As botanist Steve Mueck explains, this single discovery effectively refutes claims that old growth forest can be sustainably logged.
Current forest managements practices are looking at harvesting on rotation times in the vicinity of 80 to 120 years with the perception that that’s a particularly long period of time… Now it is, I suppose, in the context of a human lifetime, but it is a very, very short period of time in comparison to the age in which many of the components that live in these forests can in fact get to in a natural system.
In other words trees 500 years old and more cannot be regrown in an 80-120 year logging cycle.
There’s more to it than just the old growth trees, of course. A 500 year old tree is, by definition, part of a forest ecosystem which is the product of at least 500 years of evolution and floristic succession. Five hundred years of ecosystem succession also can’t be restored or sustained by an 80-120 year logging cycle.
Indeed, as the ecological climax of succession is a function of the original climatic, edaphic and other conditions at the time of the disturbance which preceded the succession process, it is arguable that a logged 500 year old forest ecosystem may never be restored to its climax condition, given the reality of climate change and post-1788 human-induced changes to environmental conditions in Australian landscapes.
It’s past time the Victorian Labor Government stopped rewarding the treachery of Labor’s New Right Fifth Column and got serious about sustainability.
Having been in the “Hundred Year” forest at Pemberton in WA I think there is good evidence to support the regenerative ability of the Karri/Marri/Jarrah forest in SW WA. The site was intially fully cleared for broad acre farming but then let go and returned to its natural state.
Note that I fully support the preservation of virgin old-growth forest in Australia. But I also support the logging of previously logged areas. The “Hundred Year” forest proves this.
Sensible selective logging would have to approach the issue on a species by species basis, and obviously you wouldn’t take down all the 500 year old trees at once.
I’m not saying that this is what Victoria currently proposes Paul, but it would be a way for humans to live productively in a forest without destroying it.
Of course Paul, you do recognise that the overwhelming majority of old-growth forests are already inside national parks, don’t you? Brown Mountain was 20 hectares, and the area of national park in east gippsland alone is about 400 000 hectares, and across the state it’s about 3.5 million hectares. This is pretty important context, don’t you think? You are suggesting taht all of Victoria’s forests are going to be logged on an 80 to 120 year rotation. Well VicForests had better get a move on, they’re currently doing about 5 000 hectares a year (nearly all regrowth from 39 and other fires), to meet your suggestion they’d have to do about 80 000 hectares a year!
The “hundred years old forest” wasn’t clearfelled and bulldozed back to bare earth and firebombed, it was logged using old fashioned axemen. As sad as it would have been to lose the giants, it would have been streets ahead of the scorched-earth techniques they use now and the ecosystem following the logging would have been far superior and far less fire prone than the post-logging regrowth from modern clearfelled coupes.
Ah crap, i just realised (bit slow) that I’m going to have to rant against Helen and Peterc in this thread, and we will all be quite sure of the correctness of our position. Quite rightly, robert and others have told us off about this in the past. Accordingly, I wont be posting about forestry. Silence does not equal agreement, however. Anyone who thinks that Victoria should ban native forest harvesting should have to explain how they’re going to offset the demand for wood products.
Can it come from plantations? Oh really!
Will it come from overseas? Nice solution! Why do you hate orangutans so much?
Will we just not use wood? Yay for concrete!
Anyway, that’s me outta here.
Helen @ 4 – my understanding is that the “Hundred Year” forest site was cleared completely to grow crops – no different to what you describe as scorched earth.
While I can’t speak for Paul, I would have thought forestry practices are squarely on-topic for this thread.
This is a wilful misreading of the post. I was quoting Steve Mueck. He did not say, and I do not say, that all Victorian forests are going to be logged on an 80-120 year rotation. The point of my post is that there are clearly areas of old growth forest in Victoria which are not in National Parks, which are being logged on such a cycle, which cannot be logged without ceasing to be old growth forest and therefore should not be logged.
Logging of regrowth forest is another matter, and more complex. I do not object to sustainable logging of those areas of regrowth forest which can be harvested for wood without ecological degradation. Some areas of regrowth forest do fall into this category, others don’t. You need to look at what ecological processes are at work in a particular regrowth forest in order to decide which category it falls into.
And as others have noted, how you log is almost as important as whether you log in determining the sustainability of logging.
What if we had to suck it up and use plantation pine and other products (such as bamboo flooring) for our outdoor settings, furniture, and flooring, instead of tropical hardwood? Would we die, or something? Would civilisation collapse?
And what about the fact that over 80% of the hardwood cut down in SE Australia goes to woodchips, not finished wood products – the talk about fine furniture and high-end veneers sounds really good but in fact most of it is just ground into chips and shipped to Japan for peanuts. If we did selective logging, without bulldozing, for genuinely high-end furniture, musical instruments and such we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.
Exactly, Helen. If we reorganise the forestry and forest products industries on the basis of adding a large amount of value to a smaller amount of wood, rather than adding little or no value to a large amount of wood, we can have just as many forestry jobs (and better jobs on better pay) without mining native forests.
Is that because there’s no market for the hardwood so they woodchip 80% of it so they can sell it, or is it that when they harvest the tree 80% of it is only usable for woodchip, but the only way to get the 20% you want is to remove the other 80% as well?
Ah fook it, I’ll play.
You have made a clear assumption paul that old-growth forest is threatened by timber harvesting and that its persistence is critical to biodiversity in Victoria. That is rubbish. It is not threatened.
If it wasn’t for bushfires it would be expanding. The area of old-growth forest harvested is totally trivial compared to the amounts that are a) reserved b) lost to fire and c) generated from mature forest. We are talking low hundred of hectares harvested compared to high hundreds of thousand of hectares protected, and tens of thousands of hectares on a cycle of being burnt and recruited.
There’s no science to say that the harvesting at brown mountain is having any effect on the long-term persistence or survival of any species in East Gippsland. In fact, it’s a real struggle to find any impact of current harvesting on biodiversity. The recent Victorian state of the environment report found it very hard to say a single thing negative about forestry, despite looking very hard. Why have we had many forestry related posts on this blog, yet I can’t recall a single one about habitat loss from land clearing for agriculture or urbanisation? Don’t you people like threatened grasslands or something, too ugly for you?
As for woodchips, look around you helen, any paper nearby? What is wrong with sustainably produced fibre? I totally agree it should be processed here in Australia and not in Japan – hmm, how about that pulp mill?
Until genetically engineered square logs with zero defects are produced (heaven forbid), most of a tree is going to be used, as pulp. Funny, I don’t see people complaining about all of the straw produced in wheat production, or the overburden in mining. There’s what 1000 tonnes of rock for an ounce of gold?
