‘High-quality sawlogs’ and TA peeler billets from plantations – would you believe?

Retired forester Robin Halton has highlighted a critical table in the 68-page Forestry Tasmania ‘Sustainability Charter Forest Management Plan 2008’:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CFMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forestrytas.com.au%2Fuploads%2FFile%2Fpdf%2FForest_Management_Plan.pdf&ei=KwkjUP6nK66jiAf0j4G4Cg&usg=AFQjCNHrQCu_bIl3_D1PqMNBnl85i3ZliQ

The document models the transition in the yield of ‘high quality sawlog from eucalypt’ plotted out to 2096 – i.e. 84 years from now.

Forestry Tasmania’s own modellingsuggests that by 2023 Tasmania’s plantation estate will sustainably produce 160,000 cubic metres of high quality sawlog every year… out to 2096.

It also predicts ~60-80,000 cubic metres of sawlog will come from predominantly ‘aged native forest regrowth’ but this does not start to be factored in until 2030. That post-2030 high quality sawlog yield comes from various categories of regrowth in State Forests.

On these FT predictions and anticipating a Peace Deal, the yield from mature native forest – i.e. validated HCV State Forests – will drop from 150,000 cub meters per year down to probably 50,000 cubic metres.

According to Ta Ann Tasmania’s website, the company“cannot and does not use Old Growth”. From their website, this is a picture taken on 8 February 2012 of a typical regrowth billet. Each annual growth ring has been marked and a pin inserted each decade. [~45 years]

No substitute

Figure: Ta Ann will trial the use of smaller and lower quality peeler billets [Photo ABC Jessica Kidd]

ABC News, 20 June 2012: ‘Veneer processor Ta Ann Tasmania is considering overhauling its operations to help the forest peace talks.

Ta Ann’s rotary veneer mills process native logs, 20 to 70 centimetres in diameter.

But the Resources Minister, Bryan Green, has revealed the company will trial using smaller and lower quality peeler logs.

He says a permanent change could free up forests for reservations under the state’s peace talks to reduce native forest logging.

“That might help ensure that we can come up with a volume for Ta Ann out of the existing mix that allows some room within the negotiations,” he said.

Under its 20-year wood supply agreement with Forestry Tasmania, Ta Ann has an annual entitlement of 265,000 cubic metres of peeler billets.’[ENDS]

A Tasmanian forester with considerable experience, Peter Bennett wrote to the Mercury newspaper on 26 October, 2010 after the Statement of Forest Principles was signed:

“The notion of a transition to a plantation-based forest industry to guarantee peace in our time and sustainability and security for the forest workforce rolls so easily from the tongue and must sound great to so many people. Now it’s time for a reality check and to test the rhetoric against the facts.

First, the target product for processing through sawmills of our native forest resource is ‘appearance-grade’ dried timber for downstream processing into flooring, joinery, furniture and office & domestic fit-out.

Planting of commercial-scale hardwood plantations in Tasmania managed for ‘appearance-grade’ products began in the early to mid-1990s. The program was funded by the federal government as one arm of a compensation package following the implementation of the Forest Industry Strategy that was developed out of the Helsham Inquiry [late 1980s].

About 6000 ha was planted using seed stock of Eucalyptus nitens (Shining gum) from northern Victoria and some Eucalyptus globulus (Blue gum) from Tasmania. These species were chosen because they have a fairly inherent resistance to Tasmanian insects and because they are both desirable species for pulp yield and pulp quality.

The establishment of these plantations for a sawlog crop was acknowledged to be something of ‘an act of faith’. At the time native forest-sourced Blue gum in Tasmania was regarded as highly undesirable for sawmilling and Shining gum was strongly non-preferred sawmilling species in Victoria.

Somehow the expectation took hold that plantation-grown versions of the same trees would not share these recalcitrant processing characteristics of their native forest equivalents.

There have been three substantial sawmilling trials of plantation-grown logs involving both tree species. The outcome from each trial has been highly disappointing and the indications are that this plantation resource will deliver little appearance-grade timber.

It will, however, deliver a ‘flood’ of mediocre quality and strength structural-grade timber that must compete in the marketplace with Radiata pine that can be produced for a fraction of the price plus three or four ‘floods’ of wood chip [for pulp].

By all means let’s have a transition to a plantation-based industry if that’s the way to go, if that’s our ‘social licence’; but we need to face up to the fact that such a move will a completely different set of product lines to those we know today [2010]. There will be practically no appearance-grade joinery timber coming forward when the transition is complete and no special-species timber at all, once the cessation of all harvesting in native forests is implemented.

Is that what Tasmanian voters really want?

P.J. Bennett, Blackmans Bay