Native forest logs 'torched'

Leslie White
Weekly Times Now, 22 June 2012   

HUNDREDS of tonnes of native forest logs harvested for timber have instead been "torched''.

They have been torched by a government agency, eyewitnesses say. And the locals question the viability of the Victorian Government logging agency.

VicForests harvested coupes near Genoa last year.

Locals say logs good enough for timber products – known as sawlogs – were not removed from the site, instead being pushed into piles and burned.

And a local firewood business is fuming - it says between 400 and 600 tonnes of logs it was negotiating to buy have been reduced to ash.

But VicForests says it used the wood available within the coupe.

Genoa firewood business owner Fred Becker, who along with his brother had run a sawmill in the area for decades, said he'd monitored local VicForests' coupes near his business for months.

"We offered to buy and process the logs onsite,'' Mr Becker said.

"We had meetings with them. It had been logged about nine months, the logs were just sitting there. There was between 400 and 600 tonnes. It could have sustained us for two or three years.

"We checked it out (again) after they torched it. I feel sick in the guts."

Rather than allow his business to use the logs, the government had instead assigned his business a new "green" coupe to log, he said.

This meant a new coupe would be logged unnecessarily and the wood he'd get from the new coupe would have to be dried over summer before it was ready to sell, Mr Becker said.

A VicForests spokesman said all timber "which could be supplied to customers was recovered'', "with firewood delivered to a customer holding an existing firewood contract with VicForests''.

A regeneration burn was completed to re-establish forest on the site, he said.

A local who would not be named said log trucks had to be dragged out of the coupes by bulldozers because conditions during harvest were so wet.

Wallagaraugh landowner Tony Brindley said VicForests shouldn't "go to all that trouble and then burn it".

"They were C grade (saw) logs, I know for a fact," Mr Brindley said.

"There were hundreds, not half a dozen.

"It's been done disgracefully. (Silt) is washing into the gullies and the Wallegrah River. Environmentally, it's a frigging disaster," Mr Brindley said.

"There's no money in it for anyone, but . . . they run a weird dole system where they employ people just to keep the thing ticking over," Mr Brindley said.

VicForests logs about $130 million worth of native forest a year.

It reported a profit of $2.3 million in the financial year ending 2011, a profit of $3.6 million in 2010, a loss of $5 million in 2009, a profit of $538,000 in 2008 and a loss of $17,000 in 2007.

It has not paid any dividend to government in the past four years.

Its 2011 annual report stated "net cash flow from operating activities remained negative as a major sawlog customer delayed payments" – and "total liabilities increased from $36.8 million in 2010 to $42.5 million".

The Auditor General has never completed a report on VicForests.

But the VicForests spokesman said the government body was "part of a broader timber industry which contributes more than $1 billion to Victoria's economy each year".

"In addition to posting a profit of $2.3 million last year, VicForests allocated contracts worth more than $100 million to small and medium sized businesses across regional Victoria," the spokesman said.

"Another $7 million was spent maintaining and upgrading the road network in Victoria's State forests. All harvesting operations comply with the Code of Forest Practice."

No credits due as forests plundered :

Michael Bachelard

The Age, June 9, 2012

Peatland recently cleared by burning near the village of Kayee Lon in Aceh. 

IN 2007, young Australian entrepreneur Dorjee Sun began a mission to save the world. He criss-crossed the globe with a documentary crew, inserting himself into climate change negotiations in a way that eventually made him one of Time magazine's ''Heroes of the Environment''.

At the same time, climate change was killing then prime minister John Howard. An Inconvenient Truth was playing on Australian screens, the Stern report shocked the world and opposition leader Kevin Rudd was capturing the popular mood that something - anything - must be done.

It was, in retrospect, the high-water mark for belief in action on climate change and low tide for the sceptics. It was in this atmosphere that Howard and Sun both found climate salvation in the same place - the tropical peat forests of Indonesia.

Anwar Ibrahim, his wife Fatima Yani and their child Muhammad Irfan. Ibrahim has lost faith in REDD. Photo: Michael Bachelard

''What are we going to do now, this year or next year, to make a difference?'' a fervent Dorjee Sun asks in his documentary, The Burning Season. ''Because the forests don't have that long.''
Howard's answer to the same question was a massive cash injection.

''Australia will form a global fund to fight illegal logging and forest destruction worldwide,'' page one of The Australian announced on his behalf in March of that election year, ''with the aim of halving the rate of deforestation and achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions 10 times greater than under the Kyoto Protocol.''

It was Howard's silver bullet, his version of a ''direct action'' pledge that cleverly skirted his refusal to sign Kyoto. In December, the United Nations caught up, agreeing in Bali, amid backslapping and cheers, to accept Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, as a valid way of tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

A team paid to clear the forest from the peat swamp near the village of Kayee Lon in Aceh. Photo: Michael Bachelard

Five years on, the silver bullet has misfired. 



The REDD schemes in Indonesia funded with Australian government money have come under serious criticism for overstating their aims and under-delivering on results. Greens leader Christine Milne recently labelled the largest of them a ''total failure''.

The private sector has fared even worse. Most of the for-profit schemes in Indonesia have faltered or fallen spectacularly, recriminations flying.

Dorjee Sun's landmark project is one of them. A deal he set up with the government of Aceh, Indonesia's westernmost province, to develop a carbon credit scheme has stalled, perhaps fatally, and 770,000 hectares of forest is in limbo.

Sun himself, in the eyes of the environmental lobby, has sold out. For cash and shares worth millions he sold half of his business to a Canadian gold mining company whose aim is to turn a forest-clad mountaintop into an open-cut mine using cyanide leaching to extract the riches.
His partner in the effort, former Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf, was so disillusioned with REDD he accused the global community of using his region as a ''carbon toilet''.

Five years after high tide, Indonesia remains one of the biggest deforesters on the planet. Once Australia's best hope for REDD, it is yet to generate a single carbon credit or earn one dollar for preserving its forests. Credible observers wonder if it ever will.

For the Gillard government, this is more than just a historical problem.

Labor's carbon trading scheme, which begins its fixed-price period on July 1, needs a big supply of carbon credits sourced from other countries. Without 434 million tonnes of offsets bought offshore per year by 2050, Treasury believes Australia cannot meet even its modest greenhouse reduction targets.

Until now, it has been believed saving Indonesian forests could supply many of these offshore credits quickly and cheaply. ''A post 2012 outcome that puts us on a path to 450 [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere] is only achievable with comprehensive coverage of REDD,'' said then climate change minister Penny Wong in 2009, adding that it would reduce the cost of global emission reduction ''by around 20 to 25 per cent''.

The government's National Carbon Offset Standard announced in March makes it possible for businesses to buy forestry credits, with suitable safeguards. But as things stand now, even if a global carbon trade materialises, many wonder if Indonesian forests can ever play a part.

''REDD? It's like farting,'' says one local villager between sips of the famous coffee in Aceh. ''It's like selling air. It doesn't make sense.''

In concept, REDD is simple. Every tonne of carbon locked up in peatlands or inhaled by trees, and saved from logging or palm oil plantations, creates carbon credits. These can be sold to big companies that cannot reduce their own emissions for a lower price and the profits go to the forest communities, local governments and project proponents.

In theory it's a win-win-win: emitting companies gain access to cheap credits; the forests and their orang-utan, tiger and elephant populations are preserved; and the income stream replaces the money on offer from the loggers, miners or palm oil plantations. But these benefits have been excruciatingly slow to emerge.

Anwar Ibrahim is a farmer and a mukim - the leader of several villages - at the edge of the Ulu Masen conservation area. Ibrahim sits with his family on the wooden floor of a hut in one of his paddocks near the village of Sayeng, chuckling robustly. ''They're talking about selling air! But it's not whether I agree or disagree with that expression, it's simply that it doesn't exist, it doesn't happen.''

As a mukim, Ibrahim has attended multiple meetings - he counts 31 since 2007 - on REDD. At a recent meeting they were warned solemnly about potential corruption in a program that does not even exist.
This area was the hardest hit in the 2004 tsunami, and non-government organisations of all sorts have helped rebuild. The only ones, says Ibrahim, whose advice has been worthless are the ones spruiking REDD. ''They invite people and then we all go and sleep in the Hermes [Banda Aceh's only luxury hotel], and after that nothing happens … It's useless. The story of REDD is just a lie.''

Ibrahim is careful to make clear he wouldn't mind being paid cash to save the forests. He turns to me, grinning broadly, and says: ''Australia! Send us your money!'' He insists, however, there is no need for it because the local people have learnt to look after the forest anyway. But about 20 kilometres down the road, the smell of recent burning belies his faith.

