Pathetic!

GEORGE HARRIS, A response to:Preserving old-growth forests is vital to saving the planet

Comments #2 and #3 are absolutely pathetic and demonstrate little understanding.
On 16 June 2009, the ANU announced the surprise findings that the world’s most carbon dense forest was in the Central Highlands of Victoria. Despite the ANU claiming “The results are published in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most-cited scientific serials”, it was not until last Thursday June 25 that the paper was available from the National Academy of Sciences.

This lack of publication did not stop the Greens or the Wilderness Society publicly referring to the findings and demanding an end to native forest logging. Such an article was published in the Age, on 22 June 2009 by Gavan McFadzean, the Wilderness Society Victorian campaigns manager and mirrored on the Tasmanian Times.

My response has two aspects. Firstly, I seek to elaborate on the criticism of the ‘science’ coming out of the ANU, and the manner in which it is being used, and secondly to explain the significance of the timber industry, and the parts of it that I am most concerned about.

The work reported on in Gavan McFadzean’s article is by Professor Brendan Mackey, Professor David Lindenmayer, and Dr. Heather Keith from the Fenner School at the ANU. A number of academics from this school are involved with the Wild Country Research and Policy Hub, which is partnered by the Wilderness Society. Professor Mackey is current Director of the Hub, and Emeritus Professor Henry Nix chairs the Hub’s Advisory Committee. These two are also volunteers for the Wilderness Society. A recent paper from the Wild Country Hub, funded by the Wilderness Society, entitled ‘Green Carbon, the role of natural forests in carbon storage’, has made some extraordinary claims about carbon storage in forests, and about carbon emissions from forestry activities.

In that paper, preliminarily released in Bali in 2007 and then officially in August 2008, it stated “A technical paper that details the source data, the methods used and the full results is being prepared for a scientific journal.” This is an extra ordinary statement, as there appears to have been major departures from conventional practices of peer review. The source of funding, the timing of the release and the media promotion of that report by the Wilderness society, has led to questions over its independence and reliability.

This, and suggestions of over-reliance on satellite imagery together with theoretical models constructed with contributions from unusual sources, and a lack of availability of data, has the potential for their work to be seen as the stuff of major scientific hoax.

This work has been eagerly waved around by Greens senators. In recent weeks, in circumstances of Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong negotiating with key crossbench senators to secure support for the carbon pollution reduction scheme, Greens Senator Bob Brown said: “the Greens want to see the end to forest and woodland logging in Australia, which would reduce carbon emissions by 15 to 20 per cent.” He has also used the then unpublished carbon findings to frame a motion for adoption by the Senate. However, the Senate has now risen, and Bob Brown’s motion is yet to pass.

Gavan McFadzean, the Wilderness Society’s Victorian campaigns manager, elaborates by saying: “If we stopped logging all the forests of south-eastern Australia, and we now have enough wood in plantations to do that, we would avoid emissions equal to 24 per cent of the 2005 Australian net greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors.” How wrong he is! It is completely at odds with the figures quoted by the Australian Emissions Information System reporting for 2006 against UNFCCC categories, (United Nations Framework for the Calculation of Climate Change), which lists harvested wood products and forest land as the only Australian sub-categories where carbon sequestration and storage outweigh emissions.

McFadzean and Bob Brown seem to be in the grip of the popular misconception that all of Australia’s sawn timber requirements can be met solely from harvesting from the plantation estate. They don’t know how wrong they are! Plantations got off to a slow start not much more than forty years ago, and the oldest plantation trees are hardly big enough to be viable saw logs. The quantities that are coming online would be consumed very quickly. What would you do then? Import timber? Some plantations are grown and managed for the pulp and paper industry, and will never make good saw logs, no matter how long they are left in the ground. Re-growth from fires in native forest over the last 100 years, together with regenerated native forest, remain the most important source of saw logs into the future, whether you like it, or not. McFadzean may be banging on about woodchips, but they are not the problem. They may help him demonize the timber industry, but going without saw logs is what the economy would really notice. Worse than that, all the non-timber alternatives have far more damaging carbon consequences, cause greater energy consumption and other environmental consequences, and are not renewable! Timber continues to store carbon when transformed into products, and the trees that are grown in their place actively take up atmospheric carbon, and the carbon storage cycle rolls on.

Ceasing all native forest logging would mean no Special Timbers for high-value uses. This would be felt right across the country, but nowhere more than here in Tasmania. It would mean no Blackwood, Huon Pine, Celery-top Pine, Myrtle, Blackheart Sassafras, or King Billy, and many others. These unique and endemic species occupy iconic space in the cultural and heritage landscape, the arts, and to the tourism and visitor experience, and related commerce, and are crucial to the viability of local furniture designers, wood turners, wooden boat builders and musical instrument makers. A recent study by professional consultants revealed the Special Timbers and woodcraft sector directly employs 2000 people full time, and a further 8500 are engaged as a hobby or to a limited commercial extent. This sector generates $70 million annually.

The biennial Australian Wooden Boat Festival is one of the most significant regular events in Hobart. It not only celebrates the history and heritage of wooden boat building in Tasmania, but encourages new activity. The value of new wooden boat building is greater now than at any point in the state’s history, and the value in repair and restoration is considerable. The three prized Tasmanian boat building timbers, Huon Pine, Celery-top Pine and King Billy, are recognized internationally as among the finest available. Our School of Wooden Boat Building has an international reputation. Should this be undermined?

Our quality retailers in Salamanca Place, the Design Centre in Launceston, and in tourism destinations like Strahan, Richmond, Stanley, Geeveston, Port Arthur, Cradle Mountain and many others are icons for tourists and locals alike. How would Bob Brown and his Green colleagues explain themselves to the proprietors, staff and customers of these businesses if the crucial ingredient in their trade was to be suddenly locked up for no good reason? How would they explain themselves to the students and staff at the School of Fine Furniture, and at the Art School and Centre for Furniture Design? The reception would be sure to be painful. The truth can be painful, just as the 14 to 16 per cent vote for the Green candidates was painful in the recent Legislative Council elections. It will get a lot more painful when mad ideas like this one are fully understood.

The Special Timbers sector does not harvest a large amount of timber. It is less than 15,000 cubic metres per annum. However, that amount is crucial, and its viability depends on close proximity to the hardwood sawmilling sector, which cuts 350,000 tons annually, and which itself requires good quality saw logs to continue being available. The sawn timber industry has to be well managed, and it has to be sustainable. It has to ensure that it does not over-cut, and that it harvests at less than the rate of re-generation. It has to have an appropriate land area available to it so that these imperatives are achievable, and for its impact to not be too concentrated. A well-managed forest estate can co-exist with our world-class system of reserves, which is something we all enjoy. I encourage all forestry operations to be undertaken carefully and properly, but if you are going to call for no native forest harvesting at all, you will have to put up with me, and many others, telling you where you should go, and what you should endure once you get there, and it may involve lodging that dodgy science where it deserves to be.