As for plantations, where are these new plantations going to be placed? We’ve got 400 000 hectares of them, with massive social costs particularly in the western districts, and we’re still carrying a $4 billion trade deficit each year for timber supplies.
Try building outdoor furniture out of pine if you like. It’ll last at least a year I’m sure, if not treated with copper, chromium and arsenic (tasty!).
Value adding wont happen because the industry has been crushed in recent years by ever-increasing reserves (some of which I support) and lack of security, so they wont invest in anything. And labour costs are too high, it’s all made in China.
Pine plantations are not terribly eco-friendly. Admittedly I don’t know much about recent, southern hemisphere practices, but I remember the British plantations as being possibly the deadest places you could possibly find, even compared to eg abandoned mineworkings and industrial sites.
Wilful, you’ll always win if you argue so dishonestly. Two examples: The demand for old growth hardwood is completely inelastic, so if you stop logging here you doom the orang-utans to death elsewhere (for those not familiar with Wilful’s talking points, that’s what the bit about hating orang-utans meant.) That may be a truism to you, but it is hardly fact. And “Don’t you people like threatened grasslands or something, too ugly for you?” this is another strawman tactic. You know perfectly well Paul is talking specifically about forests and that does not mean he doesn’t give a stuff about grasslands. If you’d care to do a keyword search on my blog you’d see I wrote a couple of posts in support of alpine ecosystems, including bogs, which are hardly forest. The VNPA, of which I’m a member, publish research very much on grasslands, box ironbark and other non-Alpine Ash ecosystems. We are just talking about old growth forest here and are perfectly capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time.
Wilful, thanks for drawing our attention to a range of issues which ought to be (and at times are) the topics for posts at LP. I’ll make sure they get a guernsey the next time I post on climate change.
That said, if the amount of old growth being harvested amounts to “low hundreds of hectares” out of about 5000 hectares per year, how difficult would it be for the forestry sector to do without it altogether and make up the resulting shortfall of “low hundreds of hectares” from other sources?
And I stand by my point that a forest ecosystem arising from 500 years or more of floristic succession cannot regrow the way it was after logging within 80-120 years.
P.S. You seem to be working with a rubbery definition of “old growth”.
We’ll just ignore that one doesn’t generally get tropical hardwood in Victoria and say: No. The pine stuff would fall to pieces within a few years and you’d need to cut down more plantation pine to replace it. And hence plant more plantation pine for the same amount of chair-life. The bamboo similarly, except when heavily processed (excess electrickery etc required) and treated with stuff made out of teh dead dinosaurs. Also, a pine or bamboo plantation is an introduced monoculture and, whilst **some say** a good place to go shrooming, largely useless to our loveable native critters. There’s also the soil nutrient leaching and so on.
So, we won’t die and civilisation won’t collapse, but the area under non-native monocultural plantation will increase causing a related increase in the rate of extinction of native species.
OTOH I believe you are mostly right about the woodchipping. It is probably sensible for that which is needed for paper to come from pine plantations, despit ethe cost of that mentioned above. The paper mill here, indeed, has its own plantation accross the Hume, and waste water from the paper making is pumped over onto the trees. Woodchips for garden beds etc can probly just fcuk off.
I did so like the obvious implication that only those with the cashola for high end furniture and violin lessons should be allowed to use wood. Now lets all talk in faux Froggy, Jacinta! Haw haw! Qu’ils se sont assis sur les chaises plastique! Honestly.
Photosynthesis is the apotheosis of “sustainable” and where we can exploit it quite directly, as in making furniture even for working class people, it is better than the heavily industrialised plantations and processed bamboo you advocate. As I said this does not necessarily mean that the Victorian regime is the height of selective sustainable forestry, though its better than your proposal.
Sigh, The reference to tropical hardwood was a response to the usual talking point no. 5324888a which is that if we don’t cut down our old growth forests then we MUST cut down the ones in Indonesia. Complete false dichotomy. I’m not under the impression that SE Australia is a tropical climate and don’t try to make out that I do.
As for the class warrior shite, please, spare me. The focus is not on who buys the end product so much as who gets the jobs producing it. So you think no working class people should be employed as printers on broadsheet newspapers? or as motor mechanics on the more expensive models of cars? Or building houses other than slum developments? Oh, please.
As for the “But, but, but, using XYZ is just as bad as using old growth forest!” well, that’s the dirty elephant in the room, isn’t it; it’s the overall level of consumption that’s partly the topic here. Perhaps we could stop tearing down nearly new buildings to build different, or insisting on 3 yearly house-flipping with new kitchen every time, and many of the other endearing qualities of our society.
I don’t know if its due to maintenance clearing or not, but nothing much else seems to grow in pine plantations – at least from what I’ve seen when hiking.
What is an eco friendly way to mulch the garden?
We have plantations already. There’s no need to cut down old-growth to generate more. That said, a monoculture crop is a monoculture crop – none of them (cane, rice, wheat, canola) are natural marvels.
Chris, mulch can be made from garden cuttings, tree prunings, dropped leaves and other garden waste. You can also buy pea straw mulch which contains nitrogen and if you’re really energetic you can go to your nearest racing stable and get a trailerload of straw with horse poo and wee in it; Plants love it.
Helen, it’s nice to see you resile from your own point about high-end furniture and musical instruments so quickly. Well done on admitting an error with such humility.
What I actually said (sans a stutter Jacinta haw haw) is not that plantation pine or plastic furniture are “just as bad” for the environment generally & biodiversity in particular as naturally grown & minimally processed hardwood, but that they are generally substantially worse. I think that the use of wood is somewhat the point as well as the jobs though. For eg the forestry worker will want a house, and it will obviously be made of something.
I don’t know how many people tear down nearly new houses but if its a common practice in your parts then yes I’m agin it. I’d have though the bigger problem in re total consumption (are we getting off topic?) is yer McMansions, but they tend to spring up on new developments. If you want to argue against crap ego-mania driven obesity inducing house design, then fill your boots and I’ll join you.
Anyway Wilful has produced some figures here about the state of Victoria’s forests which no one has landed a glove on so far. The title says “unsustainable” which implies that at least one type of forest is on its way out in Victoria, so back up your argument please. I can be convinced by facts!
Oh Chris: it’s partly the nature of pine needles and partly that it’s a plantation (eg, there’s not much else in a wheat field except wheat).
Mulch: I use cowshit myself !) In suburbia I went for grass clippings sometimes but here’s a goodun for keeping roots moist and weeds down: if you’ve got gum trees and a blowervac, put the mofo on “suck” when clearing your paths. Eucalypt leaf mulch lasts a good year.