Here, near the village of Kayee Lon, the ground is black, the forest devastated. This fire is fresh, was deliberately lit and was designed to clear the forest for palm oil.

An 11-man crew is clearing the burnt trees then cutting down more for firewood. Their leader, Safari, says they have been working for local land-owners since 2007, busily clearing forests at the rate of about 15 trees per day.

The ground underfoot is soft. Step too heavily and your foot sinks deep. This is peat and it contains millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. As long as the water-soaked forest is intact, the carbon remains locked in place. But as soon as it is cut and burnt, then drained via canals for agriculture, the woody mass - which can be metres thick - decomposes, releasing its stores of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Sumatra, Borneo and West Papua have among the richest peat forests in the world. Those in Borneo alone hold up to 70 times the carbon emitted annually by the combustion of fossil fuels worldwide.
The forest in this beautiful, mountainous province remains relatively intact because for decades the fierce combatants in the Free Aceh Movement's separatist battle against Indonesia used it for refuge. But that is beginning to change as people seek out economic opportunities.

The burning in Kayee Lon is probably illegal. Under national laws, clearing deep peat is prohibited. But good luck getting these laws enforced. On one fire-scarred plot, marked and unmarked police cars unload oil palm seedlings. Workers tell us ''high-ranking officials'' from the Aceh police force actually own the land. ''Everyone has a permit,'' insists a worker, Syukul, on a neighbouring piece of land.
This may well be true. In rural Indonesia, land title is rarely clear. And it's not just the forest that's tangled and impenetrable.

When democracy came to Indonesia after 1998, the government in Jakarta radically de-centralised, conferring significant power on local authorities and regional (the equivalent to Australian state) governments. These local governments issue permits over land with very little scrutiny. Corruption is rife, and the judges are as bad as the bureaucrats - in Aceh, 20 million rupiah ($A2200) is enough to get criminal charges dismissed.

But when Dorjee Sun first came to Aceh in 2007 and sold the miracle of REDD to his new friend, Governor Irwandi, none of this seemed like an obstacle, and it is not suggested that either have acted dishonestly.

''I did make a lot of promises to him,'' Sun tells The Saturday Age. ''I painted a picture which I guess only a naive 29-year-old can do, which was, 'Hey, Gov! Trust in this market which is going to happen and you will be paid for this forest protection'.''

Sun and Irwandi's plan was to save 770,000 hectares of this forest, home to 982,000 people as well as orang-utans, elephants and Sumatran tigers. Every year for the next 30 years, 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions would be avoided and the credits sold on the global carbon market.
They even convinced American banking giant Merrill Lynch to trade the carbon credits for them in an options deal worth up to $10 million. The deal made modest celebrities of Sun and Irwandi, who were portrayed as practical environmentalists using the profit motive to save the planet. Sun became a 2009 Time magazine Environmental Hero; Merrill Lynch won the 2008 Carbon Finance Transaction of the Year.

Sun is not so naive any more. The contractual negotiations were gruelling and the local politics complex. Even an accurate map of the area proved elusive. Then last year his sponsor, Irwandi, became involved in a fight for his political life which, two months ago, he lost. A spokesman for Irwandi's replacement as Aceh governor, Zaini Abdullah, would say only that everything to do with Ulu Masen was now under review.

Dr Jeff Carmichael, a businessman and foundation chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, has a ''seven-figure sum'' invested in Sun's project. He remains fully supportive of Ulu Masen, but says the biggest risk has always been Aceh's politics. If the new governor goes cold, the project ''probably comes to a stop; there's no point putting more money into it''.
In Sun's view, the biggest problem was the failure of the global community to come up with a large-scale carbon market for REDD credits. Carbon credits are now bought and sold on what is called the ''voluntary market''. Airline companies use this to offset the emissions from their flights, as do some manufacturing companies to paint themselves green.

If a global trading market ever evolves under the United Nation's painfully drawn-out processes, it would be a ''compliance market'' vaster, deeper and more able to provide financial incentives to develop REDD schemes. But the only existing market, run by the European Union, does not accept forest credits.
The Rio+20 summit this month marks 20 years since the first Earth Summit, but a global trading system still seems a long way off. Without this, what Sun calls ''the cavalry of carbon'', any large-scale REDD scheme is going to have trouble competing against the other possible land uses in Indonesia.
So, as illegal burning and mining continues, Sun's project is becalmed. Some of the forest rangers who are employed to protect the trees ''still cut the trees themselves'', says Firman Hidayat, who once helped train people here in REDD.

Sun says he has not given up, but he has changed his idea of what's possible. He is now focused on ''REDD 2.0'' - doing direct deals with big companies to protect the remnant forests within their concessions.

In Ulu Masen, REDD 2.0 meant ceding a forest-clad mountaintop, Miwah, a half-day trek from the nearest road, to a company that wants to make it into a 6000-hectare, open-cut gold pit. In May last year, Sun sold half the shares in Carbon Conservation to Vancouver-listed miner East Asia Minerals for $US700,000 plus 2,584,210 shares - then worth $3 million - in the mining company. The gold under Miwah is worth $5 billion.

East Asia Minerals does not yet have a permit to mine it because it lies underneath protected ''primary forest''. But environmentalists have accused Sun of allowing the company to improve its chances of gaining government approval by ''greenwashing'' the venture. Elfian Effendi of respected Indonesian organisation Greenomics, argued that Sun used the carbon project as collateral to make money. And Frank Momberg, the chief of Flora and Fauna International - Sun's former environmental and community partner in Ulu Masen - says he no longer has a relationship with Carbon Conservation.

According to Sun, the deal was a genuine attempt to sacrifice a small part of Ulu Masen to protect the rest. The miner would pay ''substantial'' royalties to save the forests outside the actual mining zone. Sun says the gold company's former CEO Mike Hawkins, was sincere in his desire to develop ''green gold'' - an environmentally friendly product that could be compared to ''blood-free diamonds'', using new, green mining techniques.

But East Asia Minerals has changed chief executive twice since then. Late last year it installed Ed Rochette, a renowned mining Mr Fix-it who told a recent conference in Bali Indonesia was, ''without a doubt, one of the top-three places [in the world] for current investment in mineral projects''.
Sun concedes Rochette regards the ''green gold'' deal as a legacy issue and ''not really something that he would have done''. Any pretence of special mining techniques has also disappeared from East Asia's releases - Rochette said in January ''the ore [at Miwah] should be able to be processed in a conventional gold cyanidation circuit''.

The gold deal has severely dented Sun's reputation in Aceh. ''They heard it and said, 'Oh, we are cheated','' recalls Hadi Daryanto, the secretary-general of Indonesia's forestry department in Jakarta.
One of Governor Irwandi's senior environment advisers, Wibisono, has said the deal destroyed trust. ''People started to think that … the intention was not to protect the environment, [but for Sun] to occupy all that land, and then later on-sell it to the mining company or plantation.'' Since then, he says, the mining company has tried every method possible to have the forest re-categorised, including approaching the government through its powerful ex-combatant constituency.

For his part, Irwandi has become morbidly disillusioned with the failed promise of REDD. Three months after Carbon Conservation inked the Miwah deal, he issued a permit for a palm oil company, PT Kallista Alam, to use 1605 hectares of peat swamp for a plantation in the Tripa conservation zone.
When the peat swamp burnt, killing an estimated 100 orang-utans, Irwandi said the environmental disaster was his ''pinch'' - a wake-up call - to the world. ''The international community think our forest is a free toilet for their carbon,'' he told The Saturday Age in April. ''I wanted some funds to create a livelihood for people who lost their jobs [when the forest was locked up]. The money did not come. REDD or blue I don't care. Where is the international attention on that?''

Sun says he is still on good personal terms with Irwandi, and argues passionately that the deal with the mining company was both pragmatic and necessary.

''In Indonesia … do you think $5 billion of gold would end up never being extracted? Honestly? I knew whether it was them, or a tycoon, or the new governor's brother or some minister's cousin … someone is going to get that gold.'' Better, he says, that it be exploited by a listed international company with corporate responsibilities to shareholders. Nevertheless, he says he agonised over the deal. ''I'm probably not going to go to environmentalist heaven any more … But far out, man! Shit. I mean, five, six years in Indonesia, you realise that you've got to play the game smarter.''

Forests of corruption

Michael Bachelard
The Age, June 10, 2012


As the public servants of Indonesia's Forestry Ministry stand waiting for the lifts, they are assailed by warnings against graft.

