's water catchments.
Philip Dalidakis acknowledges the Tasmanian deal has the potential to ''establish a precedent in the public mind'' about withdrawal from native forests.
In a sign of growing confidence, boosted by progress in Tasmania, most environment groups also back the peace talks over the Melbourne catchment ban. The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation have opted to roll the dice on Labor's forum delivering more fundamental change.
But not everyone is supportive. Bob Humphreys, industry association president and owner of a timber mill at Cann River in East Gippsland, says the talks are unrealistic.
''I don't believe that I could bring myself to sit around the table with … all those environmental groups and try to thrash out an agreement between us because we don't agree,'' he says.
''They are going to keep pushing until there is a total cessation of native forest logging. I will keep pushing until we keep surviving.''
John Brumby says he will not dictate terms to the forestry forum, but under questioning, he confirmed that he expected a shift out of forests and into plantations.
If the parties are able to reach in-principle agreement on such a transition, the question will inevitably become: who pays?
Brumby says he would expect his forum to nut out a joint plan for the future, and the federal government would then be asked for funding to carry out reforms.
Can the differences between the industry and green groups be bridged without a government weighing in?
The industry association maintains there must be a future for both native forest timber and plantations as they provide different products.
Dalidakis says the existing plantations are devoted almost exclusively to wood chips, and that the predominantly blue gum timber grown in the south-west is inadequate for higher value sawlog uses, such as flooring and joinery.
He says a best-case scenario would involve plantations providing timber for domestic flooring in 35 to 60 years. Corporate backing for such a long-term gamble would be non-existent.
''If government is serious about pursuing this policy, then they would have to do it because the resource is not going to come from anywhere else,'' he says.
Environment groups instead emphasise how quickly the shift to plantations can be made.
The recent consultant's report on their behalf found that most of Victoria's native forest logging could be replaced by plantations within five years. It suggested plantations could meet demand for wood for lesser-value products such as woodchips and pulp by plantations by 2015, and most sawn timber for structural products within a decade. Some of the top-end wood products - the floorboards and joinery that make up to 10 per cent of wood from native forests - would take longer.
Judith Ajani sees the Tasmanian model as a positive move, but says governments should not be fooled into paying more than necessary.
''What we're seeing now in these negotiations is an industry push for more government money … That is, business as usual,'' she says. ''It's time to take stock and find out what this industry really is and to let market realities drive plantation investment.''
The Age (article), November 22, 2010
BOB Brown could have scripted John Brumby's passionate address to an adoring anti-logging rally in Treasury Gardens in 1995. ''An end to native forest woodchips, the protection of our high-conservation value forest areas and an industry which is based in the future on plantations. That's what we want.''
Standing on stage with a head-banded hippie, Brumby, then Victoria's opposition leader, slammed the ''bizarre'' policy that allowed state-owned native trees to be sold for peanuts, chipped, shipped to Japan and sent back as expensive paper. ''It's bad economics, it's bad industry policy, and it's appalling environment policy.'' There is a widespread view, including within the government, that little has changed.
In 2010 the total take of wood from the state's native forests is almost as much as it was 15 years ago - about 4000 Melbourne Cricket Grounds worth. What has changed is that the proportion of that timber sold for woodchips has increased dramatically. Of the 1.8 million tonnes of timber logged in eastern Victoria each year, more than 70 per cent is sold as export woodchips for as little as $2.50 a tonne.
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Labor's plan to address the problem did not match the rhetoric of 1995. Instead, warring parties - industry representatives, unions and environmentalists - will be brought together for peace talks.
Modelled on this year's breakthrough Tasmanian forestry peace process, Brumby's stakeholder forum is a major disappointment for some environmentalists and scientists. Australian National University ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer, dismisses it as a ''Clayton's'' forest policy that ignores the biodiversity crisis facing the forests after the bushfires of the past decade.
But government insiders insist the policy is no cop-out. The Tasmanian draft agreement represents a serious breakthrough on a national scale, they say, and Brumby is keen to exploit it.
Despite the mixed response, industry and environment groups have welcomed the proposed Victorian talks. To that extent, they acknowledge that Brumby may mean business.
But if progress in the 30-year Victorian forest conflict is in the offing, it is likely to be driven more by economics than concern for the endangered Leadbeater's possums or the potential value of the bush as a carbon sink. The timber industry is struggling and keen for help.
Seasoned commentators warn that if real change is to flow from the forum, it is unlikely to come cheap; taxpayers will be asked to foot a substantial part of the bill, and environmentalists will likely be held responsible.
In Tasmania, the controversial Gunns timber firm was the key industry player in the Apple Isle draft agreement to move out of native forests and into plantations. The Gunns' announcement followed a 98 per cent collapse of profits in the second half of 2009, and a push by large institutional shareholders for a withdrawal from forests.
Gunns also faced pressure from Japanese paper makers who boycotted woodchips that lacked forest-stewardship accreditation or were taken from high-conservation-value native forests. The company's Swedish finance partners also demanded it use plantation timber in its proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill.
The ''pot of gold at the end of the Tasmanian rainbow'', as one senior industry figure describes it, is a $2.2 billion pulp mill and probably a big lick of Commonwealth money to ease the transition. ''My personal view is that Tasmania may not have gotten to this point without a pulp mill underpinning the transition,'' says Philip Dalidakis, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries.
However, Victorian timber companies are quick to point out that the industry here is a different beast. Gunns operates in Victoria, but is focused on producing timber for housing, not woodchips. The international customers of Victorian woodchips have not applied the same pressure to the state's big exporters, Midway and South East Fibre Exports. And the Victorian talks will not have a pulp mill on the table, removing the key ingredient that gave environmentalists leverage in Tasmania.
Gunns has flagged its intention to eventually move out of native forests in Victoria, but chief executive Greg L'Estrange says this is difficult because most of the state's plantation timber is in the far south-west, a long way from its mills in Alexandra in the Central Highlands and Heyfield in Gippsland.
Distance, however, is not the only disincentive. Timber from publicly owned native forests is much cheaper. Environmentalists say forestry in Victoria remains a classic example of old-fashioned feather-bedding. The government provides the land, grows the trees and contracts the workers to cut and cart the timber. The price paid for publicly owned trees does not factor in the true long-term capital cost of managing the forest and producing the trees.
A state parliamentary committee report shows that government timber agency VicForests, was paid between $2.50 and $6.50 a cubic metre for its trees in 2008. This compares with about $50 from commercial plantations.
In a report for environment groups released last week, the National Institute for Industry and Economic Research estimated that if Victoria's public forests were run on the same basis as commercial plantations, the state would receive income of $200 million per year from the sale of wood. In the five years to 2010, VicForests made a total loss before tax of $627,000.
Government support for forestry is not a new phenomenon. Commonwealth and state governments have played an active role for 100 years, initially by setting aside forest reserves to protect the industry from advancing land-clearing for agriculture and later, under former prime minister Robert Menzies, by encouraging dramatic clearing of native forests for softwood plantings.
When this policy ran foul of the environment lobby, tax breaks were introduced for private plantations, prompting the creation of managed investment schemes, including the now troubled Timbercorp and Great Southern - the companies behind the bulk of blue gum farms in south-west Victoria.
The upshot was that the state's major timber export companies enjoyed profits that were the envy of other industries. In more recent years, however, returns have been in a tailspin. Victoria's timber industries have taken a pounding from the global financial crisis, the depressed US housing market, declining Japanese demand for pulp, and lower than expected uptake of timber products by the surging Chinese economy.
Earnings per share for South East Fibre Exports for the year to December 2009 were one-third of the year before, and before-tax profit was down from $15 million to $5.3 million. Victoria's traditional mills are closing as the industry rapidly consolidates and shifts focus from high-end sawlog products to woodchips.
As in Tasmania, jobs are haemorrhaging out of timber - so much so that the forestry division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union last month described the industry nationally as in ''crisis''.
Nationals leader Peter Ryan last month said there were 19,500 workers in the Victorian timber industry, a figure that includes plantation labour. Green groups claim the true native forest workforce is in the hundreds.
CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor is a central and controversial player in the forestry debate. He made a watershed concession after a dogged 20-year defence of native forestry workers. Commenting on Tasmania's draft peace agreement, he said it signalled a way forward for the industry in other states. ''We want the best possible future for our members and their families and if that can be achieved by peace, not war, then let's talk, not fight,'' he said.
These words may well prove pivotal as warring parties sit down to negotiate John Brumby's proposed peace plan.
O'Connor belongs to a small but influential left grouping within the ALP faction that includes Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, as well as senior advisers to both Premier Brumby and Victorian Agriculture Minister Joe Helper.
His change of heart has given Labor the cover it needs to propose Tasmanian-style peace talks for Victoria.