… and in doing so, has used science to justify its practises in the same way that mining uses geology. It is no great coincidence that opponents of AGW are all mining or petroleum geologists.
And we recently saw the unedifying efforts of certain forestry and fire scientists try to blame the Victorian fires on fuel loads, despite ample evidence there were a number of contributing factors. I would put climate first, changes in exposure second (land-use pressures, people living in the area & providing ignition sources) and unmanaged fuel loads third, and then only in specific areas.
Back to forests, there is very little work on pre-European fire frequency. The only number about historical frequency in Mountain Ash forests of 75 – 150 years comes from observations put through a model by McCarthy et al: Fire regimes in mountain ash forest: evidence from forest age structure, extinction models and wildlife habitat, Michael A. McCarthy, A. Malcolm Gill and David B. Lindenmayer, Forest Ecology and Management, 124, 1999, Pages 193-203. These authors later on critiqued the model they had been using suggesting the numbers so obtained are pretty uncertain.
On using pre-European evidence, this is the conclusion of Lynch et al. (2007):
The Gell et al. 1993 comes up with very low frequencies in E Gippsland (hundreds of years) – the electronic copy of this article is firewalled but it’s 1993 in the journal The Holocene. The very earliest (pre-clearing) histories also suggest very wet forests, low cloud on hill-tops and a lot of occult precipitation (dewfall etc). The opening up of forests and warmer climate mean that our forests are much drier and exposed to burning than they probably ever used to be.
Given its importance and the lack of research done in this area (and I would suggest, vested interest in not seeing it done), the radiocarbon dating of the old growth tree is important, but again, an isolated piece of evidence.
It’s easy to have everyone at loggerheads with so many opinions and so little evidence. MORE RESEARCH NOW!!
helen, I don’t know what’s so hard with my logic trail – we log, we import, if we log less we have to either import more or substitute with something that is either as bad or worse (concrete and aluminium), or is fanciful/nonexistent (sawlog plantations and the spare land to grow more).
I don’t know who told you we could just use plantations, but it’s rubbish. Probably Judith Ajani, an academic who has demonstrated her ignorance of this issue comprehensively, and who has never contributed to any public debate about actual industry matters that I’ve ever seen.
You agree that there are issues with plantations, yet you demand more plantations.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to accept that hardwood sawlog has special properties that are difficult to replicate with other materials. Including that it takes a long time to grow!
Paul, I will look out for those posts about urbanisation and grasslands. I’m sure they do exist, I’ve just missed them up till now. It’s something I’m personally pretty keen on, it’s a crying shame. In the meantime, I can only infer your views about the relative importance of these issue from what I have observed.
BTW, in what way am I misusing the term old-growth?
Old-growth forests are, for the time being, necessary in east gippsland. If we stopped harvesting old-growth in east gippsland then there would be a lot of people out of jobs and no one to harvest the regrowth from the ’83 fires as it came on stream in the next decades. But still, there’s the assumption that this is such a terribly bad thing that has to be questioned.
Should have said of the Earth Scientists opposing AGW, are all mining or petroleum geologists. There are other professions involved in denialism of course. (For the record, I trained as an Earth Scientist, so know the species well.)
can’t yet see what functions a 500 y.o. tree could perform in the forest beyond the 100 y.o. one.
shall be convinced when i read the companion piece about an irate 500 y.o. homeless koala.
the unedifying efforts of certain forestry and fire scientists try to blame the Victorian fires on fuel loads
Given that the timber industry generally isn’t ‘t massively in favour of fuel reduction burning (burns the resource, creates defects), that’s a bit dubious. They’re really quite equivocal about the best way to reduce the impact of fire.
None of the fire scientists I know (such as Kevin Tolhurst) believe that FRB is more than a small part of the arsenal, and may in fact be quite self-defeating.
If you look at the recent parliamentary inquiry into the matter, the Department of Sustainability and environment were pretty reluctant to do more FRB.
I’m not sure why geologists being climate change denialists is relevant. Foresters aren’t denialists.
“can’t yet see what functions a 500 y.o. tree could perform in the forest beyond the 100 y.o. one.”
I infer from this that you are not an ecologist, and further that you haven’t spoken to one about it.
wilful @ 13,it’s a little disingenuous to compare the trash from forestry to the straw from wheat farming.
If you’ve ever observed modern farming practices closely, you’ll notice that the stubble generally stays standing in the field, busily preventing evaporation of soil moisture and turning into humus. Sometimes it’s grazed (if it happens to be in a wheat’n'sheep area), which simply means it gets turned into humus a bit quicker. In any case, I’ve never heard of it being pulped for paper, although that would probably be a good idea.
Well, in Perth, an awful lot of perfectly viable, if not nearly new, houses get bulldozed in the frenzy for the latest and greatest. And some utter dross, of course, which is fair enough.
I would mind less if more than a small fraction of the materials and, particularly the timber (which is mainly old growth Jarrah in anything built more than maybe 20 years ago) was salvaged rather than going for landfill or firewood.
Listen FDB, consumer told you what he was. That and little more apparently.
Jeebus, can we get some ‘industries’ that are less fecking retarded than one that destroys 500 year old trees? Yeah, dont forget to pick me up some berries while you’re out hunter-gathering for that modern Oz economy, oh ye captain of industrie.
Maybe if we bark at the moon long enough the Gods will give us insight into our plight. Oh look Ive invented a pointy stick. Maybe that makes me an entrepreneur.
That’s about the size of it, Lefty.
Wilful, you have misrepresented me again.
I don’t know who told you we could just use plantations, but it’s rubbish. Probably Judith Ajani, an academic who has demonstrated her ignorance of this issue comprehensively, and who has never contributed to any public debate about actual industry matters that I’ve ever seen.
You agree that there are issues with plantations, yet you demand more plantations.
Demand more plantations? Didn’t I say clearly upthread that we probably have enough plantations? does that sound like someone who is demanding more?
Like a squid, you throw out bucketfuls of obfuscating ink – in this case, make-shit-up ink.
In the interests of the defo thread, I did not suggest that Wilful has eight legs and suckers and lives underwater, it was a metaphor.
If you think it’s “rubbish” that you could just use plantations, well, get ready for Rubbishville, because eventually all the oldgrowth outside the NPs will eventually be gone. If the forestry industries then chuck a tanty and demand more “certainty” (ie. more free fodder) and there’s a right wing Libor or Laborial government in power in most States, then we’ll lose them as well.
What will you do then? You’ll only have plantations, assuming the level of desertification will support them. I guess we’ll all be dead and it’ll be our kids’ problem, won’t it!