"Stop bribes, corruption," says a large sign on level three. "We officers of the Ministry of Forestry are anti-bribes," asserts another.

It would seem patronising if it were not so necessary.

"The forestry sector," said Chandra Hamzah, the deputy chairman of Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission, in 2010, "is a source of unlimited corruption."

The department earns $15 billion a year in revenue from selling forestry permits and the investors with the deepest pockets are those who want to log forests or turn them into plantations. The illegal trade in logging and forest concessions, fuelled by bribes, cronyism and corruption, is invisible but probably many times larger.

On climate change, Indonesia is being pulled in two directions. Politically it appears serious about the task of reducing its emissions, 60 to 80 per cent of which are due to deforestation. The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has pledged to reduce emissions by 26 per cent without international help, and by 41 per cent if such help is forthcoming.

But economically, the drivers of deforestation have not changed. There is big foreign cash to be earned as a coal and timber producer and the world's largest exporter of palm oil.
Into this messy context five years ago walked an experienced environment project investor, the American Todd Lemons, wanting to establish a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme to sell carbon credits to the world.

By July 2010, Lemons had jumped 11 of the 12 hurdles mandated by the Indonesian bureaucracy, spending $2 million in the process. He believed his 90,000-hectare Rimba Raya project on Kalimantan would be the first to sell carbon credits from Indonesia into the world market. Rimba Raya was intended to produce 100 million tonnes of credits over its 30-year life and he had forward contacts in place with the Russian gas company Gazprom to buy them. All he needed was the forestry minister's approval.

But on the verge of success, he was informed the ministry had halved the size of Rimba Raya, making it unviable. The rest of the land was signed over to a palm oil company, PT Best Group.
The project went into limbo, and, almost two years later, there it remains. Lemons and his business partners declined to comment.

It is understood in business circles in Indonesia that Rimba Raya fell foul of nationalist sentiment by announcing the deal with Gazprom too early.

Hadi Daryanto, the quixotic secretary-general of the forestry ministry, told The Sun-Herald that Rimba Raya was just "a big noise".

"They were here from Singapore, [asking], 'Why you kill the Rimba Raya?' I don't kill. They are stupid. They don't have the licence when they go to market."

Despite the government's support for REDD projects, private schemes in Indonesia have fallen by the wayside. Many of those surviving are run by the public sector, including Australia, but even these are foundering. The flagship program, the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership, set up with money pledged in 2007 by John Howard, has been "quietly but drastically scaled back", according to a report from the Australian National University. The area now being worked on is just over 10 per cent of the original target and the Australian Department of Climate Change concedes that getting the support of local people has been difficult.

Norway has also come into Indonesia with $1 billion to try to fix its institutional problems. So far, those problems are so deep, the Nordic country has only been able to disburse $30 million of its money.
Money-makers such as Macquarie Bank and Merrill Lynch-Bank of America have not given up. Macquarie's Brer Adams is armed with a $25 million fund, "BioCarbon" and is hunting for REDD projects in Indonesia, and Merrill Lynch's Abyd Karmali said he was still keen to develop "instruments" to allow his clients to invest in REDD.

But the most prospective private REDD project is run by an Indonesian company, PT Rimba Makmur Utama. At the helm is Dharsono Hartono, an Indonesian who admits he is "crazy" to attempt it.
Born in Indonesia but educated at the US Ivy League university Cornell and a 10-year veteran of international banks in New York, Hartono has the credentials to navigate the tangle of bureaucracy, nationalism and corruption that is Indonesia. But even he has been trying for five years to get through the approvals process.

"To be successful in REDD you need time," he said. "At the moment the market [for REDD credits] is uncertain, the regulation is uncertain, the initial cost is high. You'd have to be crazy to do it."
Hartono's concession covers 200,000 hectares of forest in central Kalimantan, home to perhaps 4000 of the world's remaining 60,000 orang-utans. Just one hurdle remains - approval from the minister. It's the hurdle that tripped Rimba Raya and Todd Lemons. Hartono hopes to clear it, but he is not counting his chickens.

"I have to be realistic. I understand risk. If I'm not successful, I will have to cut my losses. The next 12 to 24 months will be a good test."

Whatever new climate change institutions have been set up in Indonesia, the real power still resides with the old, powerful economic ministries such as forestry.

Hadi Daryanto, the forestry department's secretary-general, says he is supportive of REDD.

In an interview with The Sun-Herald, he likens carbon to electricity - invisible, but a saleable commodity nonetheless. Daryanto also knows exactly how to calculate its economic value. Leaping to his feet and going to a nearby whiteboard, he sketches it out.

"If REDD is to happen, then the solution is about the payment for environmental services and the price of the carbon compared with the logs," he says.

"Logs are priced in the market at $US100 per cubic metre of log. It would have to be $US70 per tonne of carbon to compete.''

Australia's carbon tax will pay just one-third of this amount from July 1, and the European market is paying about one-seventh.

"Who will pay?" asks Daryanto. "If the price is below the [price of a] log, nobody wants to sell. They just cut the trees … It is a question of economics, not a question of conservation."

Change in Aceh hinders carbon plan

Michael Bachelard
Sydney Morning Herald, June 9, 2012

A HUGE Australian-owned forest-carbon project in Indonesia has stalled and may need to be abandoned entirely because of a recent change of government in the province of Aceh.

Australian businessman and former chief of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority Jeff Carmichael has outed himself to The Saturday Age as a seven-figure investor in the Aceh project run by Dorjee Sun, environment entrepreneur and star of the 2009 documentary The Burning Season.
But Dr Carmichael acknowledges that, due to ''political risk'' in Indonesia, he might lose the money he's already spent.

Villagers from Kayee Lon, Aceh, are paid to clear the forest from a local peat swamp. Photo: Michael Bachelard

The project, called Ulu Masen, is just one of a number of forest carbon projects which have faltered or been abandoned in Indonesia as the early hype over REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation - proves vastly exaggerated.

Publicly funded REDD schemes in Indonesia have also come under fire recently, with Greens leader Christine Milne proclaiming an AusAID project in Kalimantan that has already cost $30 million ''a failure''.
Ulu Masen was designed by Mr Sun and then Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf in 2007 to preserve 770,000 hectares of prime Aceh forest, including carbon-rich peatland. It was intended to generate millions of carbon credits to be sold on the world market.

The money would go back to the Aceh government, the project's proponents and to local people to help preserve the forest from oil-palm plantations, loggers and miners.

But so far no carbon credits have been generated or sold and the project has not achieved verification from independent certifying bodies.

Dr Carmichael said he had pledged a "seven-figure sum" of his own money to help Ulu Masen gain certification. However, that process had stopped because, since Mr Irwandi was ousted in elections two months ago, the new governor, Zaini Abdullah, has not agreed to a meeting. A spokesman for Mr Zaini told The Saturday Age that the project was "under review".

Dr Carmichael conceded he may lose the money he has spent so far.

''Subject to having a governor that confirms to us that he's committed to seeing it through, we're committed to staying with it,'' Dr Carmichael said.

''If he's not, it probably comes to a stop. No point putting money into it. We would lose every penny that we've put into it, absolutely.''

Since 2007, Indonesian forests have been at the centre of Australia's hopes for an international trade in REDD credits. But now, on the verge of the carbon tax being implemented, there are serious doubts about whether REDD can ever work on a large scale in Indonesia.

Dr Carmichael said he remained convinced that REDD was a legitimate means of offsetting industrial emissions, but agreed that ''political risk'' could make it difficult in Indonesia, which has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.

''Indonesia probably wasn't my first choice of country because I have worked there in the past and I know the difficulties,'' Dr Carmichael said.

''But Aceh under Governor Irwandi seemed to have all the right credentials.''

Mr Sun said Australia did have a chance to help Indonesia by using its carbon price - which at a starting price of $23 a tonne is higher than the global price - to encourage Aceh.

''If Australia could step in and say, 'Hey, we're going to buy carbon from REDD, but we're going to focus on bilateral arrangements' … that could single-handedly give us a reason why the new governor of Aceh would step up and say … 'We're going to have Aceh-ready credits for export in a year's time','' Mr Sun said.

Tree-pronged attack as Abbott throws down gauntlet on logging

Adam Morton
The Age (article), 8 June 2012

Braving yesterday's bracing weather, locals protest against logging at Mount St Leonard, near Healesville. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has challenged Victoria's practice of clearfell logging native forests, saying few people would not be revolted by the damage it caused.