Also important to both the economics and politics of the Victorian industry's future is Labor's announcement last week that it was scrapping its timber trading arm VicForests, and replacing it with a body with a broader forest management remit than just selling wood.
VicForests has few friends, having been widely criticised for its logging practices and lack of economic viability. Judith Ajani, a Victorian government forest policy adviser turned Australian National University academic, says the abolition of VicForests is crucial if real change is to be achieved.
Ahead of this week's state poll, the industry association made clear that it prefers the unapologetically pro-forest position of Ted Baillieu's Coalition.
A Baillieu government would maintain the current level of native forest logging and change contract arrangements to give the industry longer-term certainty.
But, after determined lobbying, forestry industry leaders are also relieved that Labor has opted for peace talks over the preference of some others within government - a unilateral decision to end logging in Melbourne's water catchments.
Philip Dalidakis acknowledges the Tasmanian deal has the potential to ''establish a precedent in the public mind'' about withdrawal from native forests.
In a sign of growing confidence, boosted by progress in Tasmania, most environment groups also back the peace talks over the Melbourne catchment ban. The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation have opted to roll the dice on Labor's forum delivering more fundamental change.
But not everyone is supportive. Bob Humphreys, industry association president and owner of a timber mill at Cann River in East Gippsland, says the talks are unrealistic.
''I don't believe that I could bring myself to sit around the table with … all those environmental groups and try to thrash out an agreement between us because we don't agree,'' he says.
''They are going to keep pushing until there is a total cessation of native forest logging. I will keep pushing until we keep surviving.''
John Brumby says he will not dictate terms to the forestry forum, but under questioning, he confirmed that he expected a shift out of forests and into plantations.
If the parties are able to reach in-principle agreement on such a transition, the question will inevitably become: who pays?
Brumby says he would expect his forum to nut out a joint plan for the future, and the federal government would then be asked for funding to carry out reforms.
Can the differences between the industry and green groups be bridged without a government weighing in?
The industry association maintains there must be a future for both native forest timber and plantations as they provide different products.
Dalidakis says the existing plantations are devoted almost exclusively to wood chips, and that the predominantly blue gum timber grown in the south-west is inadequate for higher value sawlog uses, such as flooring and joinery.
He says a best-case scenario would involve plantations providing timber for domestic flooring in 35 to 60 years. Corporate backing for such a long-term gamble would be non-existent.
''If government is serious about pursuing this policy, then they would have to do it because the resource is not going to come from anywhere else,'' he says.
Environment groups instead emphasise how quickly the shift to plantations can be made.
The recent consultant's report on their behalf found that most of Victoria's native forest logging could be replaced by plantations within five years. It suggested plantations could meet demand for wood for lesser-value products such as woodchips and pulp by plantations by 2015, and most sawn timber for structural products within a decade. Some of the top-end wood products - the floorboards and joinery that make up to 10 per cent of wood from native forests - would take longer.
Judith Ajani sees the Tasmanian model as a positive move, but says governments should not be fooled into paying more than necessary.
''What we're seeing now in these negotiations is an industry push for more government money … That is, business as usual,'' she says. ''It's time to take stock and find out what this industry really is and to let market realities drive plantation investment.''
20 November, 2010
Tasmanian forest industry waits for emergency funds
Sid Maher
The Australian (article), 20 November 2010
An emergency rescue package for the Tasmanian native forest industry promised during the federal election campaign is yet to be delivered.
The delay has sparked fears it could jeopardise an industry restructure that has won the overwhelming support of workers.
A ballot of CFMEU Tasmanian forestry division workers overwhelmingly supported a peace deal between conservationists, the industry and the union, with 97 per cent voting in favour of the industry restructure.
But CFMEU forestry division national president Jane Calvert said concern was growing at the Gillard government's failure to deliver the promised $20 million in emergency assistance to the industry.
Ms Calvert said the funds were to have been earmarked for about 1300 people involved in harvesting and haulage who had been hit hard by the current state of the industry.
She said that, unless the money for the emergency rescue package was delivered shortly, "there will be panic around our industry".
Ms Calvert said the government's procrastination could spark a loss of confidence in the process even though the union ballot vote had delivered a strong mandate for the process to begin.
More than 55 per cent of eligible members voted in the ballot -- about twice the normal turnout -- and 95 per cent endorsed the union's position for a just transition for workers, their families and communities.
On another question, 94 per cent voted for a future ballot on whether to endorse the continued implementation of the restructure.
The overwhelming endorsement of the "statement of principles" struck between environmental organisations, the industry and the union will spur talks on a moratorium on logging in high-conservation areas and, ultimately, a shift away from native forests and into plantation timber.
The CFMEU wants the green lobby and governments to secure the industry's long-term survival around the nation by agreeing to a dramatic expansion of plantation forestry.
Forestry Minister Joe Ludwig said the government would meet its election commitment to help forest contractors and their employees meet the challenges facing the native forest sector in Tasmania. "We recognise that contractors in Tasmania are facing difficulties. I will be making an announcement on the details of this package shortly and offers will be made to successful applicants before Christmas," Senator Ludwig said.
The Australian (article), 20 November 2010
An emergency rescue package for the Tasmanian native forest industry promised during the federal election campaign is yet to be delivered.
The delay has sparked fears it could jeopardise an industry restructure that has won the overwhelming support of workers.
A ballot of CFMEU Tasmanian forestry division workers overwhelmingly supported a peace deal between conservationists, the industry and the union, with 97 per cent voting in favour of the industry restructure.
But CFMEU forestry division national president Jane Calvert said concern was growing at the Gillard government's failure to deliver the promised $20 million in emergency assistance to the industry.
Ms Calvert said the funds were to have been earmarked for about 1300 people involved in harvesting and haulage who had been hit hard by the current state of the industry.
She said that, unless the money for the emergency rescue package was delivered shortly, "there will be panic around our industry".
Ms Calvert said the government's procrastination could spark a loss of confidence in the process even though the union ballot vote had delivered a strong mandate for the process to begin.
More than 55 per cent of eligible members voted in the ballot -- about twice the normal turnout -- and 95 per cent endorsed the union's position for a just transition for workers, their families and communities.
On another question, 94 per cent voted for a future ballot on whether to endorse the continued implementation of the restructure.
The overwhelming endorsement of the "statement of principles" struck between environmental organisations, the industry and the union will spur talks on a moratorium on logging in high-conservation areas and, ultimately, a shift away from native forests and into plantation timber.
The CFMEU wants the green lobby and governments to secure the industry's long-term survival around the nation by agreeing to a dramatic expansion of plantation forestry.
Forestry Minister Joe Ludwig said the government would meet its election commitment to help forest contractors and their employees meet the challenges facing the native forest sector in Tasmania. "We recognise that contractors in Tasmania are facing difficulties. I will be making an announcement on the details of this package shortly and offers will be made to successful applicants before Christmas," Senator Ludwig said.
19 November, 2010
Planting the future
Chris Owens, Lysterfield South
The Age (letter), 19 November 2010
TIM Cleary might like to deride those who care about the natural environment, but the forestry industry will never have ''certainty'' until it gets out of old-growth, high-conservation-value forests (Letters, 18/11).
Australia has the world's worst extinction record in the past 200 years. Environmentalists cannot accept the logging of these forests - habitat for rare and endangered species and a publicly owned asset - at a net loss to the taxpayer.Certainty for the industry means plantations.
As the Brown Mountain court case demonstrated, neither VicForests nor the Department for Sustainability and the Environment was undertaking fauna surveys before the chainsaws were sent in. It was left to volunteer organisations to find rare and endangered species then take legal action to protect them. If Mr Cleary had any regard for endangered wildlife, he would not try to ridicule volunteers doing the job of governments.
The Age (letter), 19 November 2010
TIM Cleary might like to deride those who care about the natural environment, but the forestry industry will never have ''certainty'' until it gets out of old-growth, high-conservation-value forests (Letters, 18/11).
Australia has the world's worst extinction record in the past 200 years. Environmentalists cannot accept the logging of these forests - habitat for rare and endangered species and a publicly owned asset - at a net loss to the taxpayer.Certainty for the industry means plantations.
As the Brown Mountain court case demonstrated, neither VicForests nor the Department for Sustainability and the Environment was undertaking fauna surveys before the chainsaws were sent in. It was left to volunteer organisations to find rare and endangered species then take legal action to protect them. If Mr Cleary had any regard for endangered wildlife, he would not try to ridicule volunteers doing the job of governments.
