*Pic: Scorched to death … A stand of celery-top pine. Pic: Pete Godfrey
• Kim Booth pics of trashed forests …
Re #27 Andrew it really is a pity that instead of addressing your mind to the real threat to special species timbers, which is the native forest woodchip juggernaut, you have instead wasted endless hours poring over Greens’ forest policy trying to find a full stop in the wrong place!
( Thank you Gary #30 for roundly demolishing Andrew Denman’s absurd proposition) …
What I would like to know is, if you love these timbers so much, where have you been for the last 40 odd years as so much of Tasmania’s mighty forests were woodchipped and consigned to the trash can of history?
Did you ever take a stand as tens of thousands of hectares of rainforest were bulldozed and napalmed, sprayed with pre-emergent herbicides, converted to serried rows of mainly pulp trees, laced with 1080 poison to exterminate indiscriminate native animals and aerial sprayed with cancer-causing insecticide?
Or did you just feast off the by kill of these vile exterminations?
Does Denman Marine really need the trophies of fresh ecological extermination to make a boat ?
And given that Denman Marine boasted it was a supplier of FSC-certified marine ply last time I looked on your website, how does advocating for logging in areas accepted by UNESCO as of World Heritage value fit?
Andrew there is still a massive amount of native forest being woodchipped right now, a lot of it perfectly suitable for sawmilling as I proved with three log truck loads of Myrtle, Blackwood and Eucalyptus, rescued off the Bunie wharf in 2013.
As well as that, there are more than enough old boats, valleys of flooded rainforest behind Hydro Dams and salvage wood to keep you building boats for the next thousand years.
It is indeed a shame that you allow yourself and your undoubted skills as a boatbuilder to be used by the Timber Barons to get into the bush … and a frontman for the Liberal Party to gain power.
What do you stand for Andrew?
Is there any tree anywhere that you don’t want to stick a chainsaw into?
• Andrea Dawkins: Heritage No Excuse for Logging the TWWHA
• Peter Adams in Comments: The media keeps repeating: “Speciality timber workers are pushing for access into World Heritage.” It would be more accurate to read: “A couple of speciality timber workers are pushing….” My guess is that the overwhelming majority of furniture designer/makers and boat builders in Tasmania have enough skill and design talent to use what materials are at hand, readily available and not in World Heritage areas.
• Pete Godfrey’s record of “World’s Best Practice” …
World’s Best Practice (massive steep hill, me in forground) Dazzler Ranges 2005. Clearfell of Native Forest 95% went to woodchip for Gunns Ltd.
Burnt Creek Bed also Dazzler ranges 2005, creek at the bottom of massive hill, creek was supposed to be protected during cable logging and also not burnt.
Dead Celery Top Pines, 2010 Native forest Clearfell, State Forest Logged by Gunns ltd, did not clear back logging slash on coupe edge; killed lovely stand of CT Pine
Garden of Eden, Again Gunns logging in State Forest 2006, cable logging on steep slope; Clearfell, Burn and Sow
Garden Of Eden Fire 1: Courtesy of Forestry Tasmania and their partners in the pine plantations. Part of a Blackwood plantation under pine that never worked out. Pine did well; blackwood failed. Fire was in 2011.
Worlds Best Practice (flat clearfelled wet forest) Caveside near Chudleigh, part of a clearfell and conversion coupe, State Forest adjacent to a Gunns coupe that they also clearfelled and converted 2005
Clearfelled Rainforest with a few massive old eucalypts interspersed. The eucalypts were all smashed up and burnt. The Myrtle and Sassafras mostly just left to burn. Tarkine 2010 courtesy of FT.
• Harry Higgins in Comments: Twenty five years ago, when I was younger and much fitter, I made a living for a while by salvaging minor species timber for sale to craftsmen. Access to clearfelled coupes in the northeast of the state was granted by Forestry, which allowed me and my colleague to scrounge what remained of the giant myrtles, eucalypts, musk and sassafrass to produce blocks for woodturners and boards for picture frames etc. We did it the hard way, dragging and carrying the wood back to our old ute. One area in the Fingal Forestry district looked a good prospect, so I travelled to the spot with a forestry ‘inspector’ to obtain approval for salvage work. When we arrived, I was appalled to see the entire area had been obliterated, including the stream reserve that the loggers were meant to preserve. The inspector (a former logger himself) said that the stream reserve was “only a Grade 3 reserve so it wasn’t so bad”. I then adopted a new strategy which involved turning up at log landings while the coupes were being ravaged, offer the loggers a carton of beer, and quickly gather the wood I wanted before it was crushed or burned. Logging whole areas to gain access to specialty timbers is a cop out and the lazy way to do it!
