Environment
The burning issue
Jack Trethewey (Mercury letters 30/10) laments the loss of biodiversity and the carbon pollution cost of the conversion of over 1000 square kilometres of native forest in Tasmania to plantation and eucalyptus regrowth in the last 12 years.
Burning of residual biomass left on the floor of the coupe is considered by many, but not all, foresters to be an essential part of the process. Compelling community and health concerns have been raised, and largely ignored.
It is possible to make an estimate of the carbon pollution cost of such forestry burns (not fuel reduction burns in standing forests) using data obtained by Forestry Tasmania scientists in 2001.
The scientists found that around 700 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare was lost into the atmosphere.
Using Trethewey’s figure for forest cleared we get a figure of 70 million tonnes of CO2 released over the last 12 years from Tasmania’s forestry “regeneration burns”.