GRAEME CORNEY, Churchill Fellow, Cultural Landscape Consultant, and former Heritage Council of Tasmania Principal Architect and Senior Heritage Advisor. A response to Woodworker’s comment at the end of this article:HERE
Mr George Harris, before our opinions diverge, let’s see if we have any common ground. Would you agree that:
Tourism is the fundamental component of Tasmania’s economic future and that its Heritage Buildings and Unique Landscapes make up two of the three foundation stones of Tasmania’s tourism industry? With this in mind Cultural landscapes are an important element of Tasmania’s man-made heritage; think of the Derwent Valley and hop-growing landscapes, or the Midlands ‘enclosure’ hedges, the Huon Valley apple orchards and the selectively logged forested Tiers.
The harvesting of timber is a tradition as old as European settlement of Australia but clear felling is a very recent practice. Traditional timber-getting in Tasmania was through a sustainable select logging process. The past 30 years has seen forestry practices move to clear felling so as to enhance the woodchip industry: fact or fiction?
Simply by having an area designated as a Private Timber Reserve approved by a Government body set up to approve PTRs any landscape can be clear-felled without scrutiny.
The example that you use of forestry operations close to the Port Arthur Historic Site is a good one.
It was not your illusionary checks and balances that brought about selective logging rather than clear felling. It was timely canvassing by the then Chair of the Tasmanian Heritage Council Mr Peter James OAM who caught wind of pending clear felling of the landscape once gazetted as a PTR.
He convinced the Tasmanian Government to pay compensation to the owner to confine the activity to selective logging.
A pending application to UNESCO for World Heritage Listing of Port Arthur would have been greatly damaged by clear felling of the PAHS environs. Relying on your so called checks and balances, the World Heritage listing would now be dead in the water.
It is a fact that in all planning schemes in Tasmania, any development next to a heritage-listed site must be considered for its impact on the cultural values of that site. The current forestry exemptions in place mean that clear felling next to a heritage listed site or even over a heritage listed site does not require planning approval, hence Mr John Hawkins’ objections ( The answer is the survival of Gunns and Forestry Tasmania . John Hawkins, heritage landscapes, Scott Gadd, Graham Corney, Peter James and David Bedford ).
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Your comparison with normal agricultural activities and the unreasonableness of requiring planning controls is shallow. No farming agricultural activity that I can think of (other than creating a dam – which does need planning approval) has any impact on the heritage values of a place.
You claim that farmers need to register PTRs to provide for long term certainty when they grow plantations. The truth is that very few PTRs are proclaimed over farmland as future coups for clear-felling. They are nearly all over forested areas that had a prior 150 year history of sustainable use as an area for select logging which without PTR approval could not be clear felled.
Forestry and tourism can both be managed to Tasmania’s benefit. However the current and dramatic impacts on our landscapes are a direct result of insufficient planning controls over a narrow-focused forestry machine that has bent the system in favour of clear felling rather than selective logging.
Editor’s Note: Two weeks after publication of John Hawkins, Heritage Landscapes, Scott Gadd, Graeme Corney, Peter James and David Bedford Tasmanian Times still waits for a Government response. This website is always open to a fair telling of the other side of the story.
