Queensland’s timber industry wants more “evidence-based solutions” for the state’s current and future supply of hardwood and softwood timbers, especially in native forests. That is according to Mick Stephens, CEO of Timber Queensland, who spoke to Wood Central after the first meeting of the Queensland Government’s Timber Supply Chain Ministerial Roundtable:
“We welcome the commitment by the State Government to work with industry on improving our timber supply chains to meet the ever-growing demand for future housing and construction needs,” Stephens said, including construction on an additional one million new homes over the coming two decades.
“We can identify key actions to support this target through boosting our plantation softwood and native forestry resources, along with wood processing, to build and furnish more homes and buildings with renewable local timber materials.”
Stephens said that a growing timber industry is not only essential to reducing emissions in the built environment, especially in Brisbane’s rapidly expanding suburbs, but also in Queensland’s regional communities, which rely on healthy forests for social and economic benefits.
“Given these upsides, we look forward to working on a bold plan that delivers policy certainty to increase sustainable production while at the same time safeguarding the environment. Both plantations and well-managed native forests will play a key role in the plan,” he said.
“We care about our industry, our people and our environment. That is why we support active forest management, which can generate a wide range of ecosystem services, including carbon storage, recreational opportunities, and wood fibre, that generate considerable benefits for people while also conserving biodiversity.”
Activists’ assumptions about native forestry are wrong.
According to Stephens, the assumption that harvesting timber from well managed native forests necessarily harmful to biodiversity is false, with strong evidence to support that forests can and should be actively managed: “This approach is in direct contrast to the views of some activist groups with ideological notions that forest reservation is the only way to deliver conservation outcomes. This rigid view fails to stack up against the evidence on the environmental benefits from well-managed native forestry.”
This evidence, Stephens said, is especially compelling for species such as koalas and gliders, including:
- Long-term research into koala abundance in the native forests of north-east NSW, with no difference in population densities in harvested state forests and national parks, noting key threats to koalas include disease, clearing for urban development and dog attacks;
- a cost-benefit study that found that state forests delivered better biodiversity outcomes and other economic and social benefits than if they were managed as national parks in Southeast Queensland;
- Recent surveys with a higher abundance of greater gliders in state forests in northern NSW than in nearby national parks, with twice the density in state forests; and
- broader carbon and biodiversity benefits from maintaining a hardwood timber industry in Queensland, taking into account risks from imports and local environmental best practices.
“We are not surprised by the findings, given state forests are managed in accordance with codes of forest practice to maintain healthy fauna populations with timber, recreation and biodiversity outcomes,” Stephens said.
“The fact that sightings of gliders in forests that have been selectively harvested for 100 years in Queensland are being used by some activists as a rationale for changing their tenure just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t pass the pub test.”
Stephens said Timber Queensland supports state forests as “important environmental assets”, which he said “contrasts with the challenges of many national parks that do not benefit from the same active stewardship that state forests receive.” Key issues in the parks include:
- pest and weed infestations;
- feral animal predations on local fauna;
- altered fire regimes such as a lack of active fuel reduction and risks of intense fires;
- a lack of access trails and road networks for fire management and suppression (compared to native forestry);
- high susceptibility to drought, fire and disease in the case of overstocked forests with a high density of suppressed and competing trees;
- no advantages from selective harvesting in the landscape with a diversity of habitat and foraging resources as in the case with state forests;
- poor carbon abatement outcomes compared with state forests, which include forest sequestration and carbon storage in wood products, and substitution with steel and concrete;
- no revenues from timber harvesting to help pay for related infrastructure (e.g. campsites, mountain bike tracks, roads) and environmental management; and
- There is a lack of independent monitoring, certification, or accountability for actual conservation outcomes compared with state forests with internationally recognised PEFC certification.
Scientists Call Out Mistruths Fuelling the Native Forest Debate.
Stephens’ comments come after Wood Central shared an open letter from Dr John Raison and Dr Sandanandan Nambiar AO – both former Chief Research Scientists from the CSIRO – Dr Glen Kile AM – a former Chief of the CSIRO Forestry and Forest Division – and Dr Tony Bartlett AFSM, who warned that a disturbing failure to acknowledge differing scientific evidence, practical experience and opinions, even by some academics, have perputated the misinformation around native forestry. Published in March, the scientists pointed out six areas of misinformation and controversy, namely:
- Harvesting of native forests is an uneconomic burden carried by taxpayers
- Harvesting is deforestation and destroys forests.
- Harvesting native forests damages forest ecology, especially threatened species such as koalas.
- Expanding plantations can quickly and easily replace the wood currently sourced from native forests.
- Harvesting and prescribed fuel reduction burning increase forest flammability and threats from wildfire.
- Harvesting causes large emissions of carbon and is bad for the climate.
“Many decades of research and practical experience are used to guide and support the sustainable management of our native forests. Despite this, some still advocate a total ban on the harvest of native forests and claim that science supports that,” the scientists said. “The public, policy makers and politicians should be wary of the increasing selective and unbalanced use of science wrapped in ideology to promote anti-forestry views.”