Speaking at a community forum at Mount Evelyn, east of Melbourne, Mr Abbott said he supported a sustainable native forestry industry, but took issue with clearfelling, in which a forest area is bulldozed, logged and the remains burned.

''I'm as much a conservationist as anyone, I'm as much a conservationist as Bob Brown,'' he told the forum. ''Do I support the clear felling of native forests? I would be most reluctant to do so. But do I want to ban all logging in native forests? No. I'd be very reluctant to do that.''

Mr Abbott said he supported sustainable logging of native forests, citing a Cape York program under which select trees were felled individually.

''You can't destroy the asset, but I do think the asset is there to be economically appreciated as well as aesthetically appreciated,'' he said.

His comments came as 31 people were arrested for blocking clearfell logging on the side of Mount St Leonard, near Healesville. About 70 local business owners and conservationists walked into a logging coupe early yesterday, some wearing masks with the face of Premier Ted Baillieu. Police said 31 were charged with failing to leave a public safety zone.

Protester organiser Chris Veenhuizen, owner of a local bed-and-breakfast and member of conservation group MyEnvironment, said visitors were being turned off by the destruction of clearly visible forest.
''The feedback we're getting from our visitors is they're not going to come back,'' she said. ''It's absolutely going to destroy the tourism business of this whole community.''

David Walsh, of government forestry agency VicForests, said timber from the Mount St Leonard area was crucial to it meeting demand for wood and wood products.

He said VicForests had previously responded to community concern by removing two coupes earmarked for logging and leaving a 50-metre forest buffer along a walking track.

''Timber harvesting has co-existed with tourism in the region for decades, and we believe both industries play an important role in the local economy,'' he said.

Victorian government media advisers did not return calls from The Age.

Woodchipping agenda up in smoke for now

Lyndon Schneiders
The Age, March 21, 2012

Despite a setback for logging interests, we are not out of the woods yet.

Australia's ancient native forests were saved the ignominy of being incinerated for government-subsidised electricity by the unlikeliest of candidates this week.

Liberal defector and House of Representatives Speaker Peter Slipper used his first deciding vote to defeat independent MP Rob Oakeshott's motion for native forest biomass to be classed as renewable energy.

'Without income from wood chipping, the native forest timber industry is not viable.' Photo: Virginia Star 

It was the latest in a series of bids by the financially unviable native forest logging industry to stay alive despite massively changed community expectations. But the closeness of the vote suggests native forests won't be out of the woods until the industry embraces a sustainable future.

In 200 years Australia has cleared and logged much of its old growth and wild forests so it can only be misguided to burn the rest.

The embrace of the seemingly innocuous-sounding biomass energy is a ''scorched earth'' policy of an industry in hasty retreat.

Late last year the Australian government announced its intention to remove renewable energy subsidies from projects that sought to use native forest ''waste'', including 400-year-old trees, in so-called renewable energy furnaces to generate electricity.

This proposal would have been hilarious if not so serious, but there is a precedent for this desperate play. In the 1960s and '70s, export wood chipping of native forests became entrenched.

Export wood chipping was portrayed to sceptical Australians as a sensible way of finding a market for those parts of a logged tree that could not be processed by a sawmill. But within a few years wood chipping became the only economic reason for logging native forests.

By the 1990s, millions of tonnes per year of native forest woodchips were exported as sawmills quietly closed across the country. Now, with changing market expectations, the world has lost its taste for woodchips from Australia's ancient forests.

For evidence of the collapsing wood chip market, one needs to look no further than the mound of chips that piled up at the Artec mill at Bell Bay in Tasmania, a pile so large that the mill suspended operations last month because it had run out of storage space until it found a buyer this week.

Developments over the past few years have demonstrated clearly that without income from export wood chipping, the native forest timber industry is not financially viable.

Even with wood chipping, the industry has relied on government subsidies for more than a decade.

Last year, the state's auditor-general warned that Forestry Tasmania needed a cash injection of $250 million to remain solvent.

The industry is in crisis. It desperately needs a new income stream to survive. Enter Rob Oakeshott and his friends from the timber industry who claim energy generated from burning native forests is renewable.

Clearly, properly managed timber plantations are a renewable resource, but wood sourced from native forest logging is something else. It can take hundreds of years for these trees to grow to the size of 30-storey buildings, and a matter of minutes for them to burn.

In the meantime, it will take decades for the resulting carbon dioxide to be sucked out of the atmosphere.

A recent North American study found that producing power from burning native forests was more carbon intensive than using fossil fuel in 80 per cent of the regions studied.

The situation would be worse in Australia, which has the most carbon-dense forests in the world.

The native forest industry has been on life support for long enough, yet governments and their rogue forestry agencies continue to draw out its death, subsidising the industry and leaving the taxpayer open to pay out contracts that can't be met.

Forests NSW had to pay Boral half a million dollars in 2006 because it couldn't supply contracts from 2002. Bizarrely, it signed new wood supply agreements in 2004, and last year Boral took Forests NSW to court again seeking a further $1 million.

Forests NSW lost $14 million in 2008-09, $16 million in 2009-10 and $232 million in 2010-11.

The Western Australian government is setting up taxpayers for huge compensation payments in its pursuit to lock in 10-year contracts of 800,000 cubic metres of wood.

Similarly, the Victorian government is trying to lock in 20-year supply contracts for native forest ''waste''.

To aid this it is planning to exempt logging from the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act so the habitat of the remaining 1000 or so Leadbeater's possums in the Central Highlands can be logged.

The government will risk the extinction of threatened species and what little is left of its old-growth forest to keep the industry going.

The Oakeshott plan aimed to throw another desperate low-value, high-volume lifeline to this dying industry. Burning native forests is not renewable and the reasons for its promotion have nothing to do with climate change.

Lyndon Schneiders is national director of The Wilderness Society.

Forests face the furnace

GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
The Australian,  March 20, 2012

WHEN Neil Bartholomaeus headed south from the Perth suburb of Nedlands to chase trout in the clear mountain streams near Manjimup, he could not have imagined the decades he would spend fighting the destruction of his new-found home.

Neil Bartholomaeus, in a state forest near Manjimup in WA, is worried green energy subsidies will see struggling woodchip companies harvest logs for biofuel. Picture: Vanessa Hunter Source: The Australian 

Just as fashion designer Prue Acton could not have foreseen the battle she has been forced to wage for the forests of southeast NSW.

Bartholomaeus and Acton both timed their escape to the bush as the native forest industry made its transition from selective logging to broadscale clear-felling to feed a global demand for woodchips.

"Every time I drive around the forest it has changed," Bartholomaeus says. "They take everything. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of old-growth marri and karri has ended up in the chip mill."

Opposition to logging by affluent city refugees has always been a nuisance to those who rely on timber for their livelihood. Jobs in the bush have been few and far between, whether in Eden in NSW or Manjimup in Western Australia.

But despite dramatically increasing the forest take, three decades of exporting woodchips has not been enough to save the industry from falling prices, reduced demand and growing competition from plantation timber.

A preference by builders for softwood pine and heightened consumer resistance to native forest woodchips have combined with a rising Australian dollar to leave the industry struggling for survival.

In WA, giant Karri trees, up to 90m tall and measuring 2m across, are still being clear-felled and sold for firewood or chips for as little as $10 a tonne.

The forest industry says 90 per cent of Australia's timber production occurs in regrowth forests resulting from previous logging. But what it doesn't say is that, at least in WA, evidence of just one cut tree in a hectare of forest is enough to disqualify the forest as old growth and redefine it as regrowth, no matter the quality of what is left. This is why forest giants, hundreds of years old, are still being clear-felled at Manjimup as "waste" for the chip mill.

It has been economics and concerns from buyers that has slowed woodchipping, not good forest management.

Nationally, native forest pulp production has fallen from 7.1 million cubic metres a year in 2000 to 3.6 million cubic metres a year in 2010. It has been substituted by hardwood plantation pulp rising from 0.7 million cubic metres a year to 4.2 million cubic metres a year in the same period.

Sawn timber production from native forest has fallen 35 per cent from 2000 to 2010 while plantation softwood has increased 30 per cent. Sawn timber production from plantation in 2010 was more than three times the volume produced from native forests.

Financial returns to state governments from forest management have been abysmal. Forest campaigners such as Bartholomaeus and Acton had hoped economic reality would eventually see the native forest industry collapse.

But manoeuvrings in federal parliament this week highlight the delicate balance that still exists between protecting timber industry jobs and and saving the centuries-old trees.