Wilful,
Kevin Tollhurst is excellent and he has certainly never run this line. David Packham tho’ …
The link between forestry and Earth Science and justification of certain ideologies flying in the face of the greater weight of evidence? I’m taking my link from Paul Norton and provocatively sock-puppeting – the gravatar gives it away, but.
I spent a great deal of time looking at written accounts of science and survey in SE Aust 1820-1860 before the largest clearing efforts began, trying to sort out climate and land-use change influences on environmental change, to link the pre-European histories with the instrumental record. There’s a gap, and it’s important.
Montane forests are described as wet, cool, dank places with low cloud even in summer. In contrast, grassland and grassy woodlands are aflame, being burnt in all seasons warm enough. Now we torch our forests and let the grasslands languish (or build on them). Doesn’t mean I’m against fuel reduction burns and love an ecological burn!
Flannery and others call the extinction of megafauna by people visiting new lands and hunting them to extinction, the blitzkreig theory. Everything I’ve read and seen and analysed has convinced me that the European occupation was an even greater blitzkreig. There are few writings of the early times that give an accurate word picture of ecosystems before large-scale changes took place. Scientific observations based on post blitzkreig ecology, including forest ecology, cannot, in my view, be used to justify basic ecosystem function for many systems. We need more science, more history and more palaeo-ecological investigation.
And I take a dim view of interpretations that do not take these wider considerations into account.
I have nothing of value to add here beyond the easily wiped crap comment title
Bit like wood chipping really.
Upper Delegate River – conservationists charged with conservation
On Thursday 26th March 2009, four people were charged in their efforts to save East Gippsland old growth forests from being chopped down. Is this Victorian Premier Brumby’s hypocritical law of conservationists being prime facie guilty of conservation? …
Helen, it’s not very edifying to see a grown woman accuse someone of dishonesty just because they’ve roundly defeated you in a logical debate.
You can say that we can get the same amount of timber whilst cutting down substantially fewer trees until you’re blue in the face, it’s still a pile of old codswallop.
Sean:
Err, what?
As far as I can tell Helen hasn’t said that. In fact she’s said:
She then suggests we should be reducing our consumption of timber, which would clearly mean that we would need to produce less of it.
You might argue that reducing consumption is impractical, but I don’t think you can just dismiss her argument “old codswallop”.
For one thing, it will be bigger. For another, it will be part of a forest ecosystem which has been evolving for 500 years rather than 100 and has therefore been able to become richer and more diverse in the life forms it supports and the ecological processes which are occurring.
Sean, you’re completely misrepresenting my arguments and you know it. I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith. Thanks Andrew B, I thought maybe my hurried afternoon typing must have completely transgressed the bounds of legibility for someone to take that from it.
[emphasis added]
If we want more plantation timber, the extra plantations will have to exist within the space/time continuum. Perhaps not on land that is currently old growth forest. Where then? The grasslands that Helen does care about also? Farmland? Thus causing more international food transport. What happened to trying to localise food production for environmental reasons? On land reclaimed from Bass Strait? In orbit? Out west where it will require irrigtating? They ain’t makin’ any more land you know.
The fact that this tree is 500 years old appears to be new knowledge. You can use that to improve your model. Ie “We used to say take [x] of this tree species per hectare, now we say take [x-y].”
The “overall level of consumption” suddenly became the partial topic when the initial argument was lost, it seems to me. Initially it was quite clearly that plantation timber should be used instead.
Helen I am not and I don’t. I haven’t accused you of dishonesty or bad faith, after all. I’ve been careful to only engage with your argument(s) as presented. You have shifted all over the place in this thread, changing position about three times so far when proven wrong, but rather than “I stand corrected”, then denouncing people as dishonest for having the temerity to disagree with things you have expressly posted in writing above.
What are you going to say now that I have bothered to quote you? That I posted your posts as a sock puppet to make you look foolish? These instant resorts to accusations of dishonesty and bad faith display a lack of character.
Sean @43
What are you going to say now that I have bothered to quote you?
You haven’t quoted me in recent comments, Sean. You have quoted me once at #17, my statement that civilisation as we know it will not collapse if we can’t all have nice hardwood outdoor settings. I haven’t gone back on that or any other of the arguments I have put forward. YOu then deliberately misrepresent my argument that native forest timber should only be used on high-end manufactured products, to make it look as if I’m arguing to benefit the rich (ignoring the fact that the makers of a product and the employees supporting same are not the same as the end consumer.) When I reluctantly wasted more time explaining this to you, you came out in #22 crowing and claiming victory because I’d supposedly “resiled” on what I said. I was simply reiterating what I had actually said.
That I posted your posts as a sock puppet to make you look foolish?
I have never accused anyone on LP, or anywhere else for that matter, of doing this, and if you understood how gravatars work I don’t see how you could possibly claim that. The fact that this idea even occurs to you, and you could in all seriousness say that I’m likely to say that is, hmmm, wow. This is not the kind of thing we do here. I think that anyone who even thinks in those terms should probably back away from the keyboard slowly and go for a nice walk.
These instant resorts to accusations of dishonesty and bad faith display a lack of character.
Sean, I’m accusing you of bad-faith arguing because of distortions of the argument like the one above, and also the one @38, the speciousness of which commenter Andrew B has already pointed out. I’m prepared to think that you simply don’t understand some of the things I’m saying, though.
Helen, you’re misrepresenting your own arguments. You said, and the quote is above, that timber products should be made of plantation pine or bamboo INSTEAD OF old growth.
You also said that you would not object if only high end furniture and musical instruments were made out of hardwood. This annoyed me as it does seem exclusivist and I admit my sarc-iness, but I accept that you were primarily concerned with lowering the volume used. My other and more serious argument against that is that the (for eg) normal persons’ outdoor furniture would then be made out of something else, the production of which is worse for the environment than native forestry. Wilful referred to aluminium for eg. You would be aware how much electricity is required to process that gear (if not, the scientific answer is ‘vast shitwads’).
You could have avoided this standard internet nastiness if your response to being shown the error of your initial thoughts on plantation pine and polymer treated bamboo was “Yeah I see you’re point. Maybe we should be talking about having less stuff, since there actually isn’t more environmentally friendly stuff than forest timber from which to make stuff which can be made of forest timber.”
I dare say we’ve got a lot of common ground so let me spell out where I’m coming from. As I say, they’re not making more land. The habitable bits of this country just aren’t as empty as a lot of us think, either. Have a look at a major-roads map of Victoria – it’s largely gridded over like an oversized suburb.