18 November, 2010
VoteForests 2010 - Life depends on it
The 2010 state election is nigh and the forest policies have been announced by the major parties. The stakes are high for the seats of Seymour and Gembrook as the parties forest policy will be a key determination on who will rule these bedrock Labor seats. Seymour hangs in with a 6% Labor lead and Gembrook ‘s candidate will be decided by a meagre 400 votes, currently held by Labor leader Tammy Lobato. These two seats carry the responsibility for the water supply to millions of people, they house a multitude of endangered species and condition Melbourne’s air quality. They are also the heartland for some of Victoria’s biggest woodchip contracts and supply Japans Nippon Paper with millions of tonnes of woodchips every year.
A coalition of regional environment groups have come together to develop a scorecard for the parties to make it easy for voters to asses the parties based on their environmental policies.
Final Scores:
Labor: 30%
Greens: 90%
Coalition: 0.5%
Today an appeal is being made to regional voters to cast their feelings about the current forest logging at the ballot box on the 27th of November. This is our last chance to save tree’s such as the tree featured above, thought to be 500 years old in the Toolangi state forests.
Appeal: Why Vote Forests?
What are our native forests worth? What value do we place on fresh air, clean water and climate stability? And what will happen to our ecosystems when species are disappearing at such fast rates?
These are the questions we are meant to be asking ourselves in 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity. According to the United Nations, biodiversity is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and vital services our lives depend on.
Forests are biologically diverse systems, representing some of the richest biological areas on Earth. They offer a variety of habitats for plants, animals and micro-organisms. However, forest biodiversity is increasingly threatened as a result of deforestation.
Yet Australia is one of a handful of countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, losing more than 500,000 hectares of native forest a year since 2005. All over the world, other countries are beginning to realise the value of native forests to protect our biodiversity and our heritage.
We all know the value of protecting our heritage buildings, even if it comes at a great cost, not only in capital expenditure but also in loss of commercial activities. Successive Victorian government’s have spent have spent more than 20 million dollars over the last few years protecting the state’s architectural heritage. At the same time, State Government forest policy has allowed logging in forests that date back to when Leonado Da Vinci painted the ‘Last Supper’, the 'Mona Lisa' and Boticelli painted the ‘Birth of Venus.’ These legacies are Victoria’s history, the artefacts of our natural heritage.
Victoria is the most land-cleared state in Australia and yet houses more forest than any other state, including Queensland. Our forests are home to the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, sooty and powerful owls, great gliders and small native fish like the Barred Galaxias.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics estimates that up to 85 per cent of wood coming from the Central Highlands Forest is being sold to Japanese pulp and paper company Nippon for as little as $12 per tonne.
We, the undersigned, are calling on concerned residents of Seymour and Gembrook to let the major parties understand the value of our native forests - vote forests. Let them know that native forests are not just trees. They are the lifeblood of this planet - our history and our future.
We the undersigned support an end to native forest logging:
My Environment Inc
Healesville Environment Watch
Communities Combating Climate Change (C4)
Environment East Gippsland
Friends of the Leadbeater’s Possum
Warburton Environment Inc
Vote forests, life depends on it.
Thank you,
Sarah Rees & the MyEnvironment Team.
When talk is cheap
Tim Cleary, Werribee
The Age (letter), 18 November 2010
ONE of the reasons the Tasmanian forest peace plan got so far was because it was initiated by the participants. The state government stayed out of it until the last minute.
In contrast, the Victorian ALP has committed to getting loggers to talk with greenies from the outset (''Loggers, greenies arguing already'', The Age 17/11). The last time this happened was during the regional forest agreements of the 1990s, which provided no certainty for either side - that's why they are still arguing.
Another possible solution is for the Victorian native forest industry to attain certification to the Forest Stewardship Council standard. This would mean that the loggers would need to improve their standards, and the domestic environmentalists would need to recognise international best practice, not be stuck on commie-hippie-greenie-nimbyism.
The Age (letter), 18 November 2010
ONE of the reasons the Tasmanian forest peace plan got so far was because it was initiated by the participants. The state government stayed out of it until the last minute.
In contrast, the Victorian ALP has committed to getting loggers to talk with greenies from the outset (''Loggers, greenies arguing already'', The Age 17/11). The last time this happened was during the regional forest agreements of the 1990s, which provided no certainty for either side - that's why they are still arguing.
Another possible solution is for the Victorian native forest industry to attain certification to the Forest Stewardship Council standard. This would mean that the loggers would need to improve their standards, and the domestic environmentalists would need to recognise international best practice, not be stuck on commie-hippie-greenie-nimbyism.
17 November, 2010
New study shows a way out of native forests for Victorian timber industry
Media Release - The Wilderness Society and Australian Conservation Foundation
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
An independent report commissioned by The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation outlines how the Victorian forestry and wood products sector can achieve real resource security by making a smooth and rapid transition from native forests into plantations, paving the way for an end to Victoria’s long running forest disputes.
The report by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR), ‘Opportunities, issues and implications for a transition of the Victorian wood products industry from native forest into plantations’ outlines a path for the native forest industry to shift into Victoria’s now huge plantation resource, Australia’s largest, starting immediately.
“So far this election, the Coalition has committed to intensify native forest logging, and the ALP has said they’ll convene talks between the industry & conservationists. Neither party has promised to properly protect our precious native forests, but this report shows it is possible and can be done very quickly,” said The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Forest Campaigner Luke Chamberlain.
“Victoria’s extensive plantations, mainly in Western Victoria, can provide an additional 3.5 million cubic metres of eucalypt hardwood a year – almost three times the volume of low-value logs currently harvested from public native forests.”
According to the study, the vast majority of the wood currently extracted from native forests (mostly woodchips and low value products) can be replaced with plantation timber now, while higher grade wood for joinery and flooring can be sourced from native forests until suitable wood is available in plantations.
“The coming on stream of Victoria’s plantation resource fundamentally shifts the forest debate. It is no longer a case of jobs versus the environment,” said Lindsay Hesketh, Forest Campaign Coordinator for the Australian Conservation Foundation.
“We can protect our native forests and have a vibrant plantation based wood products industry with more jobs, and well positioned to take advantage of growth export markets into Asia.”
“It leaves open the opportunity to leave native forests to do what they do best – store carbon, supply water and protect biodiversity, while using existing plantations for what they do best – wood production.” he concluded.
The report finds:
For further comment contact:
Luke Chamberlain, The Wilderness Society 0424 098 729
Lindsay Hesketh, Australian Conservation Foundation 0418 655 551
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
An independent report commissioned by The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation outlines how the Victorian forestry and wood products sector can achieve real resource security by making a smooth and rapid transition from native forests into plantations, paving the way for an end to Victoria’s long running forest disputes.
The report by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR), ‘Opportunities, issues and implications for a transition of the Victorian wood products industry from native forest into plantations’ outlines a path for the native forest industry to shift into Victoria’s now huge plantation resource, Australia’s largest, starting immediately.
“So far this election, the Coalition has committed to intensify native forest logging, and the ALP has said they’ll convene talks between the industry & conservationists. Neither party has promised to properly protect our precious native forests, but this report shows it is possible and can be done very quickly,” said The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Forest Campaigner Luke Chamberlain.
“Victoria’s extensive plantations, mainly in Western Victoria, can provide an additional 3.5 million cubic metres of eucalypt hardwood a year – almost three times the volume of low-value logs currently harvested from public native forests.”
According to the study, the vast majority of the wood currently extracted from native forests (mostly woodchips and low value products) can be replaced with plantation timber now, while higher grade wood for joinery and flooring can be sourced from native forests until suitable wood is available in plantations.
“The coming on stream of Victoria’s plantation resource fundamentally shifts the forest debate. It is no longer a case of jobs versus the environment,” said Lindsay Hesketh, Forest Campaign Coordinator for the Australian Conservation Foundation.
“We can protect our native forests and have a vibrant plantation based wood products industry with more jobs, and well positioned to take advantage of growth export markets into Asia.”
“It leaves open the opportunity to leave native forests to do what they do best – store carbon, supply water and protect biodiversity, while using existing plantations for what they do best – wood production.” he concluded.
The report finds:
- just as the housing and construction industry has made a transition to plantation based softwood products, it is now possible for the woodchip, pulp and paper sectors to move to a plantation-based resource
- the newly restructured wood industry would have security of supply and be based on leading-edge technology
- Victoria could become a world leader in forest-based carbon stores, helping the state address climate change
- if Victoria’s native forest estate competed with the hardwood plantation sector in a commercially neutral manner, it would generate a return to taxpayers of between $200 and $300 million per year
- the transition to plantation-based forestry will create real financial incentives to invest in the State’s plantation estate and improved processing technology without the need for ongoing State and Federal Government subsidies.