• Jack Lumber in Comments: Do you note apart from the usual suspects no-one even bothers to join in. This is a typical TT W@#K fest and the pictures add no value to the discussion and the discussion is the usual circular backslapping and hand ringing . THE WHA is not under threat; it will not result in large scale Clearfall, ( so why the pics ). I’m sorry that the celerytop pine tree was burnt but really are you saying every tree is special. If so please advise when a sawmill in Meander is closing, as EVERY TREE must be special > or is imported lumber OK. What is the chain of custody for said lumber at Meander? Just give me a FSC cert # and we can put that one to rest once and for all.
JULY 3 on Tasmanian Times: • STATE, WHA: No mining … but logging still allowed … ?
• Jenny Weber: Call to protect Tarkine in Festival of Voices
• Andrew Denman in Comments: I’ll wade back in and would like to offer some constructive debate to the issues being raised but before I do, a simple question for all who have replied to this thread. All that is required is a yes or no answer – no additional qualifications just a plain old yes or no. Do you support sustainable, selective harvesting of specialty timbers? Simple question and again all I’m after is a yes or no answer. Look forward to all the replies to this post.
• Andrew Denman in Comments: I’ll wade back in and would like to offer some constructive debate to the issues being raised but before I do, a simple question for all who have replied to this thread. All that is required is a yes or no answer – no additional qualifications just a plain old yes or no. Do you support sustainable, selective harvesting of specialty timbers? Simple question and again all I’m after is a yes or no answer. Look forward to all the replies to this post.
• Peter Henning in Comments: #13 The fact of the matter is that you, and people like you who want to use ‘special species’ timber resources, need to answer a few questions yourselves before you start asking questions of others. First, you need to put on the public record, clearly and unambiguously, where you stand in relation to overall forestry practices, such as clear-felling, trashing water catchments, wrecking soil profiles, napalming to prevent biodiversity, the establishment of exotic monocultural plantations and spraying regimes, just for starters. I can’t recall your name being at the forefront in arguing for sustainability in any of those areas. If you want to be a player in sustainability, prove it. Until then, and you put some runs on the board, why should you be trusted with any claims at all in relation to sustainability? Where was your voice when the pulp mill debate was at its height? On the side of sustainability? There are a few people I know and would trust as ‘sustainable’ users of special species timber. They’re the ones who opposed the trashing of special species in clearfelling. Are you one of them?
• Andrew Denman in Comments: Thanks for the initial replies everyone. Alright, let’s talk about sustainability to see if I can elicit a few more yes or no answers. Let’s go for an internationally accepted definition of sustainable use from the Convention on Biological Diversity which states …
• Gordon Bradbury in Comments: I think John Hawkins (#22) highlights one of the many risks/limitations in this whole debate (and John conveniently leaves out the politicians and our complete lack of trust in them). This is not simply about land tenure and/or counting trees. In fact to begin the debate at the issue of sustainability I suspect is totally fallacious. There are other aspects far more important and significant than simply counting trees. If I think of this whole issue from a business point of view none of it makes any sense at all. It’s like the Mt Wellington cable car – a half baked idea masquerading as innovation. So to answer your simplistic question Andrew the simplistic answer is “No”. Until I see something resembling a proper business plan I will continue to oppose WHA logging as just more Tasmanian cronyism.
• Paul Harriss: Workforce Invasion Laws Working
• ABC: Sue Smith resigns from Tasmanian Ministerial Advisory Council on Forestry Tasmania’s top independent forestry advisor to the State Government has quit, three weeks after being gagged by the Resources Minister. Former Legislative Council member Sue Smith resigned as deputy chair of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Monday. Council members were banned from speaking to the media after Mrs Smith publicly called for Forestry Tasmania to be dismantled and its assets sold. Just two days later the Resources Minister Paul Harriss said Mrs Smith had reversed her position and supported retaining Forestry Tasmania. Mr Harriss announced Mrs Smith’s departure this morning and denied he had earlier misrepresented her views when he suggested she had changed her mind on Forestry Tasmania. …
• Gordon Bradbury in Comments: Special Timbers Cronyism. The more I think about this the worse it becomes. WHA logging is just more classic Tasmanian cronyism pure and simple. Sustainability is a complete furphy. Remember the Quentin Beresford book about Gunns? It barely mentions sustainability. The book is all about cronyism and … In what way is the WHA logging proposal any different? A small handful of Tasmanians want multi-generational guaranteed access to a public resource at taxpayers’ expense. In what way is this not cronyism?