What I would ideally like to see is a carefully planned system of state and/or private forests connecting existing national parks in order to do something about the island effect, for starters. That land would have to have some economic usefulness though for the reasons stated above. If it was selectively logged on a scientific species by species basis, you could theoretically conscript self-interest to expanding the total area of forest. It would be a forest with good vehicle tracks in it yes, and machines that cut down trees rumbling along some of the time and so on. If you wanted “pristine” you just go into the national park bit, but these native forestry areas could still benefit biodiversity, anti-AGW, possibly rainfall (?) and other stuff too if it was done properly.
Another thing is that hardwood is a good product. It is renewable. It is created using solar energy in a place that can support a wide ecology if we’re not engaging in wide clear-felling. It doesn’t need much processing, which may be “retarded” as someone said above but is also energy efficient. It lasts. Etc.
‘If you think it’s “rubbish” that you could just use plantations, well, get ready for Rubbishville, because eventually all the oldgrowth outside the NPs will eventually be gone. If the forestry industries then chuck a tanty and demand more “certainty” (ie. more free fodder) and there’s a right wing Libor or Laborial government in power in most States, then we’ll lose them as well.
What will you do then? You’ll only have plantations, assuming the level of desertification will support them. I guess we’ll all be dead and it’ll be our kids’ problem, won’t it!’
- quote from Helen
Look, I wasn’t going to get into the Helen bashing, but really, this is totally illogical.
At present, forests are logged and then allowed to regrow. This does not make them plantations. Some of our most spectacular forests are regrowth; the Black Spur near Healesville, one of those ‘must sees’ for overseas travellers, was planted by hand after the 1939 fires.
However, Helen seems to be assuming that once all the old growth forests have been logged, they will be replaced by plantations.
No, I’m saying once they’re all logged, they won’t be old growth. You can split hairs and say that that coupe over there is not plantation but managed regrowth forest, but it’s not old growth, and if it’s regrowth after being bulldozed and burnt it’s not going to come back as wet sclerophyll with old man tree ferns underneath.
One thing you’re missing is the influence of the non-conservation legal system. For instance, the tax dept will not let you claim expenditure on a forest plantation as a business cost unless the harvest will take place within a limited time period. 500 years is right out. 120 years is probably pushing it. So regardless of the actual intention of the foresters, if they want the normal business structure where expenditure can be offset against income, they have to claim a 120 year cycle (actual number may vary).
Likewise, land use rules, water use rule, and so on quite possibly have similar clauses that stop people like me from saying “this is a forest plantation, honest, I’m going to cut these trees down in a millenium or two, really I am”.
Helen
I beg your pardon?? As I said, the iconic Black Spur forest at Healesville is exactly that, and it’s a very wet scleophyll forest with tree ferns underneath.
Burning is recognised as one of the methods of stimulating regrowth; I was encouraged by a local environmental expert a few years ago to treat my riverbanks this way in order to regenerate native plants where none had grown in decades. It worked; I now have a mix of native grasses and shrubs replacing the blackberries.
Anyway, you’re drawing a pretty long bow: just because some posters are saying here that they’re not too stressed about Brown Mountain (and I’m not well informed enough on the issue to take a position) doesn’t mean they’d sit idly by whilst some feral government bulldozed all the National Parks.
The point being made by many here, Helen, is that there are major major expanses of old growth forest protected in National Parks. It is inconceivable that that’s going to change, and if it did, whether Brown Mountain had been logged wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
And – on pine – we owner built three houses, used pine in all of them on the ‘save the rainforests’ principle and found out what a crap material it is for flooring and decking. If I had my time over, I would replace our very expansive deck area with jarrah; much better than every now and then plunging through the deck to mid calf because another ffing board has broken.
So what you’re essentially arguing for is more old growth areas to be declared national parks, Helen?
I’ll respond to Sean by saying that I’m still not persuaded that it is not possible to retain a viable forest industry in Victoria whilst also conserving all remaining old growth forest from logging (and let’s not forget that the remaining old growth, in and out of National Parks, is only a fraction of what it was before European colonisation). Not that Sean is necessarily arguing such a view.
I’m off for the weekend.
Yawn. All those tired irrelevant arguments about why we need to destroy or natural heritage . . .
Actually, it is very simple. Over 80% of Australian’s (maybe not Wilful) want their old growth forests protected.
The Bracks Government said they would protect “the last remaining areas of old growth forest available for logging” in 2006.
They are still logging them, including hundreds of trees 500 years or more old.
These trees, as Paul points out, will never be “replaced” under 30 to 120 year logging rotations.
By the way, the three areas of Brown Mountain allocated to logging are 3 coops of approximately 60 hectares.[link] 20 has been logged, the rest has still not been protected.
And there is old growth logging in progress elsewhere – such as the nearby Delegate cathcment.
It is time for our remaining old growth forests to all be protected, in line with what the Australian people want.
Well, that seems fair, Peterc – over 80% are protected.
Did the survey actually ask if the 80% thought the present level of protection was adequate or whether they wanted protections extended?
I’m genuinely curious.
Mehitabel,
The survey asked people “If they wanted all remaining old growth protected”.
Around 80% said yes. This has been repeated on several occasions over several years.
The only people who want to cut them down are from woodchip companies, the few people directly involved in logging and cartage, the public servants in DSE who see their mission as protecting the loggers, and the politicians who have done deals with companies and the CFMEU for it to continue.
A survey in East Gippsland about 4 years ago asked the same question. Around 60% said they wanted all old growth forest protected. This in the heart of the region where the myth prevails that they “jobs cutting down forests are more important than protecting them”.
I think there would about 6 jobs cutting for 8 weeks cutting dowm 500+ year old Brown Mountain trees. A few truck trips to the Eden woodchip mill (for 80 to 90% of the trees killed).
A few odd logs as crumbs to local sawmills, if any are still going.
All remaining old growth forests outside of existing reserves should be protected.
I googled this and the first survey I came up with said only 18% supported the total cessation of old growth logging.
I realise that’s from a source you wouldn’t accept, but my point is that using polling to justify a position on an issue like this is very dodgy.
So, if the 18% is correct (please don’t jump down my neck, this is a line of argument not my personal position), by your logic we should just go ahead and rip the whole thing up.
Not a position I would adhere to. Some things are important to protect, even if popular opinion is against you.
Secondly, given that we had reports that Brown Mountain was being logged back in November, it’s obviously taking them more than 4-6 weeks!
Logging is on hold at Brown Mountain. Threatened species were found by conservationists. These of course should have been found first by DSE, but they didn’t look for them, which is a breach of the Code of Forest Practice.
Now DSE has been forced to do a proper survey, which I understand is still in progress. The loggers have moved elsewhere – like the Delegate catchment.
There are several excellent reasons to protect old growth forests – public opinion being one of them. Other reasons include protecting biodiversity, keeping the carbon in them stored, water production, tourism values, and because they are intrinsically nice.