For further comment contact:
Luke Chamberlain, The Wilderness Society 0424 098 729
Lindsay Hesketh, Australian Conservation Foundation 0418 655 551
Loggers, greenies arguing already
Adam Morton and Royce Millar
The Age (article), November 17, 2010
PREMIER John Brumby's proposed Tasmanian-style forest peace plan is under pressure just days after being announced, with environmentalists and timber bosses at loggerheads over a new study into the industry's future.
Research to be released today suggests most of Victoria's native forest logging could be replaced with timber from plantations within five years.
Commissioned by the Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, it found that the demand for wood for lesser-value products such as woodchips and pulp could be met entirely by plantations by 2015. Most higher-grade sawlogs used for floorboards and joinery would come from plantations within a decade.
The study was immediately challenged by Victorian Association of Forest Industries head Philip Dalidakis, who warned he would struggle to negotiate with the Wilderness Society unless it took a more conciliatory approach.
The clash followed Mr Brumby last week promising talks between forestry companies, unions and green groups in a bid to reach consensus over the timber industry's long-term future.
The study, by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research, found there was growing pressure on the government to charge the industry the true cost of native forest timber and put comparatively expensive plantations on a level playing field.
Woodchips from native forest sell for between $2.50 and $6 per cubic metre, compared with about $52 from commercial plantations.
The proportion of native forest timber sold as low-value pulp logs had increased from 50 per cent up to 70 per cent over the past decade. Just 30 per cent becomes saw logs for higher-value uses.
The consultants' report said ''extremely conservative'' assumptions suggested a transition to plantation-based forestry would lead to the industry employing more people than now within five years.
Wilderness Society campaigner Luke Chamberlain said the report showed the vast majority of wood extracted from native forests could be immediately replaced with plantation timber, mostly from western Victoria.
''Political leaders of all parties need to look closely at the historic opportunity we now have to resolve perhaps the longest running and controversial environmental issue in Victoria,'' he said.
Australian Conservation Foundation campaign co-ordinator Lindsay Hesketh said the underpricing of native forest timber had left the industry ''stuck in the past, reliant on subsidies, unable to progress''.
It is believed some in the state government have not been persuaded by the report. The Age understands the government commissioned its own analysis by consultants Fifth Estate. The results of the second study have not been released.
Mr Dalidakis said the environment groups' study was based on flawed modelling and assumptions that undervalued the native forest industry, overestimated the supply from plantations and underestimated the costs of transporting plantation timber from south-west Victoria to a mill at Maryvale, in Gippsland.
The Age (article), November 17, 2010
PREMIER John Brumby's proposed Tasmanian-style forest peace plan is under pressure just days after being announced, with environmentalists and timber bosses at loggerheads over a new study into the industry's future.
Research to be released today suggests most of Victoria's native forest logging could be replaced with timber from plantations within five years.
Commissioned by the Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, it found that the demand for wood for lesser-value products such as woodchips and pulp could be met entirely by plantations by 2015. Most higher-grade sawlogs used for floorboards and joinery would come from plantations within a decade.
The study was immediately challenged by Victorian Association of Forest Industries head Philip Dalidakis, who warned he would struggle to negotiate with the Wilderness Society unless it took a more conciliatory approach.
The clash followed Mr Brumby last week promising talks between forestry companies, unions and green groups in a bid to reach consensus over the timber industry's long-term future.
The study, by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research, found there was growing pressure on the government to charge the industry the true cost of native forest timber and put comparatively expensive plantations on a level playing field.
Woodchips from native forest sell for between $2.50 and $6 per cubic metre, compared with about $52 from commercial plantations.
The proportion of native forest timber sold as low-value pulp logs had increased from 50 per cent up to 70 per cent over the past decade. Just 30 per cent becomes saw logs for higher-value uses.
The consultants' report said ''extremely conservative'' assumptions suggested a transition to plantation-based forestry would lead to the industry employing more people than now within five years.
Wilderness Society campaigner Luke Chamberlain said the report showed the vast majority of wood extracted from native forests could be immediately replaced with plantation timber, mostly from western Victoria.
''Political leaders of all parties need to look closely at the historic opportunity we now have to resolve perhaps the longest running and controversial environmental issue in Victoria,'' he said.
Australian Conservation Foundation campaign co-ordinator Lindsay Hesketh said the underpricing of native forest timber had left the industry ''stuck in the past, reliant on subsidies, unable to progress''.
It is believed some in the state government have not been persuaded by the report. The Age understands the government commissioned its own analysis by consultants Fifth Estate. The results of the second study have not been released.
Mr Dalidakis said the environment groups' study was based on flawed modelling and assumptions that undervalued the native forest industry, overestimated the supply from plantations and underestimated the costs of transporting plantation timber from south-west Victoria to a mill at Maryvale, in Gippsland.
12 November, 2010
The Wilderness Society responds to Labor’s forest package
MEDIA RELEASE, The Wilderness Society
12 November 2010
The Wilderness Society has cautiously welcomed the Labor Party’s promise to support and fund a stakeholder negotiation process to resolve the state’s long-running forest disputes.
“However we are disappointed that this announcement fails to listen to community concerns to protect of our high conservation value native forests and puts the onus on stakeholders in the debate to solve the issue,” said The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Forest Campaigner Luke Chamberlain.
“We welcome the recognition from the Brumby government that just like in Tasmania, the Victorian native forest logging industry is in crisis and needs reform.”
“As in Tasmania, we will take up the challenge and enter these negotiations in good faith,”
“However this does not alter the expectation we have always held that the state government immediately stop logging in Victoria’s high conservation value forests, rule out the burning of native forests for power generation and help move the industry into Victoria’s plantation resource."
“Our native forests are facing a biodiversity crisis after years of over-logging. Our willingness to enter into talks does not absolve the state government of responsibility to show leadership in protecting Victoria’s forests.”
“The commitment to abolish VicForests is a welcome acknowledgment that the agency has failed both economically and environmentally, and that non-timber values such as carbon, water and biodiversity must be prioritised by the new agency.”
“Reinstating pre-logging surveys for East Gippsland is also a good decision, but it must be enacted immediately, and should apply to the whole state, not just one region.
For further comment contact: Luke Chamberlain m: 0424 098 729
Gavan McFadzean m: 0417 754 023
12 November 2010
The Wilderness Society has cautiously welcomed the Labor Party’s promise to support and fund a stakeholder negotiation process to resolve the state’s long-running forest disputes.
“However we are disappointed that this announcement fails to listen to community concerns to protect of our high conservation value native forests and puts the onus on stakeholders in the debate to solve the issue,” said The Wilderness Society’s Victorian Forest Campaigner Luke Chamberlain.
“We welcome the recognition from the Brumby government that just like in Tasmania, the Victorian native forest logging industry is in crisis and needs reform.”
“As in Tasmania, we will take up the challenge and enter these negotiations in good faith,”
“However this does not alter the expectation we have always held that the state government immediately stop logging in Victoria’s high conservation value forests, rule out the burning of native forests for power generation and help move the industry into Victoria’s plantation resource."
“Our native forests are facing a biodiversity crisis after years of over-logging. Our willingness to enter into talks does not absolve the state government of responsibility to show leadership in protecting Victoria’s forests.”
“The commitment to abolish VicForests is a welcome acknowledgment that the agency has failed both economically and environmentally, and that non-timber values such as carbon, water and biodiversity must be prioritised by the new agency.”
“Reinstating pre-logging surveys for East Gippsland is also a good decision, but it must be enacted immediately, and should apply to the whole state, not just one region.
For further comment contact: Luke Chamberlain m: 0424 098 729
Gavan McFadzean m: 0417 754 023
Brumby makes pledge on state forests
Adam Morton and Royce Millar
The Age (article), November 12, 2010
PREMIER John Brumby will today promise ''Tasmanian-style'' peace talks between loggers, unions and environmentalists in a bid to resolve decades of conflict over the forestry industry in Victoria.
A returned Labor state government would also abolish VicForests, the government agency that has faced accusations over its logging practices and economic viability.
But Mr Brumby has not guaranteed that the process will lead to greater protection of the state's old-growth forests.
He said a ''stakeholder forum'' would follow the Tasmanian model, in which timber companies, unions and green groups met for several months before submitting a joint recommendation to the government.
The federal government would then be asked for funding to carry out proposed reforms, including possibly helping workers and communities who lost their jobs.
"We have been encouraged by the approach taken in Tasmania and we hope that stakeholders in Victoria can also put forward a strong and sustainable consensus vision for the timber and forest products industry," Mr Brumby said.
"The key is to provide a fair process where all the parties feel comfortable negotiating and discussing possible solutions, without the government having a predetermined view."
The Age (article), November 12, 2010
PREMIER John Brumby will today promise ''Tasmanian-style'' peace talks between loggers, unions and environmentalists in a bid to resolve decades of conflict over the forestry industry in Victoria.
