George Harris
Hooray! Another well paid academic gets his ego massaged with a story and photo in the paper. Professor David Bowman (The Mercury, page 10, 9/07/2008) is prescribing economic disadvantage for a lot of hard working Tasmanians who really don’t deserve it. By proposing a moratorium on logging what he calls high conservation forests, he would be disadvantaging a lot of people in the supply side of the industry, as well as all the high value-adding artists, designers, cabinetmakers, boat builders, wood turners, and musical instrument makers, and the network of craft shops and gallery proprietors around the state. These people, and their activities, are all of world’s best standard.
In reality, 97% of the measured high conservation value old-growth is already fully protected, (papers, Community Forest Agreement), and a treasured object made from Special Timbers can have a life span as long, or even longer, than that of the tree from which it came, which is a good result for captured carbon.
If Professor Bowman had recognized that the area of native forest actually harvested each year is really quite small in relative terms, and that we are actually bringing about a net increase in the biomass present in Tasmania in the form of living trees, including plantations, he would have been more useful. Had he have suggested we could improve further by planting even more trees, he would be deserving of adulation.
What we really need is a moratorium on tax payers’ dollars being spent on dubious individuals slithering into comfortable seats on the climate-change gravy train.