Independent MP Rob Oakeshott stunned his Labor and Greens colleagues when he lodged a disallowance motion to unpick the agreed renewable energy package that specifically excluded native forests.

Speaker Peter Slipper used his casting vote yesterday to defeat a motion by Oakeshott that would have seen electricity users paying a subsidy to the timber industry to burn the forest for bio-energy, after the vote on the floor of parliament was tied 70 to 70.

Wilderness Society national campaign director Lyndon Schneiders says defeat of the motion should finally convince the native forest-based timber industry to restructure, rather than looking for quick fixes to long-term decline. "The native forest logging industry has for years kept spruiking this bizarre notion that burning old-growth forests and koala habitat is somehow renewable energy, in a desperate last roll of the dice to find a market," he says. "The defeat of Rob Oakeshott's motion means that government incentives won't drive this destructive, polluting industry."

Oakeshott had said his proposal would not result in one additional tree being cut down, because only forest waste would be eligible. But environment groups say he was being naive at best.

They say the recent surge in biomass advocacy is designed to find a replacement market for native forest woodchips.

Scientists both for and against petitioned federal politicians to influence their vote.

A petition signed by forest industry scientists in favour of the Oakeshott disallowance motion suggested the concerns of environmentalists were misplaced, because only forest waste would be burned for biomass fuel. They say harvesting native forests solely for renewable energy is neither economically attractive nor the best use for the timber. The scientists say sawlogs earn a far greater return for the land manager when used to produce structural or appearance-grade products than if sold as biomass fuel.

The letter, written by Martin Moroni, senior research scientist with Forestry Tasmania, and signed by forestry scientists from across the nation, encouraged Oakeshott to push ahead. It said production of biomass fuel from native forests would likely be associated with the burning of processing residues and some harvest residues to generate heat and electricity in boilers located in rural communities, close to mills.

According to world bio-energy association board member Andrew Lang, even Renewable Energy Certificates would not be sufficient to make biomass from forests a profitable, standalone business.

He says the value of RECs and the wholesale price of electricity combined needed to allow a return on capital for a biomass plant was in excess of $110 a megawatt hour.

At present RECs are trading for about $30 a MW hour and the wholesale price for electricity is between $30 and $40 a MW hour, so the price of RECs would have to almost double before a biomass plant would be viable.

"There is a long way to go before any power company decides to build a large biomass-fuelled plant," Lang says.

But everybody in the renewable energy business expects the REC price to increase sharply if the federal government is to have any hope of meeting its 20 per cent renewable energy target by 2020.

Conservationists say there is little coincidence that the areas most interested in dabbling with bio-energy are the existing export woodchip mills in NSW and WA.

The Eden mill, which takes forest logs from southeast NSW and Victoria, is already experimenting with power generation from wood pellets made from sawdust.

The Manjimup bio-energy plant has permission to burn plantation timber residue, but the project has been relocated to the Diamond native forest mill far away from any plantation resource.

According to the Wilderness Society, rather than easing back on loss-making forestry, the WA and Victorian governments are pursuing a model that draws increasingly large volumes of timber from over-cut forests that are in ecological crisis.

Both governments have identified native forest biomass as a significant, undeveloped market.

"Such an approach will only delay the inevitable industry collapse as markets and yields decline, and leave taxpayers to pay contract compensation," the Wilderness Society says.

Conservation groups do not believe assurances from Oakeshott and the forest industry that it would only burn "waste" product.

They say it is identical to the rationale for export woodchipping, which expanded rapidly from the late 1960s and early 70s, and became the driver of native forest logging.

Waste commonly refers to standing trees that are not useable for other commodity timber products. In many cases, "waste" trees constitute the majority of timber removed from the forest.

For example, the Victorian government at present is offering for sale timber in East Gippsland at the ratio of one sawlog to 7.6 "residual" or "waste" logs that can be used for pulp or biomass. In WA, "waste" logs can be 400-year-old marri trees that are critical habitat for a range of threatened species.

As a percentage of total wood taken from native forests, the sawn timber output represents less than 12 per cent of total wood removals. The reality is the woodchip tail has long been wagging the forest dog.

According to Acton, woodchipping for the Eden mill started in the 70s with a projected 5000 tonnes a year for five years, but is now regularly topping a million tonnes a year, more than 90 per cent of the forest harvest.

With the woodchip market under pressure, Eden woodchip mill general manager Peter Mitchell says he would be quite happy to burn native forests for electricity but the numbers simply don't add up -- at the moment.

"If we start to bring trees in here to chip and turn into electricity we may as well just burn $100," he says. "It costs us about $70 a tonne to get a tree in here, and we can only afford to pay $15 (for it to be financially viable)."

Environmentalists fear RECs could eventually bridge that gap.

Acton says she is not a member of the Greens and does not object to a forest industry based on the use of high-value timber for furniture and building products. She is also sympathetic to arguments about regional employment. In southern NSW, the industry employs about 340 people in sawmills, as contractors and at the Eden chip mill.

Acton says it makes more sense to build tourism and for the state to buy out forest licences and instead sell carbon credits against the avoided deforestation.

Oakeshott's motion has once more shown how Australian forests are at the crossroads. The challenge for conservationists is to make trees more profitable alive than dead. Should they be left standing for posterity, or should they go up in smoke for short-term prosperity?

Bid to use 'forestry waste' in biomass energy projects fails by one vote

Jarrod Watt
ABC Ballarat - Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 20 March, 2012  

Federal Independent MP Rob Oakeshott's bid to introduce an amendment allowing wastes from forestry to be used in biomass projects lead to a House vote locked at 70-70 before the Speaker added his vote to reject the move. Ballarat-based board member for the World Bioenergy Association Andrew Lang says this is a colossal lost opportunity and that the bioenergy industry has been 'hijacked' as Australia move towards a carbon-taxed economy.

A defeat by the narrowest of margins in the Federal Parliament for a vote to allow biomass projects to be fuelled by forest waste is being declared a victory for 'scare campaigners and fundamentalists' by one of Australia's pre-eminent advocates for biomass energy production.

"It's just a really unfortunate thing, that this has hijacked the debate about bioenergy more broadly.
"The biomass or the harvest residues or the timber industry processing residues that are involved in native forestry are always going to be a very small part of the total available biomass that goes into producing baseload energy, whether it's from straw or municipal waste or plantation harvest waste - it's a distraction in the whole debate and unfortunately it's held up the entire debate," says Ballarat-based campaigner for bioenergy and board member for the World Bioenergy Association, Andrew Lang.

Bioenergy projects are essentially renewable energy projects using power derived from biological sources, but one particular method involves burning organic products in an incinerator to generate electricity - straw, greenwaste, sugarcane, and the cause of the tensions with Green groups in Australia - forest waste.
Rob Oakeshott's proposal allowed for forest wastes to be eligible for carbon credits when used in biomass projects.

Speaking as he introduced the Amendment to Parliament last night, Rob Oakeshott expressed surprise that the ALP would ignore the advice of its newest Senator when considering the possibilities of bioenergy projects to generate clean energy:

"It is therefore a surprise that today the Labor Party is choosing to ignore new Senator Bob Carr on the issue of renewable energy and to make it harder for biomass, as a genuine renewable source, to be a contributor to the climate change challenge of our time. Over the last month there has been a war of scientists - views have been cited both for and against this disallowance motion.

"But today the chairman of the Centre of Excellence for Climate Change, Woodland and Forest Health has come out publicly and said that the position I am taking should be supported. If Senator Bob Carr is not good enough, what about the chairman of the Centre of Excellence for Climate Change, Woodland and Forest Health? Why would we deny his voice and why would we deny the centre of excellence in developing best policy?"

Andrew Lang reaffirms that the issue of forest waste being used in biomass has been characterised as 'burning forests' when the truth is it is about using the litter and waste left over by forestry operations.

"The Greens and allied groups have made it out to be a very alarmist agenda that the native forestry industry might have.

"But generally speaking, in most cases that I am aware of, where it's suitable, the harvest residue is burned on site - if we were in countires like northern Europe or North America, where it's economically possible that harvest waste, or the harvest residue - the woody part of it, not the leaves or bark - would be taken off and chipped and turned into energy for local schools or hospitals or prisons...

"It's just a matter of how you use this material, do you leave it to rot on site or do you utilise it to offset use of fossil fuels?"

Mr Lang has been advocating and planning for a biomass energy generator facility in Ballarat - does this he see this rejection by the Australian Parliament as destroying any chances of developing a local bioemergy industry, with applications for local energy production?

"It doesn't rule out the rest of the industry but it puts a different mindset into the heads of the politicians, and possibly the public and some areas of the media.