A returned Labor state government would also abolish VicForests, the government agency that has faced accusations over its logging practices and economic viability.
But Mr Brumby has not guaranteed that the process will lead to greater protection of the state's old-growth forests.
He said a ''stakeholder forum'' would follow the Tasmanian model, in which timber companies, unions and green groups met for several months before submitting a joint recommendation to the government.
The federal government would then be asked for funding to carry out proposed reforms, including possibly helping workers and communities who lost their jobs.
"We have been encouraged by the approach taken in Tasmania and we hope that stakeholders in Victoria can also put forward a strong and sustainable consensus vision for the timber and forest products industry," Mr Brumby said.
"The key is to provide a fair process where all the parties feel comfortable negotiating and discussing possible solutions, without the government having a predetermined view."
10 November, 2010
Government pursues Brown Mountain protest charges
MEDIA RELEASE
Magistrates Court at Melbourne, Wednesday 10 November 2011
In August 2010 the Supreme Court of Victoria found that logging at Brown Mountain was unlawful.
Concerned members of the community protested against logging at Brown Mountain as surveys revealed the existence of threatened species. The government criminally charged these individuals for protesting and their charges have come before the Court today.
Lawyer for the individuals charged, Vanessa Bleyer, invited the government to withdraw the charges.
“Minister Jennings and Premier Brumby should do the right thing and withdraw the charges against those individuals who were taking steps to stop the government breaking the law,” Ms Bleyer said “particularly when their purpose has effectively been vindicated by the Supreme Court”.
“The government refused to withdraw the charges despite the Supreme Court finding that logging at Brown Mountain would be unlawful” she said.
“The individuals are now put to the time and expense of defending the charges against them in the Magistrates’ Court” she continued.
Today, the Court will determine when the matters will next be listed in Court before the final hearing.
For further information contact Vanessa Bleyer on 03 9600 4224 or 0412 58 68 48.
Magistrates Court at Melbourne, Wednesday 10 November 2011
In August 2010 the Supreme Court of Victoria found that logging at Brown Mountain was unlawful.
Concerned members of the community protested against logging at Brown Mountain as surveys revealed the existence of threatened species. The government criminally charged these individuals for protesting and their charges have come before the Court today.
Lawyer for the individuals charged, Vanessa Bleyer, invited the government to withdraw the charges.
“Minister Jennings and Premier Brumby should do the right thing and withdraw the charges against those individuals who were taking steps to stop the government breaking the law,” Ms Bleyer said “particularly when their purpose has effectively been vindicated by the Supreme Court”.
“The government refused to withdraw the charges despite the Supreme Court finding that logging at Brown Mountain would be unlawful” she said.
“The individuals are now put to the time and expense of defending the charges against them in the Magistrates’ Court” she continued.
Today, the Court will determine when the matters will next be listed in Court before the final hearing.
For further information contact Vanessa Bleyer on 03 9600 4224 or 0412 58 68 48.
Want to save the world? Plant a tree
Steven Katsineris, Hurstbridge
The Age (letter), 10 November 2010
SINCE the fires of 2009 there has been an increase in clearing of trees and other native vegetation around Melbourne. In the past 200 years we have cleared billions of trees for agriculture, grazing and human habitation. The loss of these trees and other vegetation has brought about many of the environmental problems we now face in south-eastern Australia.
We need to nurture and maintain trees; by conserving and replanting them we combat climate change, filter and purify our water, cool the earth, stop soil erosion, control salinity, provide shade and shelter, preserve habitat and wildlife.
We all want to protect our families and communities, but rather than helping, cutting down more trees will probably make things worse.
Every tree saved makes a difference to retaining a healthy environment.
The Age (letter), 10 November 2010
SINCE the fires of 2009 there has been an increase in clearing of trees and other native vegetation around Melbourne. In the past 200 years we have cleared billions of trees for agriculture, grazing and human habitation. The loss of these trees and other vegetation has brought about many of the environmental problems we now face in south-eastern Australia.
We need to nurture and maintain trees; by conserving and replanting them we combat climate change, filter and purify our water, cool the earth, stop soil erosion, control salinity, provide shade and shelter, preserve habitat and wildlife.
We all want to protect our families and communities, but rather than helping, cutting down more trees will probably make things worse.
Every tree saved makes a difference to retaining a healthy environment.
09 November, 2010
Be selective
Ian Davidson, Wangaratta
The Age (letter), 9 November 2010
THE end of old-growth logging in Tasmania, and in other states hopefully, is terrific news; but the Greens proposal to end all logging on public land is simplistic and provides conservation no great long-term advantage.
As an independent wildlife biologist with nearly 30 years' experience, I have come to recognise that high-value selection logging, which retains large trees in native forest, is the only land use that maintains all flora and fauna in the long term. I have been in healthy rainforests teeming with wildlife in Borneo where high-quality forest management is practised and many people are still involved and employed, without public expense.
All land requires management to control weeds and feral pests, let alone thinning our many dense regrowth forests - who will pay? By all means stop bad forestry practices, but promote uses of native vegetation that retain wildlife and ecological health, especially if they can be self-funding.Chip backflip
Kath Gannaway
Upper Yarra Mail (article), 9th November 2010
Ray Lewis wants a halt to clear-fell logging of native forests for wood chips.
TOOLANGI resident Ray Lewis is calling on John Brumby to keep the pre-election promise he made in 2005 to ban wood chipping of native forests timber.
He wants the Premier to stand by the election pledge to end native forest woodchipping exports.
However, last week the Premier's office issued a statement saying the government backed the industry's woodchip paper deal.
As Victorians head to the polls, Mr Lewis said he wanted all political parties to commit to ditching clear-fell logging in state forests, and in particular in the water catchments.
And, keep those promises.
“I'm not a greenie, and I have no objection to selective logging, but what you see here is just ripping the guts out of the forest,” Mr Lewis said looking from the hill above his home to a coupe of Silvia Creek Road.
It was at a pre-election rally in Melbourne fifteen years ago that John Brumby, as Leader of the Opposition labelled wood chipping of native forests “a total disaster” in terms of the economic return and the environment.
Slating the Kennett Government for its record on the export woodchip industry before the surprise ALP win, Mr Brumby said: “We need a new direction, we have the opportunity to head in a new direction, a new direction that says no export woodchips from our native forests.”
Mr Lewis says it's time that promise was honoured and that the time is right, with the Tasmanian timber industry's recent announcement they plan to move out of native forests in favour of plantation timber, for all Victorian politicians to bite the bullet on an industry he says sends more native timber overseas as woodchip than it turns into high quality timber products.
While the Department of Sustainability in August reduced the number of coupes approved in its Timber Release Plans by 47 in the Marysville District which includes Toolangi, he says it is not enough.
“They are clearing remnant forest, untouched by the Black Saturday bushfires and when you challenge VicForests or DSE they just tell you they regenerate it,” he said. “You only have to go up to the Monda Track (Toolangi) and see what's been done there. When they clear-fell they take everything, including tree-ferns, some decades old. You can't reseed them.
“They left a buffer zone, but months later came back and cut it all down resulting in damage to trees and ferns on the other side of the road.
A VicForests spokesman in response to questions put to the organisation in July in relation to logging in Toolangi told the Mail while in some instances the Forest Management Plan requires a scenic buffer of specific roads there was no requirement for one on the Monda Track coupe.
He said the section, which Mr Lewis refers to as a buffer, was not logged during the initial harvesting in 2008/09 but was cut in 2009/10 as planned.
In relation to tree-ferns, he said “VicForests does not remove tree ferns from the forest as part of its operations”, but added that “not all ferns survive the harvesting process”.
Upper Yarra Mail (article), 9th November 2010
Ray Lewis wants a halt to clear-fell logging of native forests for wood chips.
TOOLANGI resident Ray Lewis is calling on John Brumby to keep the pre-election promise he made in 2005 to ban wood chipping of native forests timber.
He wants the Premier to stand by the election pledge to end native forest woodchipping exports.
However, last week the Premier's office issued a statement saying the government backed the industry's woodchip paper deal.
As Victorians head to the polls, Mr Lewis said he wanted all political parties to commit to ditching clear-fell logging in state forests, and in particular in the water catchments.
And, keep those promises.
“I'm not a greenie, and I have no objection to selective logging, but what you see here is just ripping the guts out of the forest,” Mr Lewis said looking from the hill above his home to a coupe of Silvia Creek Road.
It was at a pre-election rally in Melbourne fifteen years ago that John Brumby, as Leader of the Opposition labelled wood chipping of native forests “a total disaster” in terms of the economic return and the environment.