• Bryan Green: Paul Harriss has lost control and must resign or be sacked
• Gwenda Sheridan in Comments: … We are living in a new world of uncertainty from whichever angle we view it. Old patterns of how things used to be done have to be foregone and new patterns have to emerge. For the special species persons (who obviously know how long it takes for the species to reach maturity), where in the Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Act 2014, can we find exactly what “partial harvesting” means; is it just a slick expression for what is “aggregated retention”? We can see many examples of this on Google Earth so let’s have an answer please? How much of any coupe is to be saved with partial harvesting? Then we have an issue of the age and specific species trees that are to be selected and culled. Where is the register for the public to see of special species trees that are Old Growth? Aged special species trees also on a register? …
• Andrea Dawkins: Only ‘Yes Men’ Welcome on Harriss’ Council
• Paul Harriss: Ministerial Advisory Council
• Paul Harriss: Response to Mr Green’s Claims
• Bryan Green: Paul Harriss digs himself a deeper hole
• Andrea Dawkins: Harriss; No Plan, No Idea
• Dr Alison Bleaney in Comments: # 64 you missed a very salient point, which is our work/ data that has been so decried by forestry and political establishments, has been published in an international environmental journal, Here And the problem with all the rebuttals of our work so far are they are formed from belief frameworks and bring no new data to the table, as demonstrated amply by your posting. So if we are to trade credibility, perhaps we can start with credible data, brought to the table with integrity and transparency. And since you brought the subject up, what has Forico had to say about our work? I’ll leave that for you to bring to this posting if you would like to further open this debate on this subject, but my tip for today is to ask them first as they may be a tad nervous about their position on this matter, Here.
• Andrew Denman in Comments: … I don’t have to respond to accusations by either the author of the article or posters here about my conduct re specialty timbers in this state but I will. I have only been here since 2004 and started my business in 2005. Since I have been here I have worked closely with forestry and whoever has been in government to drive special timbers policy away from past practices and into a new paradigm. Those of you who have tried this before like TWFF etc will know how difficult a task this is. Over the past 10 years my business has employed many, trained apprentices and contributed more than $6M into the local economy. Over that time I have also spent thousands of hours in the pursuit of putting specialty timbers onto a sustainable footing – not only to ensure the resource remains available and sustainable in perpetuity but to ensure the skills and culture associated with specialty timbers use are not lost to future generations. This may not seem important to those of you with no skin in the game or complete opposition to our industry but to many, many Tasmanians, use of these timbers holds a special place within the rich fabric of Tasmanian society. …
• John Lawrence in Comments: Mr Poynter (#101) decries TT group think. He‘s right. Group think however is, unfortunately, widespread. The two professions I’ve worked in, economics and accounting, are just as bad as anything on TT. But so too is the forestry profession. There hasn’t been a lot of recent mea culpas from foresters (Messrs Lumber and Halton are possible exceptions). There are lots of professionals other than foresters who have expertise in areas that encompass forestry. To dismiss their views out of hand requires group think of a scale that Mr Poynter condemns in others.
• Frank Strie in Comments: Thanks Stan – #102 “Get an Independent Foreign Person” – that is a great suggestion Stan. Considering Tasmania’s decades long ‘forest war’ situation in Tasmania, I like to propose here and now someone as the ideal person “for a better Tasmania” in regard to responsible forest management: The World Renowned Prof. Dr. Jurij Diaci, University Ljubljana, Slovenia “Integrated forest management for resilience and sustainability across 25 countries” – Research Experience …
• John Lawrence in Comments: #112 Mark Poynter You misunderstand groupthink. It is not merely the preserve of rabbles like the TT crowd. Training (and on going professional development) aren’t antidotes as you suggest. In practice they act to reinforce groupthink. There’s lots been written about group think. Let me copy and paste a bit from Bill Mitchell’s book on Eurozone groupthink.
