Photograph taken on Burnie wharf, November 2012: Logs destroyed from sitting around with nowhere to go
Photograph taken on Burnie wharf, November 2012: Huge amounts of fresh logs being stockpiled
The Tasmanian Greens today highlighted major discrepancies in forest policy by highlighting the piles of whole logs for export, while at the same time smaller contract operators cannot access sufficient resource.
Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP said that it is impossible to fathom how thousands of tonnes of millable blackwood logs are left on the wharf to split and rot, while at the same time Forestry Tasmania is claiming there is a shortage of specialty timbers.
Mr Booth also raised concerns that now some of these stockpiled logs are being sold as firewood, again incurring a massive loss to the public purse.
“Forestry Tasmania has stockpiled on the Burnie wharf, amongst other places, tens of thousands of tonnes of both eucalypt and blackwood logs, only to leave them rotting and splitting in the sun, which is inexcusable,” Mr Booth said.
“Despite losing $27 million last year, Forestry Tasmania somehow thinks it is okay to allow this ongoing waste, while they are also claiming that there is a specialty timber shortage.”
“The Greens are calling on Forests Minister, Bryan Green, to intervene and require Forestry Tasmania to either leave blackwood standing, or they ensure it is made available at commercial rates to Tasmania’s country sawmillers.”
“We also seek answers as to how much public monies Forestry Tasmania will lose on the blackwood and eucalypt whole logs piles on Burnie wharf
“We also seek clarification as to whether any contractor who has received exit package funding, is still operating in the native forest industry by carting logs?”
“There must be no further market interference and subsidies, which are destroying future mill logs, ruining efficient operators, propping up the inefficient and wasting public money,” Mr Booth said.
Kaingaroa Forest - the largest plantation in the Southern Hemisphere.
Napier, a major export port for soft wood forest products.
• David Obendorf: Industrial-scale Forestry in New Zealand
The New Zealand Government began planting exotic forests in 1899 near Rotorua to address growing timber shortages as slow-growing native forests were exhausted.
In the 1930s, vast areas of cleared land were planted with Pinusratiata. The largest plantation was the 290,000-hectare Kiangaroa forest on the North Island. As these plantations matured, timber processing industries were established.
In 2006 softwood plantation forests of various ages covered a total area was 18,000 km2 or 1.8 million hectares of New Zealand. In that year log harvesting produced 18.8 million m3 of timber; this is projected to rise as high as 30 million m3 per annum after 2010.
The value of all forestry exports (whole logs, woodchips, sawn timber, panels and paper products) for the year ended 31 March 2006 was $NZ3.62 billion and $4.65 billion by 2011.
Australia accounts for just over 25% of export value, mostly paper products, followed by Japan, South Korea, China and the United States. Within the New Zealand economy, forestry accounts for approximately 4% of national GDP. On the global stage, the New Zealand forestry industry is a relatively small contributor in terms of production, accounting for 1% of global wood supply for industrial purposes.
In the 1980s the NZ government sought to sell their State forests to private interests.
Several Maori tribal groups took the Government to court to prevent the sale, arguing that they were the traditional owners of the land, that the land had been wrongfully taken from them, and that the government should retain the land until a settlement of the claims had been reached.
It took 20 years to reach settlement of those claims and to see the forest lands returned to their traditional owners.
On 1 July 2009, ownership of the Kaingaroa Forest passed to a group of Maorii as the traditional land owners, in partial settlement of their claims that the Crown breached the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
The forests themselves (the trees) continue to be owned by a private company (Kaingaroa Timberlands Ltd), which holds a forestry licence over the land.
Show Comments
Comments (25)
You build your wharf, you stack your logs onto it and you wait. Many of the Pacific islands have a similar belief system.
Might there be one sawmiller in Tas who is being amply supplied while their competition is being starved? This is Tasmania after all.
John Hayward
30 months of forest talks were merely a sham for extracting money from the public purse; nothing more. The forest industry leaders at the roundtable were not genuine in their motivation or intention and the ENGO leaders naively trusted them and they were comprehensively played with and publicly silenced.