The economic arguments in favour of logging them are by comparison feeble and opportunistic. The real money lies in properly managed plantations, which is where the industry is going anyway.
I’m not arguing a pro logging position here, by the way – it’s just I get affronted by spurious arguments.
If I can stop one of you from dropping one of these sillinesses into public discourse and thereby ruining the efforts of others, it’s all worth while.
And if DSE has ceased logging because they’re attention has been drawn to threatened species, then it shows that the processes work and that public action is effective, both good things to be applauded.
Much better arguments this time, peterc, I feel I’m getting somewhere…
We might be getting somewhere, but the Victorian government isn’t.
How they can allow the destruction of our natural heritage and trees older than 500 years is beyond me.
Of course it is, Peter.
They’ve only just found out how old the tree is – a pity they weren’t psychic, this could all have been avoided.
Do you give them any credit at all for (i) overhauling the logging quota system, which resulted in the closure of several mills and the unemployment of mill staff? (ii) the creation of new National parks, which protected stands of old growth forest which were previously under threat? Or is it a case that they haven’t done every single thing that you wanted so therefore they must be evil environmental vandals?
mehitabel, giving an industry credit for finally being forced to accept the inevitable despite their best efforts to avoid it is more than I can stomach. When it comes to voluntarily reducing their short-term profits for any reason at all, I just haven’t seen the evidence. Explaining to forest companies that they should stop fighting to continue their heavily subsidised logging of state-owned old growth forests has never worked AFAIK. What works is fighting to stop them doing it.
But yes, I think it’s admirable that Gunns Ltd obeys the law of gravity, and it’s truly astonishing how closely Rio Tinto operations adhere to the second law of thermodynamics. They deserve full credit for that.
???My post didn’t have anything to do with the industry.
the individual 500 y.o. tree being cut seems similar to the case of the death of 120 y.o. people. sad for the family, but not a crisis for humanity.
There are hundreds of trees over 500 years old being cut. Only one has been radio carbon dated. Dozens of bigger ones have been recently felled with more to follow.
It is a pity that DSE and the government doesn’t actually determine how old these trees are – that they don’t is deliberate negligence.
Cutting down these forests and killing 500 year old treeas are crimes against the enviroment, and criminal in law according to the Code of Forest Practice and RFA prescriptions.
The poachers are in charge of the gamehouse.
I give them credit for continuing to destroy old growth forest and killing 500+ year old trees.
All they have to do is protect remaining unprotected old growth – as Labor said they would in 2006. That’s really not too hard unless you are a rapacious out of control industry given access to publicly owned forests.
Around about 10% of Autralia’s pre European settlement old growth forest remains today. About half of this is still unprotected – and should be protected immediately.
A lot of what has been protected over recent years is not prime old growth forest – much of it has already been logged or is snowgums, mallee woodlands etc.
Peterc – I’m sorry, but if you won’t give credit where credit is due (nothing wrong with then continuing to criticise, any government’s environmental creds could always do with improvement), then you’re scarecely an honest broker.
The ‘rapacious out of control industry’ you refer to bitches about the Vic Govt as much as you do, but for the reverse reasons – they feel that they are over regulated, have been locked out of coupes they should rightfully be allowed to harvest and (legitimately) that Vic Govt policies have led to the closure of mills and the loss of jobs.
If it were really ‘out of control’ none of these things would have happened.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the tone of the lead article and others I’ve read suggests it was a complete surprise to the environmentalists that the tree tested as old as it did. So I don’t think DSE expected it either.
Yes, 500 year old trees should be protected, no argument.
But if it’s a choice of logging an old growth forest in Australia, where I know that all sorts of environmental watchdogs will be supervising what happens, and one overseas where I don’t believe there is any such supervision, I will (reluctantly) go for the former – unless I’m prepared to go without paper, that is.
“protecting remaining unprotected old growth” is not all they have to do. It is imperative to protect it, but degraded forest must also be given a chance to recover and remove carbon from the atmosphere. It is the cheapest, safest and quickest way to achieve that.
Killing 500 year old trees is clear evidence that VicForests, and the Loggers/Woodchip companies are out of control. And that DSE is failing to protect these forests.
You are wrong. That is why the tree was tested. It was considered highly likely that the tree was this age. It wasn’t the biggest/widest either. There are others that are older.
Wrong again. DSE quote the age of theses trees to be “100 to 200 years old”. They know they are not, but of course once it is known that the trees are that old, and the forests contain threatened species (as Brown Mountain & Delegate forests do), it is apparent that these forests should be protected, and illegal that they be logged.
So they don’t test the trees or look for threatened species. Despite DSE having scientists well capable of doing so. There are none so blind as those who do not see.
This obviously indicates a stench of mismanagement and possible corruption within DSE and the Minister’s offices. Ultimately, Premier John Brumby is accountable – at least at the 2010 election coming.
Peterc, you do like to draw long bows.
Now, I have no hesitations in hoeing into the DSE (and in fact had a bit to do with breaking it up, as in its former incarnation it was far too big and unaccountable, and would argue that it still has a way to go) but perhaps they said the trees were 200 years old because that’s what they really thought?
You don’t really have to press the conspiracy button every time someone does something you don’t agree with, you know.
And then from there you jump straight to accusations of corruption at the very top. Are you seriously suggesting that Gavin Jennings is corrupt? Or Brumby is?
What a weird and distorted world you live in.
I notice that you’re quite happy to take my quotes out of context, but not to address the points I’m making – that the foresty industry HAS faced incresing regulation under this government, that it HAS been locked out of areas it confidently expected to log (leading to the closure of mills and the loss of jobs) and that the age of the tree was a newsworthy (and by implication, unexpected) matter – ’500 year old tree turns to be 500 years old’ not being news.
My concern, as I’ve said before, is that the lack of reasonable argument coming from people such as yourself undermines the work others are doing to make a genuine difference. A lot less frothing at the mouth and more use of evidence will get you a lot further.
and, I know, you’re now going to talk about me making ‘ad hominen’ attacks on you, when you’ve just done exactly the same (with far less provocation) to Brumby and Jennings.
“Ultimately, John Brumby is accountable” is quite a reasonable statement Mehitabel. I would take that to mean that JB is the Premier and GJ is the Minister responsible and that they should pay the price at the voting booth next time around. You may not agree, but they made an election promise, let’s say that again, and election promise to protect all old-growth at the last election, got in, and reneged.