Slating the Kennett Government for its record on the export woodchip industry before the surprise ALP win, Mr Brumby said: “We need a new direction, we have the opportunity to head in a new direction, a new direction that says no export woodchips from our native forests.”
Mr Lewis says it's time that promise was honoured and that the time is right, with the Tasmanian timber industry's recent announcement they plan to move out of native forests in favour of plantation timber, for all Victorian politicians to bite the bullet on an industry he says sends more native timber overseas as woodchip than it turns into high quality timber products.
While the Department of Sustainability in August reduced the number of coupes approved in its Timber Release Plans by 47 in the Marysville District which includes Toolangi, he says it is not enough.
“They are clearing remnant forest, untouched by the Black Saturday bushfires and when you challenge VicForests or DSE they just tell you they regenerate it,” he said. “You only have to go up to the Monda Track (Toolangi) and see what's been done there. When they clear-fell they take everything, including tree-ferns, some decades old. You can't reseed them.
“They left a buffer zone, but months later came back and cut it all down resulting in damage to trees and ferns on the other side of the road.
A VicForests spokesman in response to questions put to the organisation in July in relation to logging in Toolangi told the Mail while in some instances the Forest Management Plan requires a scenic buffer of specific roads there was no requirement for one on the Monda Track coupe.
He said the section, which Mr Lewis refers to as a buffer, was not logged during the initial harvesting in 2008/09 but was cut in 2009/10 as planned.
In relation to tree-ferns, he said “VicForests does not remove tree ferns from the forest as part of its operations”, but added that “not all ferns survive the harvesting process”.
03 November, 2010
Call to end native woodchipping
Leslie White
The Weekly Times, November 3, 2010
A contractor for government logging agency VicForests has called for the end of woodchipping of native forests for export.
The contractor, who asked not be named, also said the agency was sending some timber-quality "sawlogs" to the woodchipper and was carting timber from the Central Highlands to East Gippsland for a taxpayer-funded loss of more than $1000 a truckload.
The news comes as Premier John Brumby, who as opposition leader had promised to end wood chipping for export and base the industry on plantations, is under pressure to release a forest policy.
WATCH THE VIDEO: John Brumby promises - back in 1995 - to end wood chipping for export
The contractor said East Gippsland coupes were producing as little as one in 12 truckloads of sawlogs and that the woodchips in the remaining loads were being "given away".
"It's ridiculous - the stuff should just be left standing," the contractor said.
"(Prices paid for woodchips are) supposed to be confidential, but it's around $65 (a cubic metre), and it costs that."
Much of VicForests' operations were based on selling massive volumes of pulp at very small return, he said.
VicForests' annual reports state it has harvested about 1.8 million metres cubic metres of timber in each of the past two years.
The Weekly Times understands Midway and Japanese-owned South East Fibre near Eden, export 900,000 cubic metres of this as woodchips to Japan.
VicForests' biggest customer, the Maryvale Mill, is also Japanese-owned.
The contractor also accused VicForests of converting native forest to "plantation" by "clearing multi-aged species to get a single-aged crop in there" which was easier to harvest.
A spokesman for VicForests said logs were sold at online auctions and that it liaised "closely with sawmill owners" to ensure as many sawlogs as possible were purchased.
VicForests aimed to maximise the number of sawlogs it took from the bush, he said.
VicForests delivered timber across to state "to meet its contractual obligations", he said.
The spokesman said prices paid for wood chips were commercial-in-confidence.
"VicForests actively regenerates all areas which it harvests to enhance the quality of Victoria's forests, and improve the long-term sustainability of the native timber industry," he said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Brumby said the Government had "a strong record in balancing the sustainability of Victoria's timber industry" with "the need to protect biodiversity".
The Weekly Times, November 3, 2010
A contractor for government logging agency VicForests has called for the end of woodchipping of native forests for export.
The contractor, who asked not be named, also said the agency was sending some timber-quality "sawlogs" to the woodchipper and was carting timber from the Central Highlands to East Gippsland for a taxpayer-funded loss of more than $1000 a truckload.
The news comes as Premier John Brumby, who as opposition leader had promised to end wood chipping for export and base the industry on plantations, is under pressure to release a forest policy.
WATCH THE VIDEO: John Brumby promises - back in 1995 - to end wood chipping for export
The contractor said East Gippsland coupes were producing as little as one in 12 truckloads of sawlogs and that the woodchips in the remaining loads were being "given away".
"It's ridiculous - the stuff should just be left standing," the contractor said.
"(Prices paid for woodchips are) supposed to be confidential, but it's around $65 (a cubic metre), and it costs that."
Much of VicForests' operations were based on selling massive volumes of pulp at very small return, he said.
VicForests' annual reports state it has harvested about 1.8 million metres cubic metres of timber in each of the past two years.
The Weekly Times understands Midway and Japanese-owned South East Fibre near Eden, export 900,000 cubic metres of this as woodchips to Japan.
VicForests' biggest customer, the Maryvale Mill, is also Japanese-owned.
The contractor also accused VicForests of converting native forest to "plantation" by "clearing multi-aged species to get a single-aged crop in there" which was easier to harvest.
A spokesman for VicForests said logs were sold at online auctions and that it liaised "closely with sawmill owners" to ensure as many sawlogs as possible were purchased.
VicForests aimed to maximise the number of sawlogs it took from the bush, he said.
VicForests delivered timber across to state "to meet its contractual obligations", he said.
The spokesman said prices paid for wood chips were commercial-in-confidence.
"VicForests actively regenerates all areas which it harvests to enhance the quality of Victoria's forests, and improve the long-term sustainability of the native timber industry," he said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Brumby said the Government had "a strong record in balancing the sustainability of Victoria's timber industry" with "the need to protect biodiversity".
Coalition's forest vow slammed
Adam Morton
The Age (article), November 3, 2010
Environment groups have attacked the opposition's forestry policy, accusing it of planning to intensify logging to a rate that could turn Central Highlands native forests into plantations.
The Coalition says it will guarantee the forestry industry's long-term future by promising current levels of native forest logging could continue. It would also review the frequency at which forests of fast-growing native species are logged.
The Wilderness Society and Australian Conservation Foundation said the Coalition's policy was at odds with a push for employers, unions and environmentalists to follow Tasmania's lead in working on a joint peace deal.
The forestry union has joined activists in calling for a similar process in Victoria.
Coalition agriculture spokesman Peter Walsh said logging rates would only be changed if it was backed by scientists from the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
The Age (article), November 3, 2010
Environment groups have attacked the opposition's forestry policy, accusing it of planning to intensify logging to a rate that could turn Central Highlands native forests into plantations.
The Coalition says it will guarantee the forestry industry's long-term future by promising current levels of native forest logging could continue. It would also review the frequency at which forests of fast-growing native species are logged.
The Wilderness Society and Australian Conservation Foundation said the Coalition's policy was at odds with a push for employers, unions and environmentalists to follow Tasmania's lead in working on a joint peace deal.
The forestry union has joined activists in calling for a similar process in Victoria.
Coalition agriculture spokesman Peter Walsh said logging rates would only be changed if it was backed by scientists from the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
30 October, 2010
In Eden lies knowledge of trees
Paddy Manning
Sydney Morning Herald, October 30, 2010
Also published in WA Today
''Clearing forests may enrich those who are doing it, but over the long run it impoverishes the planet as a whole.'' That's not tree-hugging blather, but a leader in The Economist a few weeks ago.
The magazine wants governments to ''move fast'' to save the world's forests, describing them as ''purveyors of water, consumers of carbon, treasure-houses of species … ecological miracles''.
''Without a serious effort to solve this problem,'' the leader concluded, ''the risk from climate change will be vastly increased and the planet will lose one of its most valuable, and most beautiful, assets. That would be a tragedy.''
A map of the world, inside the magazine's special report, coloured Australia bright red - one of a handful of countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, losing more than 500,000 hectares of forest a year since 2005.
As climate change accelerates, it makes no sense to be chopping down native forest - the cheapest, largest-scale carbon sequestration available. Land-use change (mostly deforestation) accounts for about 15 to 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than all the world's ships, cars, trains and planes.
Afforestation, reforestation and reduced agricultural emissions could, the magazine reported, sequester 40 parts per million of greenhouse gas from the at osphere by 2050. (We are at 450 ppm and rising; we need to get back to 350 ppm.) Old growth forest may be especially significant in its ability to suck up carbon.
Which is one reason there has been an ecstatic reaction to the peace deal negotiated this month to phase out native forest logging in Tasmania.
A lot of detail needs to be fleshed out, and there is plenty of scope for backsliding, but the immediate focus has switched to the mainland. Can a similar coup be achieved here?
Talks are beginning, but it looks hard. At Eden, on the NSW south coast, the Japanese-owned South East Fibre Export woodchip mill is locked in a 40-year fight for survival against conservationists.