"Some people think bioemergy is bad when the only thing they hear of it is this vilification of it by green groups - when in reality bioenergy is three quarters of our energy anyway in one way or another," he says.
Andrew Lang says the effects by policy inaction are easily seen around regional Australia - farmers burning their stubble, forestry companies burning the waste left over by felling operations - but the focus has been unfairly shifted onto native forest logging operations.

"We're trying to push the use of plantation harvest waste and we're trying to push the use of straw but all around us the countryside is going up in smoke because of the want of any other policies; and the whole concentration on native forest harvest residue and the residue from every sawmill that might mill native forest logs being able to be eligible for renewable energy cresdits is a complete distraction in the whole thing.

"If it's managed right, if it's regulated right at the State level, not a single extra tree would be felled if that legislation had gone through - if native forestry biomass had been joined in with all other forms of biomass as eligible."

Failed energy subsidies push 'fantastic' for forests

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation),  March 20, 2012

Forest campaigners say a failed bid to subsidise the burning of forest waste will protect Western Australia's forests from more logging.

A motion by independent MP Rob Oakeshott called for valuable renewable energy certificates for electricity generated from state forest waste.

The motion was rejected in Federal Parliament yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the WA Forest Alliance, Jess Beckerling, says it is a win for forests around the country.

"It's a really strong indication that common sense has prevailed," she said.

"It was a very, very close vote but what it's shown is that people are really concerned about the destruction of native forest, particularly when that destruction is for such low value products."

Ms Beckerling says the result will protect Australian forests from an increase in logging.

"[It's a] wonderful result for forests and wildlife in WA and also around Australia," she said.

"Huge, enormous old karri trees and marri trees would have been fed into the furnaces.

"So it's a fantastic result for the forests that that won't be happening."

Windsor opposes forestry burning plan

David Wroe
The Age, March 19, 2012

A CONTROVERSIAL push by crossbench MP Rob Oakeshott to allow forestry companies to earn renewable energy subsidies by burning native forest wood looks set to be shot down, with fellow independent Tony Windsor refusing to back the deal.

Mr Oakeshott's move, which infuriated the Greens and sparked a vigorous environmental campaign, appears likely to fall short of a majority when it goes to the Parliament this week, mostly likely today.

A regulation created under the government's carbon tax deal with the Greens and independents has banned loggers from earning renewable energy certificates — which can be sold for cash — by burning native forest wood to make electricity.

Mr Oakeshott's move to disallow that regulation is aimed at waste wood created by timber logging. But green groups argue that it would also throw a financial lifeline to the woodchip industry — which is struggling amid slumping exports — by giving it a new source of revenue. Mr Windsor, who had previously been thought to support the motion, told The Age: "I won't be supporting it in the House."

Mr Oakeshott acknowledged that "if everyone turns up, it'll probably lose by one". "But [I'm] still working on it," he added. "There's a whole range of things that can change the dynamic."

Mr Oakeshott said biomass such as wood waste was a "genuinely renewable energy". If it were not burnt for electricity, it would either be burnt as waste or decay naturally, emitting carbon anyway, he said.

"It has been a disgraceful campaign by GetUp!, the [Australian Youth Climate Coalition] and the Greens," he said.

But the Greens argue Mr Oakeshott's motion would just encourage more logging of native forests by giving the woodchip industry a new economic incentive. "We are working extremely hard to make sure that this tightening of the rules around renewable energy stands," said the party's deputy leader Christine Milne.

Forests agency sued for logging

Tom Arup
The Age, March 19, 2012

VicForests has been accused of logging protected rainforests.

STATE-OWNED timber agency VicForests has been hit with court action by the Environment Department after it allegedly logged protected rainforest.

The court battle relates to VicForests' logging operations in the Orbost Forest District in East Gippsland, where the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment says unauthorised harvesting of rainforest and buffer areas took place.

A spokeswoman for the department confirmed the prosecution, saying charges laid on VicForests included "undertaking an unauthorised timber harvesting operation in a state forest".

VicForests has also been charged with directing its contractor to log rainforest against timber harvesting licence conditions.

VicForests spokesman David Walsh said the timber agency would defend itself against the allegations. "The charges relate to harvesting operations in East Gippsland," he said. "VicForests intends to strongly defend itself in relation to this matter." If found guilty, VicForests faces a maximum penalty of $29,000. A directions hearing will be held in the Orbost Magistrates Court on March 29.

Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh said: "Like anyone, VicForests is entitled to the presumption of innocence. They are also required, like protesters, to obey Victorian law."

The prosecution of VicForests follows the timber agency's win in the Supreme Court last week against green groups trying to stop three logging coupes in part of Victoria's central highlands near Toolangi. Conservationists had argued the coupes threatened habitat of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum, Victoria's faunal emblem.

After VicForests' win last week, Mr Walsh accused green groups of costing the government hundreds of thousands of dollars this year in protest management and legal fees in logging cases.

Opposition spokesman for government scrutiny Martin Pakula said it was obscene that two government agencies were now fighting each other in court in the Orbost case.

"So, Victoria is in deficit by almost $350 million in the last six months, and yet we've got two state government agencies wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting each other in court. It's just obscene," he said.

The Wilderness Society's Luke Chamberlain said that in 10 years, less than one in 300 coupes in Victoria had been challenged by environmentalists. "It is hardly a case for government to argue that court cases are stopping logging in Victoria, triggering a need to change Victoria's environment laws in relation to logging," he said.

The state government recently released a new plan for the timber industry, which among other things increased VicForests' ability to sign timber contracts to 20 years.

The Baillieu government is also proposing changes to the Timber Code, allowing exemptions to be granted from state environment laws for individual logging coupes.

It comes as the state environment department decided to halt operations at an education centre in the Toolangi State Forest from July 1.

400 years in the making, felled by bid to be green

GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
The Australian, March 15, 2012 12:00AM

TREES more than 400 years old that grow to 90m and measure 2m across could be fed to the furnace to generate electricity as a result of independent MP Rob Oakeshott's plan to extend renewable energy subsidies to native forests.

The Karri trees -- Western Australia's tallest and among the world's tallest -- are already classified as forest waste and turned into woodchips for a market that no longer wants them. For anyone who doubts it, examples of the trees are stacked up at the Diamond chip mill in Manjimup in Western Australia's southwest.

Forest campaigner Jess Beckerling said carbon dating had shown that 430-year old trees were being sold as firewood for as little as $9 a tone.  "There is no economic rationality in it," Ms Beckerling said.

Manjimup is a reflection of was is happening in state forestry nationally as the industry has moved increasingly to plantation timer and the export market for woodchips has collapsed.

Mr Oakeshott's proposal to provide a subsidy for burning forest "waste" is considered a potential lifeline for foresters and a new flashpoint for environmentalists around the nation.

Long-standing plans for a bio-energy plant in Western Australia's southwest have struggled to get off the ground. The plant has approval to burn residue from plantation timber. But the location for National Power's proposed 45 megawatt power station has been shifted to the Diamond mill site away from blue gum plantations in state forest operations.

Mr Oakeshott said his motion would not result in additional logging and rely only on residues now burnt in the field. But environment groups fear extending the renewable energy certificate scheme to include electricity generated from forest waste would be a repeat of the export woodchip experience of the 1970s. It would radically change the economics of producing electricity from the forest and accelerate the clear felling, they claim.

Granting valuable renewable energy certificates for electricity generated from state forests was specifically excluded from the federal government's clean energy legislation. But Mr Oakeshott has lodged a disallowance motion to this specific clause in the legislation. If the disallowance motion is not challenged in federal parliament before March 21, the clause will cease to apply and forest timber will automatically qualify for renewable-energy subsidies.

Mr Oakeshott has the support of the bio-energy industry, which says a biomass plant would get its main supply from plantation forestry and urban woody biomass and that any native forestry biomass used would be minor.

Environment groups reject claims that only waste left behind would be burnt because the legislation is not specific. "Residue is whole logs," Ms Beckerling said. "The idea that they are somehow going to feed a furnace from mill waste is completely ridiculous."

Neil Bartholomaeus, a former head of Work Safe Western Australia, said he had seen it all before.

He is a marron farmer, trout fisherman, long-time resident and forest campaigner. "You end up with the situation where, effectively, the tail - the residue being burnt for biomass fuel - would be wagging the dog," he said.

Manjimup Shire president Wade DeCampo supports Mr Oakeshott's disallowance motion.

