Surely it is the extremity of arrogance to dictate that a forest which has been cycling naturally for millions of years (and with eucalyptus trees only being a relative newcomer to the scene) that “foresters” doing their “science” actually have deduced a better way for forests to “regenerate” than the forests have themselves evolved.
The entire ethic, operation, outlook and goal of the “science” is founded on one thing, and one thing only, that being that the forest’s existence and makeup is purely in its dollar value, and how to harvest as many of those dollars as quickly as possible. In this blinkered world there is no use for a forest other than to cut it down for profit. The thought that forests may have evolved for a completely different reason seems not to occur.
What is said with regard to growing eucalyptus after fire is all true. But the aim is only commercial-grade eucalyptus trees. That’s what the scientific research seems to be all about; no thought of balance or of renewing everything else there, only the efficient and commercial replacement of one sort of commercially desirable pulpwood tree, the eucalyptus.
Where is the research dedicated to the regrowing of the non-commercial species, the preservation of wildlife, the value of naturally fallen timber and debris in situ and lack of fire frequency in the rainforest cycle.
On the obsession with fire – it is an undeniable fact that high intensity fire is an extremely rare thing in Tasmania’s rainforests. If it happens it will kill, often as not, the rainforest trees there outright. The eucalyptus, as relative newcomers to the cycle, adapted as any weed does to make benefit of conditions that the original plants couldn’t handle well.
That alone, even to a layperson, surely makes it obvious why the Tasmanian rainforest hA such a unique and historically important place in the world – because it is extremely rare for our climate to encourage unassisted wildfire in them, unlike elsewhere in the country. Which is why Tassie has had such large areas of old growth temperate rainforest; and they don’t.
So this obsession with eucalyptus is borne from an obsession with money, nothing else. It was all about eucalyptus and plantations and bucketloads of money. This being money for private companies of course and not the stakeholders, namely Tasmania’s population. Nothing at all to do with natural balance and indeed, the survival of ours or any other species either.
All the current touchy-feely “environmentally concerned science” coming from forestry these days appears simply to somehow validate in modern climate change terms the archaic science from the ‘50’s & 60’s whose sole aim was simply to find the best way of regrowing commercially valuable eucalyptus as quickly and densely as possible to make as much money as possible.
To call what is done to our publicly owned native forests “regeneration” is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, their own included.
Take the Florentine valley as an example of “good forestry”. It simply beggars belief. Visit the valley, climb any of the taller peaks surrounding it for an overview, or simply look at it on the latest updated Google Earth photo and it is immediately obvious what a bloody unnatural disaster “forestry” has visited upon the valley. It is one gigantic eucalyptus tree-farm now, old ANM “year planted” signs on the ground verifying current rotations of under 20 years. It is absolutely nothing like the original reports of the place before the clearfelling storm hit; namely that of ancient, open myrtle and sassafras rainforest intermingled with stands of tall eucalyptus trees and areas of scrub, buttongrass and cutting grass.
Having razed that place, the loggers now want to play with their “science”; dozers, excavators and bastard cable-loggers and flatten the Upper Florentine as well, turn that into a short-rotation eucalyptus farm, finish the demolition and conversion of the Styx and the Wedge, then dust off their hands with the Weld, completing the conversion of the southern wild valleys of the state into one giant woodchip farm.
Only now the market increasingly won’t buy chips from there anymore, all of which makes the whole thing utterly pointless.
Yetthe loggers still bang on about science and “regeneration” and endlessly hammer this discredited line because they’re just too self-centred and headstrong to admit that it’s all wrong. It’s not even about the money anymore, because as both Gunns and FT have so effectively demonstrated in their balance sheets recently, there simply ain’t none anymore. With vast plantations in fast-growing tropical climes elsewhere in the world for competition, it ain’t coming back again, either.
Forestry research science was (and is) about regrowing eucalyptus, not regenerating native forest; that being the stuff that was there before initial harvest. It was (and is) predicated on making money, not regrowing the original forest, which includes all species, not one or two, and does not involve 1080. Original forest as an ongoing concept is completely alien to them. Beneath even thinking about, in fact.
Any opposition is met with aggravated annoyance at our stupidity, yet why is it that Gunns and Forestry have not been able to date to get full FSC approval? Are the FSC people too stupid as well?
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s arse if loggers get annoyed by what I say. If that is their reaction it obviously points to a raw nerve being hit, which is exactly the point. Calling shots as I see them is my right as well as theirs, and parroting FT’s B.S. lines does not make their viewpoint any more superior than is mine. FT’s B.S. is increasingly being exposed, because it no longer can hide what it’s doing from being seen, and the Internet, whether they like it or not, is giving voice to all people, not just forestry and party-line hacks.
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Now, to respond to Woodworker’s attempted smart diatribe substituting the life-cycle of vegetables to the actual reasoning of the how and the why of the eucalyptus tree’s life-cycle in the forest, implying the rabid hippie-greenie-doped-up floral lifestyle of me that these blokey-bloked-up-blokes love to lay on people who dare to differ from their viewpoint.
So sorry, Woody, I eat meat.
I don’t have a vegetable garden. And I don’t hug trees nor smoke dope. Flowers make me sneeze.
Your bias is showing, and your analogy couldn’t be wider off the mark if you tried.
I’m not indoctrinated by anyone. I make up my own mind from what I see for myself. I don’t comment on something I haven’t seen in reality. As I’ve said to you before, you ought to get out into the old forest sometime and see exactly what is being done to the place. These are your raw materials …
I appreciate that you want and use wood for a purpose that I have always supported. I love wood when skilfully turned or worked. I live by choice in an old wooden house (with all the problems in maintenance that brings), and have spent an inordinate amount of time stripping over a century of paint jobs inside it to expose the 19th Century wood, from doors to skirts to floors, dadoes and linings. I also paid a fortune for two custom made guitars which were only so expensive because I specified flame maple and figured blackwood with a clear, unstained finish for their construction. They are things of true beauty.
Wood is marvelous stuff. Clearfell for chips, on the other hand, is the cancer of this State which so many of us want to end as the driving force behind forestry. It’s no longer a by-product, it became a principle product ages ago when trees were harvested and regrown specifically for it. We can do far, far better than this.
Once the Forestry Tasmania apologists realise that the majority of those people who are calling for a rethink are not automatically vegan, dark green, dope-smoking, dreadlocked, anarchic hippies, they too might stop this stupid auto-association crap that the government and forestry have encouraged for so long and start questioning why this profitless insanity is allowed to continue.
So please go into the forest and see what the chippers are doing to the place. How much mature celerytop, myrtle, black-hearted sassy, leatherwood, and other superb timber is either sitting in the piles marked for chipping or dozed into the windrows and piles for burning. How the understorey and forest floor which has evolved over millennia is completely destroyed and turned over in a way that few natural events short of a volcanic eruption would ever cause.
To quote a question previously asked but unanswered by the woodchip industry apologists, please answer this simple question:
“If woodchip predominant forestry as practised since the 1960’s is so good for Tasmania, why are we still the poorest state?”
And please be a bit more intelligent in answering than to blame the “greenies” yet again. They are but a small minority as the apologists are always so quick to point out; so if that’s true then they have had no real direct influence on what has gone on in Forestry over the decades. There is something much sicker going on here.
Elsewhere:
Lemmings, heading for the cliffs