You need to look up “ad hominem” in the dictionary. PeterC is talking at the level of policy and moral hazard (DSE under pressure by woodchippers), not ad hominem at all. You appear to think it means “you can’t criticise anybody on anything.” If anything, you are doing the ad hom by describing a quite reasonable doubt of the DSE’s willingness to preserve forest as a “conspiracy theory”, which we all know is code for “look out, person with tinfoil hat and issues here!” So, yeah I see what you did there.
I can’t really comment on the timber uses for the logged forest, other than to say I find it hard to believe there aren’t substitutes for a lot of it.
However, in regard to the issue of paper I recently came across some research on the use of bagasse (sugar cane waste) for paper. I’d always thought this might be useful in a minor way, but couldn’t replace wood – I mean how much cane waste could there be?
The answer I discovered was “lots”. Vastly more bagasse is produced each year in Australia than paper consumed. Now some of this is burnt to power the sugar mills, but there are other ways of doing that. As far as I can tell there is enough bagasse to entirely replace our woodchip production – from native forests AND plantations. I gather the cost would be slightly higher (although new technology might fix this) but not something that would make a noticeable difference to most people’s budget.
Helen, the ‘ad hom’ ref is in fact to a post on another thread from another argument I had with Peterc, where – when I got a bit shirty with him for twisting my words in ways I never intended – he accused me of going all ad hom on him. Sorry, of course that wouldn’t be clear to other bloggers.
I do appreciate people reading comments carefully. Peterc states that DSE knew the tree was 500 years old, had a duty to check its age and concludes that, because this didn’t happen it is ‘obviously’ a sign of corruption in the Minister’s office. If that isn’t a conspiracy theory, I don’t know what is.
He then follows it with a statement that says Brumby is responsible for this.
So peterc is clearly not talking about responsibility for election promises but responsibility for corruption.
Do read comments carefully before you attack them.
Getting the Victorian Labor government to see sense in sustainability is like trying to get this one to do the same:
http://www.crash.net/v8+supercars/news/145045/1/dunlop_to_back_queensland_event.html
These two stat administrations are very similar in operation. Oh, and did I say what a great idea it was for the QLD Greens to do the darkside trick (ironically on the same day as the QLD Labor government should have been responding to an oil spill) with Labor and lose their only MP? More than happy I ripped up my membership.
No, that is not what I stated. Don’t verbal me please. Re-read my post. I said:
I will spell out the facts. It is up to you whether you and other readers to decide whether there is a “conspiracy” or not.
Fact 1. DSE don’t radiocarbon test these trees (or if they do they don’t disclose that they do or the results). Apparently they don’t do ring counts either.
Fact 2. DSE don’t do proper surveys for threatened species. As evidenced by conservationists finding two threatened possum species an the Orbost Spiny Crayfish, and a quoll scat in Brown Mountain forest to be and being logged.
Fact 3. DSE can do these surveys, and have scientists capable of doing them. They are doing one now in the Brown Mountain forests as a reaction to the threatened species found.
Fact 3a. DSE also have scientists capable of estimating the age of trees. But they don’t appear to let them survey forests they intend to log.
Fact 4. DSE and the Victorian Government are in breach of the law by neglecting to survey for threatened species (the RFA & Code of Forest Practice). They have been informed of this and have ignored the legal advice provided, and refused to answer direct questions on the legality of their logging operations.
Fact 5. As previously stated 500 year old trees and older are being killed.
Fact 6. In 2006, the Bracks Labor goverment committed in a their policy document “to protect the last remaining old growth forests in East Gippsland available to logging”.
Fact 7. In 2008, the Brumby Labor government broke this promise by logging Brown Mountain and other designate old growth forests.
I stand by me conclusion that this pattern of facts indicates a stench of mismanagement and possible corruption within DSE and the Minister’s offices.
Jennings is accountable as Environment Minister.
Lenders is accountable as Minister responsible for VicForests.
Brumby is accountable as Premier of Victoria. The Labor Cabinet is accountable for their decisions to allow this logging to proceed.
The silence from them all is deafening. And the 500 year old trees keep on falling.
As far as I can see, the only way I verballed you was by saying you said DSE knew the tree was 500 years old, when you in fact said they knew it was greater than 200.
For that I apologise.
So now you’re saying that DSE didn’t know it was 500 years old but they shouldn’t have logged them because they are 500 years old.
Clear as mud.
DSE missed a quoll scat? Wow. I assume the quoll scat was also carbon dated, so we know that it was there when DSE did their assessment. I mean, a quoll scat’s a hard thing to miss.
OK, I know I shouldn’t go there, but I would point out that Brown Mountain is not identified as an area of old growth forest in the policy you cite. As I’ve said before, I don’t know enough about BM to comment but will point out that a forest which is not old growth can have 500 year old trees. (My bottom paddock has at least two).
You don’t seem to understand what corruption is, by the way. It isn’t breaking election promises. It carries with it at least the implication of personal gain (NOT political). Please point out where the personal gain is for these Ministers.
Thanks for your apology.
Brown Mountain is identified by DSE as an area of old growth forest. Your comment about which forests are old growth is as clear as mud.
Playing around with definitions of old growth is a favourite tactic of those in DSE who aid and abet the ongoing destruction of old growth for Corporate gain (by your definition, this could well be corruption). You seem to like playing that game too.
Glad to see you take the point about threatened species being present.
You would have to ask the Ministers involved whether they get any personal gain from these operations.
I think we need a Royal Commission into this mess. That could ask them the same question. We the public have a right to know.
By the way, corruption does not have to involve monetary gain: [link]
As I’ve said previously, I have little truck with DSE and in fact have been active (and successful, to some extent) in lessening its powers. In Gippsland in particular, there has been evidence going back many years that DSE management was far too close to the forestry industry (may still be).
This is part of the reason why I find your comments about Govt ministers ludicrous. As I have pointed out, the Govt has taken real steps to reign in the DSE and to curtail the foresty industry.
Peterc, we’re not in fundamental disagreement here. As I’ve also said before, it is the quality of your arguments that annoy me. When those in the environmental movement rely on emotionalism, fuzzy arguments and unfounded accusations, they can be safely ignored by those in power. To be a successful activist, you have to be totally sure of your ground and hammer home the facts without hysteria. You also have to maintain cordial relationships with those who can actually change the things you want to.
If you want to really make a difference here, peterc, and win over hearts and minds, you firstly need to be honest about what has been achieved. Secondly, you have to recognise that the only way you’ll change the situation is by getting the govt on side, not something which will happen if you are prone to accusations of corruption and incompetence. Thirdly, you need to recognise that you are dealing with intelligent people and treat them as such (both other bloggers and the government).
The best thing Bob Brown did for the environment was put on a suit.
DSE powers have not really be lessened; certainly not with regard to the felling of old growth forest. It is still largely business as usual, with DSE management still far too close to the forestry industry.