Local businesses are concerned a bio-energy furnace would threaten the clean food image of an area that produces twice as much as the Ord River scheme.

Appeasing Nationals

Galena Debney, Glenlyon
The Age, (letter), March 14, 2012 


IT IS like a nightmare to witness environmental gains of the past 20 years being chipped away by the Baillieu government as it appeases the Nationals for getting them over the line.

Using resources wisely

Jim Adams, chief executive, Timber Communities Australia 
The Age, (letter), March 14, 2012 


MANY East Gippsland communities rely on forestry. Towns such as Bairnsdale, Orbost and Cann River are absolutely reliant on the industry for jobs and, in many cases, their very survival.

VicForests is not talking about an increase in the amount of forest harvested for timber production. We're looking at making better use of the very small amount of the forest available to the industry to ensure our rural communities that rely on forestry have a future. A possible outcome from VicForests' tender process could be new engineered high-value wood products.

Retrain sooner, not later

John Storey, Hornsby, NSW
The Age, (letter), March 14, 2012 


SOONER or later the Baillieu government will need to help train and create lasting, sustainable jobs for the handful of people currently employed to log East Gippsland native forests. If it is done sooner rather than later, the state will not only save a small fortune in taxpayer subsidies, but will give my grandchildren the same opportunity to enjoy the splendour of those beautiful, unique forests that I enjoyed as a child.

The most cleared state in the nation

Chris Owens, Lysterfield South
The Age, (letter), March 14, 2012

THE National Parks Association noted at the weekend that Victoria is the most cleared and ecologically stressed state in the country. The Baillieu government's latest plan in its almost daily attacks on what's left of Victoria's natural environment is the proposal to burn our forests for electricity (''East Gippsland timber destined for chips, power'', The Age, 13/3).

The rationale is to encourage investment in the native forest industry. Investors should note that as the experience in Tasmania demonstrated, the public doesn't support native forest logging and will not support burning of forests for electricity. There will be no certainty of future government support. It is disappointing that the only vision Ted Baillieu has for Victoria is one in ashes.

Feed the beast

Charles Street, Euroa
The Age, (letter), March 14, 2012 

THE construction of a ''forest waste''-fired power station will cost millions of dollars and require a small full-time workforce to keep it going. An asset of that size will need to be fed constantly to ''maximise the return on investment'' and retain employment. What happens if the fiery furnace ever runs out of ''forest waste'' fuel?

Simple. Just cut down some more trees. Any trees; habitat trees, endangered species, young trees, ancient trees - who cares? The power station will not be a ''waste disposal unit'', it will quickly become a business imperative. This is gross environmental vandalism taken to the point of stupidity. Our heritage will just go up in smoke. This proposal needs to go into the furnace. Today.

East Gippsland timber destined for chips, power

Adam Morton
The Age (article), 13 March 2012

UP TO 90 per cent of timber logged in long-contested east Gippsland native forests over the next two decades could be woodchipped or burnt by electricity companies to generate power, government documents show.

Woodchips and biomass are being put before endangered species, the Wilderness Society claims. Photo: Louie Douvis

The Baillieu government has started a tender process for 837,000 tonnes a year of woodchips and forestry waste, offering contracts of up to 20 years.

Of this, tender documents indicate 451,000 tonnes a year could come from mixed species forests in Tambo and east Gippsland — the site of Victoria's most heated disputes between timber workers and environmentalists.

But forecasts show that until 2030 the same forests will yield just 50,000 tonnes a year of high-quality sawlog timber used in furniture and construction.

Across the state nearly 30 per cent of logged native timber is considered high-quality, but the documents show that in east Gippsland it could be as little as 10 per cent.

The rest is considered suitable for woodchipping, conversion into low-value wood products such as chipboard or burning as fuel by a new renewable energy industry. Conservationists said it was evidence that these forests were logged to make cheap goods that could come from timber plantations — or in the case of power generation, other sources altogether.

"The government is choosing to put woodchips and biomass [power generation] ahead of Victoria's endangered species," Wilderness Society campaigns manager Luke Chamberlain said.
State-owned forestry agency VicForests said east Gippsland remained one of the largest producers of high-quality sawlogs in Australia.

VicForests spokesman David Walsh said the amount of high-quality timber available for logging in the region had fallen, in part due to the creation of old-growth reserves, but would increase as forests matured after 2030.

"In the short-term, this timber remains vital in supporting local manufacturing and providing much-needed jobs in rural Victoria, as well as reducing our need to import wood products from developing nations," he said.

The tender process is a key part of the Baillieu government's promise to encourage investment in the native forestry industry.

The Coalition guaranteed the industry's long-term future prior to the 2010 election. By contrast, Labor wanted "peace talks" between the industry, unions and conservationists with a goal of reducing logging.
A Saturday Age investigation last month revealed Labor considered shutting down the industry altogether, but ultimately rejected the idea. Some industry leaders warned it was in terminal decline due to a combination of economic, environmental and political pressures.

But Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Lisa Marty said native forestry still generated about $150 million a year in east Gippsland, directly supporting about 2000 people.

Mr Walsh said the plan to sell logging waste previously left or burnt on the forest floor would "impact on sawlog ratios, but will result in a more efficient use of our forest resources". About 80 per cent of forestry revenue comes from sawlogs.

Mr Chamberlain said an efficient industry driven by high-value goods would stop clearfelling forest areas and instead fell only select trees for sawlogs. He said selling logging waste for power generation was effectively "tree mining".

Fears for Tasmanian forest deal's effect on species

Matthew Denholm, Tasmania Correspondent

The Australian, 10 March 2012

A CONSERVATION group fears the Tasmanian forest peace deal will be perversely "devastating" for key threatened species, potentially hastening extinctions.

The Tasmanian Conservation Trust is worried about a push to maximise the scale of new forest reserves by relaxing logging practices in the remaining production forests.

This trade-off would result in production forests being harvested more intensely, with a weakening of rules in the Forest Practices Code about the retention of forest fragments for threatened species.

By increasing the wood volumes from production forests, this would enhance the ability to protect the forests sought by green groups while still honouring timber contracts.

The Tasmanian government has suspended planned improvements to the code to allow this trade-off to be on the table at the peace talks between green groups and industry.


The TCT, which is not at that table, supports more reserves but not at the expense of weakening the code.

TCT director Peter McGlone told The Weekend Australian it would be a "devastating sell-out" if vital protections for threatened species were weakened under the forest deal. This was particularly so given that "very little" threatened species habitat was found in the areas being sought for reservation, while most were found in forests where the code was their only protection.

"Masked owl and swift parrot are nationally endangered, old-growth-dependant forest species which will gain very little out of these reserves," Mr McGlone said.

This meant the forest deal -- if it reduced the code -- could perversely make things worse for threatened species and drive the swift parrot to extinction.

"There will be a big gain for certain values, such as world heritage area and wilderness values, which we totally support, but a massive assault on biodiversity values," Mr McGlone said.

"We not just talking about an increasing loss of threatened species habitat, but there will also be massive impacts on water catchments and waterways, with the more intense logging regime."

Minister 'out of line', Aborigines demand apology

ABC News, March 02, 2012


Tasmania's Aboriginal Affairs Minister Cassy O'Connor has apologised to Aborigines for comments claiming Forestry Tasmania was exploiting a vulnerable community.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre demanded the public apology saying the comments were patronising and condescending.

The centre wants to control more than 500,000 hectares of native forest in a partnership with Forestry Tasmania.

It has been in talks with the state-owned company about transferring land protected from logging under the forest peace deal to the Indigenous community.

Ms O'Connor had accused Forestry Tasmania of exploiting the vulnerable Aboriginal community.

That angered the centre's legal director Michael Mansell.

"[It's out of line] to make such patronising and paternalistic and condescending comments about Aboriginal people and then claim to be the Minister representing their interests."

Mr Mansell says the proposal would create 60 jobs for Aborigines and the Minister should be representing their interests.

He says he was pleased to receive a call from Ms O'Connor but that was not enough.

"I did point out to her that I was very happy to accept that, and I appreciated her call, but her comments were made public."

"Aborigines around Tasmania heard those comments, were hurt by those comments and she should make a public apology."

The Minister has since apologised unreservedly to any member of the Aboriginal community who took offence.

She says she was reflecting on Forestry Tasmania's motives rather than members of the Aboriginal community.

Support for plan
Tasmania's forest industry has backed the plan.

The Forestry Industries Association has abandoned the peace talks, but says the idea has merit and needs to be considered.

Spokesman Terry Edwards has rejected claims Forestry Tasmania is trying to undermine the peace process.

