DEAR News Of The Area,

WHEN I wrote about finding the middle ground to logging issues in April the cracks were showing.

Now there are full blown holes gaping in our community.

I don’t want to lose our forests in the state they are, but I also don’t want one timber or forest worker to lose their job.

In fact, I believe we need more people managing our forest, not less.

The people who work timber know the roads, the trees, the equipment and machinery, and are an undisputable asset.

The fact is the forests need so much management due to most previous funding being around extraction.

That isn’t anyone’s fault but policies which none of us here created.

The thing is we are all (I believe) arguing the same point, no matter which side of the fence you choose to sit.

As professor David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science from the University of Tasmania stated, regrowth is more likely to burn, so it goes without saying that logging established trees of any quality and replanting them with new ones is increasing fire risk.

This may work when done at a small scale or spread over multiple properties.

However current plantation clearfell management is intensifying fire risk by providing thousands of hectares of regrowth all at once (such as in Newry SF between Valla and Urunga).

Native forest has similar regrowth issues as now harvestable areas are allowed to be all-but clear felled.

For example Conglomerate SF ‘selective logging’ retained 10m² per 10,000m² of trees (yes that’s one percent left).

Regulations changed which meant what once had the potential to become a sustainable industry again is quite literally being incinerated.

Over half of what is being taken from the current logging sites, both native forest and plantation, is wastage or low quality.

Not left to mature or as habitat, but burnt on site or taken to be chipped, pulped, or made into disposable pallets.

However, it would be beyond the pail of stupidity to lose our timber workers.

Removing these people will directly increase fire risk by taking away our communities ability to manage the forests.

I worry that industrialisation from both timber and tourism giants threatens the functionality of this place and the forests which divide and unite our townships.

But there are definitely solutions.

Actually, I believe we’re strategically placed as a community to excel in private forest management, on private land.

This place knows timber.

In the meantime we need our workers to keep working if they want to.

In order to do that our public forests must be funded differently, shifting focus from extraction to management.

Where logging does take place it’s got to be back to real selective logging right now, even in plantations.

This will ensure the canopy is maintained which will keep the temperature down.

All public areas which contain highly valuable habitat for multiple threatened species should be avoided until we understand their role.

For example, possums are the best pollinators as their hair catches pollen better than birds and bees do.

We don’t know what happens if we take them out of the forests.

For those who argue we need more timber now, we also need more timber in the future. Wasting half of mixed-hardwood seeded forests which are already nearly 60 years old, and replacing the wasted immature trees with brand new saplings, certainly doesn’t get us there. Stopping this wastage being allowed and removing low quality yield in general (unless truly leftover from a high quality saw log) we have a big step towards a consensus from everyone.

Our locals desperately need to be valued in the bush they know best and that counts for everyone.

We all want the same thing – forests which work.

So the solution isn’t one or the other, it’s all together now.

Regards,
Jodie ARMYTAGE,
Valla.