There was no Plan B. With 2 days of Parliament remaining - Giddings and Green dream of ratifying legislation on a Tasmanian forest peace deal before the end of 2012 has been clear-felled… once again!
When will we ever learn?
Iagree with Karl on this one, it is time that the cargo cult was dropped as a working model.
The markets are never going to rush to Burnie to see all the logs and want to take them away.
FT could have bothered to wax the ends of the logs or at least put water sprays on them to slow down the drying. By the time they get to a mill they won’t be any use at all.
Where is George the Woodworker when you need him, he should be up there with the Huon mob protesting about the waste of valuable timber.
Be interesting to hear FT’s side of this. It doesn’t appear that these logs were intended for sawing and if they were, there’s been no attempt made to preserve them.
No end plates, they don’t appear to have been end coated and I can’t see any sign of a sprinkler system. Good way to create firewood though!
This is yet another in our face example HOW NOT to do business.
There can be no excuse, considered that these piles of degraded logs are just the indicator of many wasted opportunities. If we have the photos of the areas these now wasted trees grew, we would have it conformed again that the madness has to end.
How the politicians in Hobart still support this as “sustainable management” is beyond believe. The Australian Forestry Standard and the PEFC International surely would not see such wasteful operations as acceptable, credible business.
The waste of our mixed species forests and first rotation immature regrowth, mainly to keep the supply of peeler logs going is bizarre. How much longer will the two major parties condone these practices?
This wasteful forest mining (simplistic logging) needs to end and only than would Tasmania have a chance to develop responsible, commercial restoration forestry practices.
Exemplary models of responsible approaches in forest management can be found:
http://www.forestguild.org/mission.html
The Forest Guild practices and promotes responsible forestry as a means of ... is dependent on responsible forest management that places the highest priority ...
AND
Forest management principles
http://www.twff.com.au/documents/twffprosilvapol.pdf
Yet again more breathtaking examples of the unmitigated gall, incompetence and mendacity of Forestry Tasmania, and of the irresponsibility of the Government to allow its own business arm to get away with is.
I presume the NZ item has been posted as some kind of beacon for Tasmania?
NZ cleared 5 million ha of marvellous native forests full of remarkable timbers and put 3 million under cow shit and 2 million under radiata.
The 2 million under radiata could have produced kauri, various beeches, kaihakatea and rimu and all the eco-services sustainably and in perpetuity. Instead they’ve got soft white radiata pine mostly sapwood that can’t be used in any structural capacity unless it is soaked in preservatives.
And to the ceded areas, traditional white access (yes) has been summarily extinguished by native title and in the case of Kaingaroa compounded by Timberland’s zero tolerance loss adjusters. They close the forest on the flimsiest premises, and you have to line up on Friday at a grubby booth in Rotorua (a) to find out if they’ve decided to open, and (b) to then beg for a weekend 9-5 day pass.
Some beacon.
For the record. Timber Workers For Forests made it very clear in the first quarter of 2010.
This interview by ABC Rural outlined what the key issues are to create a positive forest policy.
You can read it again:
Market to drive change in Tasmanian forests
By Sally Dakis, Wednesday, 24/03/2010
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/tas/content/2010/03/s2855032.htm
Have the deal makers taken any notice of it?
NO, the advise was simply ignored, despite that TWFF was one of the original founders of FSC Australia in Social Chamber. We were ignored and sidelined as it was considered easier that way.
However, if the remaining Forest Industry Groups, the Federal and State Government, the ENGOs and Unions involved in the IGA process think that such a outdated construct, the exclusive, elitist, secretive process can ever result in a lasting quality outcome, they will find that without real change in attitude and holistic cooperation, Tasmania will simply not find a happy future. This attitude does them and Tasmania no good.
It is a triple loose situation outlook.