Its chief executive, Peter Mitchell, says that SEFE, unlike Gunns, does not have the option of switching to plantation. Too much nearby forest is protected, or is state forest which cannot be converted to plantation.
Woodchip prices are down. A value-adding pulp mill is not an option - the region does not have enough water and, at roughly a million tonnes a year, throughput is too small to justify the investment needed.
The mill is a major employer in the Eden area, whose economy the federal Labor MP Mike Kelly - also the parliamentary secretary for forestry - describes as tenuous. Parliamentary library research he's done confirms SEFE can't move to a wholly plantation base.
A bright spot for SEFE was a proposal, now before the NSW government, to build a five megawatts biomass plant to burn so-called fines - residues from their own mill, and from nearby sawmills - to generate renewable electricity. At the moment the residues either help power the Bega Cheese factory or are sold as mulch and carted away. Some is wasted.
The plant would power the mill and, if excess power was sold on and renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated, it could be a nice little earner.
SEFE estimates that on top of turnover of about $70 million a year, if the biomass plant generated its forecast 31,000MWh a year, sold on at $80/MWh (based on a REC price of $35 and a wholesale electricity price of 5.5¢/kWh) it would pull in about $2.5 million.
Which is not make-or-break - SEFE will survive if the plant does not get up. A key question is whether the local retailer Country Energy, the only logical buyer, will buy power from a controversial project. Mitchell says Country offered SEFE an indicative price a year ago.
''They'll buy it,'' he says, ''but they wouldn't sell it as Green Power.'' Country dodged the question this week, saying it has all the renewable energy it needs for now.
Conservationists fear the Eden biomass proposal is a test case, the thin end of the wedge, which would provide a vast new market to prop up native forest logging, just as the economic case for traditional woodchip operations is unravelling. It may seem crazy to log native forest for renewable energy now, but if a carbon price is brought in, and it rises as expected, dragging REC prices up with it, what now seems uneconomic could soon become a major industry. It is a deal-breaker for the environment movement if native forest can be burnt to generate ''renewable'' energy.
''It's the number-one conspiracy theory we get thrown at us,'' says Mitchell, adding that the REC regime incorporates a ''high value test'' that prevents logging for the primary purpose of generating energy. NSW environment protection laws prevent use of forest residues for power generation. Mill residues are OK.
Kelly, whose seat of Eden-Monaro takes in both the Snowy Hydro scheme and Infigen's Capital wind farm at Bungendore, wants the region to be Australia's renewable energy flagship and is working with the Clean Energy for Eternity movement, which promotes a ''50/50 by 2020'' emissions reduction target.
Kelly is a cautious supporter of the SEFE project as long as it does not use native forest waste, although he supports native forest logging in the region.
The forestry division national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Michael O'Connor, is equally guarded. The union's position will depend on the outcome of collective agreement negotiations at SEFE. ''We're not going to support any employer … if they don't have good, safe union jobs. It's a bit like someone you live next door to. If they're rude to you, you're less likely to help them out.''
paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au
Sydney Morning Herald, October 30, 2010
Also published in WA Today
''Clearing forests may enrich those who are doing it, but over the long run it impoverishes the planet as a whole.'' That's not tree-hugging blather, but a leader in The Economist a few weeks ago.
The magazine wants governments to ''move fast'' to save the world's forests, describing them as ''purveyors of water, consumers of carbon, treasure-houses of species … ecological miracles''.
''Without a serious effort to solve this problem,'' the leader concluded, ''the risk from climate change will be vastly increased and the planet will lose one of its most valuable, and most beautiful, assets. That would be a tragedy.''
A map of the world, inside the magazine's special report, coloured Australia bright red - one of a handful of countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, losing more than 500,000 hectares of forest a year since 2005.
As climate change accelerates, it makes no sense to be chopping down native forest - the cheapest, largest-scale carbon sequestration available. Land-use change (mostly deforestation) accounts for about 15 to 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than all the world's ships, cars, trains and planes.
Afforestation, reforestation and reduced agricultural emissions could, the magazine reported, sequester 40 parts per million of greenhouse gas from the at osphere by 2050. (We are at 450 ppm and rising; we need to get back to 350 ppm.) Old growth forest may be especially significant in its ability to suck up carbon.
Which is one reason there has been an ecstatic reaction to the peace deal negotiated this month to phase out native forest logging in Tasmania.
A lot of detail needs to be fleshed out, and there is plenty of scope for backsliding, but the immediate focus has switched to the mainland. Can a similar coup be achieved here?
Talks are beginning, but it looks hard. At Eden, on the NSW south coast, the Japanese-owned South East Fibre Export woodchip mill is locked in a 40-year fight for survival against conservationists.
Its chief executive, Peter Mitchell, says that SEFE, unlike Gunns, does not have the option of switching to plantation. Too much nearby forest is protected, or is state forest which cannot be converted to plantation.
Woodchip prices are down. A value-adding pulp mill is not an option - the region does not have enough water and, at roughly a million tonnes a year, throughput is too small to justify the investment needed.
The mill is a major employer in the Eden area, whose economy the federal Labor MP Mike Kelly - also the parliamentary secretary for forestry - describes as tenuous. Parliamentary library research he's done confirms SEFE can't move to a wholly plantation base.
A bright spot for SEFE was a proposal, now before the NSW government, to build a five megawatts biomass plant to burn so-called fines - residues from their own mill, and from nearby sawmills - to generate renewable electricity. At the moment the residues either help power the Bega Cheese factory or are sold as mulch and carted away. Some is wasted.
The plant would power the mill and, if excess power was sold on and renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated, it could be a nice little earner.
SEFE estimates that on top of turnover of about $70 million a year, if the biomass plant generated its forecast 31,000MWh a year, sold on at $80/MWh (based on a REC price of $35 and a wholesale electricity price of 5.5¢/kWh) it would pull in about $2.5 million.
Which is not make-or-break - SEFE will survive if the plant does not get up. A key question is whether the local retailer Country Energy, the only logical buyer, will buy power from a controversial project. Mitchell says Country offered SEFE an indicative price a year ago.
''They'll buy it,'' he says, ''but they wouldn't sell it as Green Power.'' Country dodged the question this week, saying it has all the renewable energy it needs for now.
Conservationists fear the Eden biomass proposal is a test case, the thin end of the wedge, which would provide a vast new market to prop up native forest logging, just as the economic case for traditional woodchip operations is unravelling. It may seem crazy to log native forest for renewable energy now, but if a carbon price is brought in, and it rises as expected, dragging REC prices up with it, what now seems uneconomic could soon become a major industry. It is a deal-breaker for the environment movement if native forest can be burnt to generate ''renewable'' energy.
''It's the number-one conspiracy theory we get thrown at us,'' says Mitchell, adding that the REC regime incorporates a ''high value test'' that prevents logging for the primary purpose of generating energy. NSW environment protection laws prevent use of forest residues for power generation. Mill residues are OK.
Kelly, whose seat of Eden-Monaro takes in both the Snowy Hydro scheme and Infigen's Capital wind farm at Bungendore, wants the region to be Australia's renewable energy flagship and is working with the Clean Energy for Eternity movement, which promotes a ''50/50 by 2020'' emissions reduction target.
Kelly is a cautious supporter of the SEFE project as long as it does not use native forest waste, although he supports native forest logging in the region.
The forestry division national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Michael O'Connor, is equally guarded. The union's position will depend on the outcome of collective agreement negotiations at SEFE. ''We're not going to support any employer … if they don't have good, safe union jobs. It's a bit like someone you live next door to. If they're rude to you, you're less likely to help them out.''
paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au
29 October, 2010
Road to extinction
Jill Sanguinetti, Narbethong
The Age (letter), 29 October 2010
ENVIRONMENT Minister Tony Burke's newly released biodiversity plan (''Biodiversity plan to lock up land'', The Age, 27/10) is woefully inadequate given the biodiversity crisis upon us.
The UN Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 report released in May found that the target set by the UN in 2002, to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, was not met. In fact, the rate of extinctions and habitat loss has significantly accelerated since 2002. The report calls for urgent, direct action to reverse a projected dramatic loss of biodiversity in the next 10 years.
If Tony Burke is listening he will call for an immediate halt to clear-fell logging in remaining pockets of ecologically mature, mixed-age forests that are home to vulnerable and culturally valued species.
In the central highlands of Victoria, species such as spotted quoll, Leadbeater's possum, greater glider and sooty and powerful owl are facing local or absolute extinction; floral species are being lost to clear-felling and monocultural plantation; and the habitat of iconic species such as superb lyrebirds and wallabies is being erased at an unprecedented rate. A five-year plan to meet biodiversity targets is way too slow.