"Forestry would not get any additional access over and above as if these were national parks.

"The people that will get access are the people of Tasmania, the recreational users, the people camping and fishing and hunting."

One of the parties involved in a proposal also denies it would threaten the state's forest peace deal.

The Managing Director of Britton Timbers at Smithton, Glenn Britton, rejects claims it will derail the deal.

"This does not jeopardise the IGA (Inter-Governmental Agreement) in any shape or form. The only jeopardy the IGA is in is the radical Green movement."

The Wilderness Society's Vica Bayley says Forestry Tasmania is in no position to transfer control of the land.

"We're highly suspicious of the role of Forestry Tasmania here."

"There is no role for Forestry Tasmania in negotiating Aboriginal land hand back issues and we would recommend the Government get involved and negotiate that directly."

Forestry Tasmania has rejected claims it is working to undermine the peace deal.

Meanwhile, the Premier, Lara Giddings, has ruled out signing a memorandum of understanding between the two groups.

Forestry Tasmania's Bob Gordon says a formal agreement will not proceed without the Premier's approval but talks with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre may continue.

"When the Premier rang the Chairman she asked us not to sign."

"We weren't intending to sign it immediately anyway. We were always intending to have a further discussion with government about it and if Michael Mansell wants to have further discussions with government and he wants us to be involved then we'd be part of that."

Kelty plea
Tasmanian Premier is appealing to the forest peace deal negotiator, Bill Kelty, to return to Tasmania to help finalise the deal.

The former union boss helped the environmental and industry signatories reach the initial agreement to end logging in most public native forests.

The signatories now have to agree on the boundaries of protected forest, based on the findings of an independent panel which has assessed 572,000.

The Premier, Lara Giddings, is hoping Mr Kelty will return to the state for the most challenging stage of the talks; deciding which forests to protect from logging.

She says Mr Kelty is considering the invitation.

"[He's] one of Australia's best negotiators.

"I've had some preliminary discussions with Bill, I'm just not sure whether or not he's able to do it at this point but I certsainly think that is what we need and that is what the Australian Government wants, it's what the Tasmanian Government wants."

McKim calls for Forestry Tas sackings over secret deal

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), March 01, 2012

The Tasmanian Greens leader wants the Forestry Tasmania board sacked after revelations the state-owned company is negotiating to hand over land marked for protection to Tasmanian Aborigines.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre wants areas protected under the federally-funded deal to end logging in native forests handed to Aborigines.

The centre's legal director, Michael Mansell, says state-owned Forestry Tasmania has agreed verbally to help manage protected forests, if the Government gives the land to the Aboriginal community.

The future of 572,000 hectares of Tasmania forest is currently being considered for protection from logging.
Mr Mansell says Aborigines are waiting to see how much is deemed as having high-conservation value.

"Once that's agreed, we believe the land should vest in Aboriginal people, the management of the conservation areas vests with us."

"The money for the management that has been set aside already by the Commonwealth, $7 million, should go to us and, as part of the management of that large conservation area, we would have to pay the experts.

He has drawn up a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Forestry Tasmania to help manage the forests.

He says it is yet to be signed, but the state-owned company and forest groups agree on the principles of the deal.

Mr Mansell says the MOU does not allow for future logging inside the protected forests and he expects environmental groups will also sign on.

He says it is now up to the Premier, Lara Giddings, to act on the land handover which would also need approval from the Tasmanian Parliament.

Ms Giddings says she is aware that the Aboriginal community approached Forestry Tasmania to discuss options to manage new areas of reserves.

She says the State Government is not currently considering such a proposal.

 PHOTO: Michael Mansell expects environmental groups will sign onto the land deal.
Greens leader Nick McKim has told ABC Local Radio that Forestry Tasmania was actively undermining the peace process.

"That it is actively seeking to undermine the IGA and ultimately what needs to happen now is that Lara Giddings and Bryan Green need to step up to the mark, sack the Forestry Tasmania board, sack Bob Gordon and get that organisation back working in consonance with government policy not opposed to it."

Minister gobsmacked
Tasmania's Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Cassy O'Connor, is concerned Forestry Tasmania is trying to exploit the Aboriginal community.

Ms O'Connor has warned the community it is a mistake to get involved with Forestry Tasmania.

"This move, particularly on Forestry Tasmania's part, is a mistake."

"Forestry Tasmania is exploiting a vulnerable community, in the process they are potentially undermining the IGA, and as the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs I'm frankly gobsmacked that FT could go to this extent with the community and not consult with the Minister," she said.

The Opposition's Peter Gutwein says he is not surprised by the revelations.

"This clearly demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of this Government, absolutely."

"I don't think there could be a clearer description of this Government as dysfunctional at the moment."

The Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, says it is a cruel move by Forestry Tasmania.

He says the Aboriginal community made him aware of the issue two weeks ago and he has urged them to be wary of the state-owned company.

"This is quite a treacherous activity that Forestry Tasmania has been involved in."

It is a rogue organisation that sees itself outside the reach of proper probity by the State Government and State Parliament and it's pretty cruel, using the Indigenous community in Tasmania."

Milne: Forestry Tasmania’s overcutting exposed. Forestry Tasmania board must go

Green Pages (Australian Edition), 24 February 2012

Forestry Tasmania’s over cutting of Tasmania’s native forests has been exposed in the leaks around the independent analysis of wood supply contracts as part of the Intergovernmental Agreement, Australian Greens Deputy Leader Christine Milne said today.

“What has become clear is that Forestry Tasmania has overcut and over allocated the forest to such an extent that even with the retirement of two thirds of its contracted volume via Gunns, Forestry Tasmania cannot meet the remaining one third of its obligations.

“With an annualised shortfall of 39,000 cubic metres of veneer logs, what would have happened if Gunns and TA Ann were both still in the market?

“Forestry Tasmania would have been hung out to dry and one or other or both of the companies would have sued for breach of contract.

“Forestry Tasmania must be disbanded beginning with the Board which has overseen reckless destruction of forests, overcutting, over allocation in contracts and financial failure with the $18 million losses over the past two financial years.

“It is time for the Board to explain why it permitted the over allocation of the forests and then the overcutting whilst pretending that the forests are sustainably managed.

“Forestry Tasmania and Ta Ann should apologise to the forest activists who have been telling the truth about the forest practices that underpin their contracts.

“Far from being sustainably managed, Forest Practice Authority chief, Graham Wilkinson has made it clear that Forestry Tasmania’s current practices do not meet scientifically based requirements for the protection of threatened species.

“Forestry Tasmania has argued throughout the process that, provided it can continue to ignore scientifically based requirements for the protection of endangered species, it could still meet its contracts until 2030 provided no more areas were protected.

“Now we know that is a lie. It cannot. Even with no reserves, and unsustainable practices, Forestry Tasmania cannot fulfil its contracts from native forests.

“Forestry Tasmania must go.”

Green agenda on forestry peace 'shafted', says Milne

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), February 24, 2012

The first $20 million of forestry peace deal money is no longer linked to the forest reserve legislation.

The Greens are fuming about the Federal Government's latest change to the forest peace deal.

The first $20 million in regional development funding under the deal is no longer conditional on the success of legislation to create new forest reserves.

Greens Senator Christine Milne says it is a massive breach of faith.

"The loggers get their money, the regional development money flows and the conservation agenda is shafted."

"The people who are being taken for a ride here are the people who negotiated in good faith and believed that for Commonwealth money to be spent there would be conservation outcomes," she said.

She says it is an insult to conservation and industry groups which negotiated the $276 million peace deal.

"What does this mean for the agreement if it can be amended at whim without consultation, without anyone knowing what it means?"

"I think we've got a situation now where we've got an intergovernmental agreement that is meaningless."

But the Federal Minister Simon Crean says he made the change to put the faltering peace deal back on track.

"Really, this puts the onus back on those who have still got reservations to say 'do we want more of this or more of the unrest'?"

All but three of Tasmania's 15 MLCs say they will block the legislation unless green groups end their overseas campaigns against Ta Ann Tasmania.

Of the total funding package, $100 million is still linked to the legislation.

Mr Crean will meet MLCs this morning to win support for the forest peace deal.

Huon MLC Paul Harriss says the change to the peace deal will not change the minds of his colleagues.

"People will see through that, for goodness sake, you know, what does he take us for?"

"The whole $120 million in regional development money is nothing but a sop anyway and in essence it's blood money."

"We're talking close to a $1 billion industry in this state and to think that they can replace it with just $120 millions in regional development money is just a joke," Mr Harris said.