The huge stockpiles of split and cracked logs are indicators that the forestry practices have to change fundamentally - not simply another trade off deal continue the madness between totally protected reserves as Living Museums and trading these gains off by allowing wasted forests and trashed water catchments to continue.
Plantation management in Tasmania has to change, if the IGA process simply does exclude this fact, the deal would be useless.
Time will tell.
#5 ...FT’s side of the argument?
The enemy did it
Firewood sells for around $100 / tonne. Probably the best net return FT have got from its efforts at “downstream processing”.
No defence of forestry from the usual suspects I see.
storage costs on the Burnie wharf must be cheap for some lab-green protected businesses.
bet that storage costs are not being paid.
Interesting it would be to track down the responsible individual that had orchestrated this additional example of illogical sloth.
Ah well who cares, there’s still plenty of HCV that we can help ourselves too whenever we want.
That this GBE has in its employ such sloth-heads with no real accountability toward their waste creations and to the manner that this compounds upon their presumed revenue expectations, becomes another classic illustration of the mental density of those at the top of this non-sustaining, non-profitable and illogical performing logging GBE.
As was mentioned above, ‘wherefore art thy tongue ye forest proponents with your government-funded destructive logging addicted yeomanry?’
The people of Tasmania are heard calling for George Harris, (apparently the new unpaid jocular replacement for the issuing of (counterfeit?) claims of competence, formerly the precinct of one highly remunerated Kenneth (the spinning spieler) Jefferys,) where are you George?
Whereby you then write to us on Tas Times offering your impotent rationales in the hope of laying yet another veneer of cosmetic understanding to protect this ongoing failure agency from its frequent random acts of incompetence and verbal immolations.
George Harris.
This seems to be a proper Monument to Stupidity.
Your comments please.
#8 For once I have to agree with you hugo. However I think the point is that NZ messed up environmentally, but have at least turned a profit, whereas FT…?
All the spiel about New Zealand’s abundance of forests soon pales to insignificance when one undertakes a Google overview of the North island.
As for the South Island most all Forested regions remaining are in the high elevation zones.
After reading Hugoagogo’s comment it would seem that they had called on Forestry Tasmania to develop their timber supply operations.
Bash and burn like buggery to get rid of the exotic native species in order to make way for huge pinus radiata plantations.
So as far as intelligent strategies are concerned it seems as though they too were of same destructive mind-set as is extant in Tasmania, for they were early put to the task of the ripping down and the burning of their natural forests, (maybe even sent a bit in to the woodchippers,) just to rid these once prolific forested realms, on those 2 major Pacific Ocean islands, of their nowadays highly valuable exotic native species…
Definately the same boozy blindness there as is practiced here by way of Forestry Tasmania’s Native Forest destruction policy!
Let us hope the past and present directors of Forestry Tasmania will be given the full recognition so deserved to them, before they meet the Valkyrie that will transport them to their Valhalla as a result of both their ‘extensive’ and ‘intensive’ destruction endeavours, as may one day also be offered to the former Tasmanian logging cut-throats of John Gay-lord and Robin Gray-beard, along with their dumbed down faithful acolytes.
Dear Mr Booth as a Green representative for Country sawmillers desperate to get their hands on this magnificent pile of blackwood and eucalypts, I have sought an explaination of a top level professional foresterwithin FT:
Robin,
Thanks for your perennial interest in defending the Forest industry in Tasmania!
The logs in question, both eucalypt and blackwood are logs that do not meet the specifications for sale under our existing contracts for supply to Tasmanian sawmillers. The logs arise as a result of integrated harvesting to produce eucalypt and blackwood sawlogs and sliced veneer logs as well as eucalypt peeler logs to supply to Ta Ann’s Tasmanian plants.
The logs for export are lower quality that cannot be sold on the current domestic market.
Overseas markets for these logs provide the opportunity to sell logs that would otherwise be wasted, to increase the returns from the production of sawlogs, veneer logs and peeler logs, and to keep harvesting and cartage contractors gainfully employed.