28 October, 2010
No forest quick fix: union
Adam Morton
The Age (article), October 28, 2010
THE forestry workers' union has warned the Brumby government not to make a quick-fix election commitment on native forests to woo the green vote, saying it would kill any chance of a Tasmanian-style peace deal for Victoria.
The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union has called for forestry peace talks for Victoria similar to those in Tasmania, where the timber industry and environment groups last week agreed to a framework deal to phase out the majority of native forest logging.
Michael O'Connor - the CFMEU forestry division national secretary who will lead the entire union from January - said Victorian timber companies had already been approached about joining talks on the industry's future.
But he said this did not mean the union supported an end to native forest logging in Victoria, and cautioned against the state government promising a ''five-minute fix'' before the November 27 poll.
It is understood Labor figures have been considering an election forestry commitment, with ending logging in Melbourne's water catchments a likely priority.
Mr O'Connor said: ''My view is, if the government wanted to play around the edges with this issue they probably would kill off instantly any chance of a similar process as Tasmania ever happening.
''People who are advocating certain positions about the forestry issue just because there is an election around the corner, shouldn't let the blood rush to their head.''
Mr O'Connor said the native forest industry was in crisis, and that peace talks were the best way to give security to forestry workers and towns. In the meantime, he called for the forest area available for logging to remain unchanged and timber contracts overhauled to protect workers' rights.
Wilderness Society forests campaigner Luke Chamberlain called on the government to commit to supporting Victorian peace talks. He said they would need to protect native forests and give the logging industry a secure future in plantations.
Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Philip Dalidakis said the association would expect to be involved if talks went ahead, but they would have to be on a different basis to Tasmania's.
Environment Minister Gavin Jennings said the government would talk to all parties before any decisions.
Opposition spokesman Peter Walsh said a Coalition government would give security to the timber industry by guaranteeing ongoing access to forests. It would support peace talks if they had industry backing, but said it was ''very early days''.
The Age (article), October 28, 2010
THE forestry workers' union has warned the Brumby government not to make a quick-fix election commitment on native forests to woo the green vote, saying it would kill any chance of a Tasmanian-style peace deal for Victoria.
The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union has called for forestry peace talks for Victoria similar to those in Tasmania, where the timber industry and environment groups last week agreed to a framework deal to phase out the majority of native forest logging.
Michael O'Connor - the CFMEU forestry division national secretary who will lead the entire union from January - said Victorian timber companies had already been approached about joining talks on the industry's future.
But he said this did not mean the union supported an end to native forest logging in Victoria, and cautioned against the state government promising a ''five-minute fix'' before the November 27 poll.
It is understood Labor figures have been considering an election forestry commitment, with ending logging in Melbourne's water catchments a likely priority.
Mr O'Connor said: ''My view is, if the government wanted to play around the edges with this issue they probably would kill off instantly any chance of a similar process as Tasmania ever happening.
''People who are advocating certain positions about the forestry issue just because there is an election around the corner, shouldn't let the blood rush to their head.''
Mr O'Connor said the native forest industry was in crisis, and that peace talks were the best way to give security to forestry workers and towns. In the meantime, he called for the forest area available for logging to remain unchanged and timber contracts overhauled to protect workers' rights.
Wilderness Society forests campaigner Luke Chamberlain called on the government to commit to supporting Victorian peace talks. He said they would need to protect native forests and give the logging industry a secure future in plantations.
Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Philip Dalidakis said the association would expect to be involved if talks went ahead, but they would have to be on a different basis to Tasmania's.
Environment Minister Gavin Jennings said the government would talk to all parties before any decisions.
Opposition spokesman Peter Walsh said a Coalition government would give security to the timber industry by guaranteeing ongoing access to forests. It would support peace talks if they had industry backing, but said it was ''very early days''.
26 October, 2010
Pulpwood uses
Peter Sheehan, Camberwell
The Age (letter), 26 October 2010
Judith Wakeman (Letters, 24/10) correctly observes that by volume, sawlogs comprise only about one third of a native forest harvest. By her argument, fertiliser must be the main purpose of cattle farming. After all, only about a third of an animal ends up as saleable meat.
Pulpwood is not just a low-value downfall product. Converted to particle and fibre boards, it comprises an increasing proportion of expensive ''solid'' timber products like flooring and furniture. Further, we all use an awful lot of paper.
The Age (letter), 26 October 2010
Judith Wakeman (Letters, 24/10) correctly observes that by volume, sawlogs comprise only about one third of a native forest harvest. By her argument, fertiliser must be the main purpose of cattle farming. After all, only about a third of an animal ends up as saleable meat.
Pulpwood is not just a low-value downfall product. Converted to particle and fibre boards, it comprises an increasing proportion of expensive ''solid'' timber products like flooring and furniture. Further, we all use an awful lot of paper.
25 October, 2010
Call time on subsidies
John Hermans, Clifton Creek
The Age (letter), October 25, 2010NOT only are we losing our biodiversity, carbon stores, water runoff, honey production and tourism from our publicly owned native forests in Victoria, but taxpayers are subsidising this industry. I think, Premier Brumby, its time is up.
Tamar Valley wrong place
Anne Layton-Bennett, Swan Bay, TasThe Age (letter), October 25, 2010
It is therefore disappointing that Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange is continuing to spruik this flawed and deeply unpopular pulp mill to potential investors. Hopefully they will have realised the Tamar Valley is, and always will be, the wrong place to build a pulp mill. And perhaps they have also reached the conclusion, correctly, that it will never receive the ''social licence'' - community acceptance - so crucial to Gunns' requirements. Mr L'Estrange now needs to accept this.
GUNNS withdrew the proposed pulp mill project from the independent Resource Planning and Development Authority in 2007 knowing full well it had been judged ''critically non-compliant''. When the project then received the government rubber stamp of approval in the fast-tracked and shameful approval process that followed, little attempt had been made to tackle any of these ''critically non-compliant'' aspects properly.
It is therefore disappointing that Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange is continuing to spruik this flawed and deeply unpopular pulp mill to potential investors. Hopefully they will have realised the Tamar Valley is, and always will be, the wrong place to build a pulp mill. And perhaps they have also reached the conclusion, correctly, that it will never receive the ''social licence'' - community acceptance - so crucial to Gunns' requirements. Mr L'Estrange now needs to accept this.
Pulp mill still on agenda
John Hayward, Weegena, Tas
The Age (letter), October 25, 2010
THOSE applauding Tasmania's ''in principle'' forestry agreement should use no more than one hand. Gunns still plans the third-largest pulp mill in the world. While now vowing to source all of the mill's 4.5 million tonne input from plantations, it is refusing to surrender the 1.5 million tonnes a year allocation of very cheap public forest wood it was earlier promised under the mill's wood supply agreement. The company has also spoken of demanding $200 million compensation for abandoning further inroads into state forests.
Other native forest loggers are demanding 30 years to exit the industry, which, at present logging rates, will render the preservation issue entirely academic. When seeking models of progressive governance, Tassie belongs among your last stops.
Woodchips are the main game
Judith Wakeman, Templestowe
The Age (letter), October 25, 2010
ACCORDING to the most recent Monitoring Annual Harvest Performance report, published by the Department of Sustainability and the Environment (August 2008), 1,667,600 cubic metres of commercial timber was harvested from Victoria's state forests in 2006-07. Of this, 24.7 per cent became sawlogs and 68.5 per cent became woodchips. (In fire salvage areas, 11.5 per cent became sawlogs and 75 per cent became woodchips.) It would seem that sawlog production has become a byproduct of the woodchip industry. There has to be a better way to produce paper.
The same report stated that ''sufficient information on regeneration and thinning operations [within Victoria's state forests] was not provided to allow adequate reporting'' of regeneration operations. Surely it is not possible to regenerate 600-year-old trees in 120 years. And it is certainly not possible to regenerate extinct wildlife.
The Age (letter), October 25, 2010
ACCORDING to the most recent Monitoring Annual Harvest Performance report, published by the Department of Sustainability and the Environment (August 2008), 1,667,600 cubic metres of commercial timber was harvested from Victoria's state forests in 2006-07. Of this, 24.7 per cent became sawlogs and 68.5 per cent became woodchips. (In fire salvage areas, 11.5 per cent became sawlogs and 75 per cent became woodchips.) It would seem that sawlog production has become a byproduct of the woodchip industry. There has to be a better way to produce paper.
The same report stated that ''sufficient information on regeneration and thinning operations [within Victoria's state forests] was not provided to allow adequate reporting'' of regeneration operations. Surely it is not possible to regenerate 600-year-old trees in 120 years. And it is certainly not possible to regenerate extinct wildlife.
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