Managing for the future

I agree with Dr Bruce Greaves (The Mercury, February 5) on many of the points which he makes in his article.

Use of native timbers for durable, high quality products such as furniture and flooring seems like a good thing to me.

Likewise, managing publicly owned native forests with an eye to the needs of future generations is only fair and reasonable. These needs include safeguarding water catchments and managing fire risk as well as ensuring the ongoing supply of high quality timber.

Monoculture eucalyptus plantations do not meet these requirements although they are sources of pulpwood.

Over the years many people from within the forest and timber industries have shown me irrefutable evidence that large amounts of valuable native timber are being wasted by the current harvesting strategy of clearfell and burn. I have seen timber which could be sawn on the road to the chipper or simply burnt on the coupe and young trees cut down rather than allowed to grow on to maturity.

I am not convinced that “our best resource”, that is native timbers, is being valued as highly as it should be.