In addition overseas markets provide the opportunity to develop market demand for eucalypt and blackwood timber products that well eventually translate to more demand for Tasmanian timbers and it is hoped to additional investment in the timber processing sector wood products made from blackwood havbe a large range of potential uses including high value decorative uses.
If Mr Booth bothered he could have sought the same advice from FT.
Thank you Kim for your alarmist article!
Time for to visit the bush operations with a FT offical to note how the certified Log Classification person working at the bush operation segerates the logs according to the LC Scale before logs leave the bush for their destination.
Mr Kim Booth, I would appreciate your comment on my #18, it seems that you begrudge FT, where are all of the screaming small sawmillers being denied of this “valuable resource”.
Instead of guessing at least I researched the article that you intentionally presented to attract anti forestry commentary!
#18 What is the reason that overseas buyers want these logs and yet nobody wants them locally? Why is that?
Serious question.
#20 Shaun, I hope that Robin answers. Some of my thoughts are that the sawmillers have been spoilt here. They don’t have to deal with logs with pipes from Termite damage that the mainlanders have to deal with. They have a massive choice of logs to choose from because of the wasteful woodchip driven logging practices of the past 40 years and so can afford to be very choosy.
Another problem that I see is that the logging industry here works all year round. When it should really only be a seasonal industry. The trees cut in winter have far too much water in them and as such are prone to splitting and checking, plus the problem of cell collapse. Cell collapse causes massive losses in the drying process in our hardwoods because the milled lumber distorts and needs to be re sawn or planed.
If the trees were only cut in summer when their moisture content was lower the cracking and distortion problems would be much lower.
They are some of my thoughts on the problem. I guess that logs cut in summer could be stored under cover or have the ends waxed to slow drying until sawing. Logging in summer/autumn would also mean that there was a lot less road damage as well.
I don’t expect that anyone will take onboard my suggestions. My experience has been that the wetter the log the harder it is to get straight, check free timber out of it.
#19 Shaun and #20 Pete Godfrey. As the Editor placed two virtually identical articles under seperate headings I have included an explaination for the log piles directly from FT under “Forestry Tasmania Forensic audit goes unheeded, by Nick McKim 16/11.
Thank you to you both for raising the Burnie log stockpile issue, it is important for these matters to be raised and hopefully solved as a part of the issues the loggers and FT are facing today.
I agree, #20 Pete if the logs are to be valued for other purpose than chipping then the presentation for sale for a higher value purposes could have included better storage, log ends greased or sprinklers! It will be interesting where the logs in question end up !
Pete Godfrey. I know everything is upside down in this part of the world.
In the UK all valuable timber was felled in winter when the sap was down.
Felling in Spring resulted ones knees being soaked by the sap pouring out.
When the trees lose their leaves in Autumn the sap descends.
Please explain.
#23 I may be wrong on my timing, but in Northern NSW when our summers we had wet summers and dry winters. The logs felled in summer were easier to debark but had a lot more moisture in them and as such took longer to dry.
I never saw much cell collapse until I came here, I also did not see logs left on landings pointing downhill to allow water to drain out before being carted. I am guessing that is done to woodchip logs so the processor pays less for them but also very wet logs don’t dry well.
Maybe your explanation of the sap is the answer but then we are talking about different trees. Yours were deciduous whereas the eucalypts here may behave differently. Hopefully someone else with more knowledge can clear the fog for me.
#23; You can’t make valid comparisons between deciduous trees and eucalypts.
Timber loses water rapidly when first cut, but with little shrinkage. Then the water loss slows down and the shrinkage increases. The problems come when parts of the log move into the rapid shrinkage area whilst the rest is still fairly stable.
Obviously moisture loss from the centre of the log is the slowest so the name of the game is to slow down the loss from the rest of the log, hence waxing the ends and storing in cool damp conditions.
For this reason, you’re likely to get better logs if they are harvested in winter, rather than summer. I’m not sure that the amount of moisture in the log is a seasonal factor in Tasmania.