Not sure which of the facts I presented you find ludicrous. But I agree the situation is ludicrous.
I re-checked the figures. Around 8% of pre European settlement forest remains in original condition in Australia. About 5.5% of this is protected. The remaining 2.5% is what is being logged; it should be protected.
I am sorry if you are getting annoyed, this is a difficult topic. Personally, I am annoyed by intrasigence within Government that condones the ongoing destruction of old growth forests; many of which are important water catchments too.
The facts I presented are not fuzzy or unfounded. If think any are, please specify which.
The primary issue were dealing with is that those in power are ignoring the clear body of scientific evidence and public opinion that indicate all our remaining old growth forests should be immediately protected, rather than destroyed.
It is not clear to me where you see the hysteria and emotion. The facts speak for themselves.
By the way, I have cordial relations with my local MPs (face to face sometimes) and the Ministers concerned (via email and letter correspondence).
Unfortunately, the way politics is played on forests, hearts and minds take second place to money and perceptions about jobs.
I commend forest protection efforts to date. Now we need to finish the job and protect the remaining 2.5%, as has been done successfully in QLD and New Zealand.
People have been trying in vain to “get the government on side” for decades. But they stay in lock step with some unions (CFMEU Foresty Division) and woodchip companies. Sadly, most of the small millers have been shafted over the last two decades too.
As I stated previously, people can draw their on conclusions about corruption and incompetence, based on the body of evidence. When you get DSE breaking the law it is pretty clear things are seriously wrong.
I know I am dealing with intelligent people. However, I don’t resile from exposing industry apologists and PR folk, or governments that get forest and other policy (such at the Feed-in Tariff and the CRPS for example) horribly wrong.
Unfortunately, it really takes an election cycle to get politicians moving, along with a grass roots campaign to mobilise community support.
Much better, peterc. Thank you.
My goodness you have talked a lot of rubbish in your recent posts here peterc. Things that you categorically must know are not true.
This is far from the first time, as well.
Where has DSE or anyone ever said that Brown mountain is not old-growth?
Who has ever changed the definition of old-growth, since Peel (1994)?
Where has DSE ever provided any opinion whatsoever about the age of these trees? Why does 500 years mean anything? Would it be OK if it was 250? 400? What an irrelevant factoid!
What doe s the election policy really say about old-growth? Or does it in fact indicate that some old-growth will still be available?
Where is this mythical spiny crayfish? Did the greenies eat it?
What are the threatened possums? Please link to their FFG or EPBC status, if you can.
Jill Redwood has never said there was a quoll there, this one is a completely new claim, first invented right here on this blog.
To the best of my knowledge no threatened species have been found there.
Can you please cite that only 8 per cent of east gippsland’s old-growth remains? I mean, really… If you want to talk about grasslands, or box-ironbark forests, or wetlands, or brigalow, sure, but more than half of east gippsland is in parks, as you know. There are about 700 000 hectares of old-growth in Victoria. harvesting accounts for absolutely less than 500 hectares a year. At this rate, we’ll get through it all in about 1200 years plus.
more than 40 thousand hectares of State forest are just about to go into the reserve system, and you’re bitching endlessly about 40 more hectares and haven’t offered a single word of compliment about that. no wonder the government dismisses you as a joke.
By the way, “corporate gain” is, in the world of adults, considered to be a good thing. Most of us live, and like to live, in the market economy.
Gosh Wilful, what a spray! Welcome back. It seems events have got away from you somewhat.
Then your knowledge is very limited. You would do better to direct your question to DSE since they are now doing the surveys to confirm sightings of threatened species. Of course if their report is tabled as a Cabinet in Confidence document we will only get to see it in 30 years, but the government wouldn’t do this would they?
Peterc, a quoll scat is not a threatened species.
And now you’re casting needless aspertions on the government again.
The Government wouldn’t do what, exactly?
The second part of your post appears to be saying: wilful is ignorant because he doesn’t know there are threatened species at Brown Mountain. The DSE does because they’ve done a survey but they’re not telling. (Can’t work out what the reference to the government actually means).
If I’ve got it right (and it’s not clear from your post) you’re saying that wilful is ignorant because he doesn’t know something that noone outside of DSE knows.
Which surely makes you ignorant too, and everyone else who isn’t privy to DSE’s information.
If you actually know that there are threatened species at Brown Mountain (and can give us a source to confirm the existence of the quoll scat) then please provide the source, rather than just telling us there is but noone knows there is because DSE isn’t telling anyone anything.
(1) After the East Gippsland Environment centre published its findings, the DSE promised to do a followup study in “ten days.” A search of the DSE website has failed to uncover this study. Perhaps it’s my search skills; can you find the DSE study?
If not, I’m sure there’s a valid reason for the delay – the DSE has had the bushfire emergency on its plate since 8 days after that report was published, and it’s easy to imagine that other things were put on hold. But surely if the report is delayed, the correct course of action is to keep clearfelling suspended until such time as the report can be completed.
(2) The species reported by the East Gippsland EC were, besides your much disparaged crayfish, the sooty and powerful owls and a large population of greater and yellow-bellied gliders, spotted-tail quoll, long footed potoroo.
(3) Lest we forget, those are the bird and mammal species. If you’d like to quickly read the original article which kicked off this post again, it is another, very iconic, very high value species which is at issue here:
(4) Another “species”, if you can call it that, which is most definitely under threat in SE Australia is rivers and waterways. The Brown MOuntain area is the headwaters of the Bonang river.
(5) Wilful keeps harping on the Black Spur regrowth – that was an area regenerated after fire, not after being chainsawed, then bulldozed (trashing the topsoil in the process) and then firebombed with chemicals. the comparison with modern logging is apples and oranges.
(6) Further to that, the use of the word “harvesting” can be seen throughout this thread in the pro-logging comments. “Harvesting” has sprung up as a term in the last couple of years to put a nicer spin on the violent processes actually used in woodchipping and clearfelling. “Harvesting”, when used for farming crops, means cutting off an annual plant at the stem, leaving stubble behind . “Harvesting”, applied to forestry, means the chainsaw/bulldozer/fire. “Clearfelling” is the actual term, but if people constantly fling the word “harvesting” around, it sounds so much gentler, so much nicer. That’s just one example of the loaded terms being used here.
(7) Wilful, “…(Y)ou’re bitching endlessly…no wonder the government dismisses you as a joke….in the world of adults…” This is all very provocative and insulting language. Please play the ball.
It is entirely relevant when (a) the logging cycle is 80-120 years and (b) as a result of climate change and other environmental changes, the conditions which pertained at the commencement of the successional process which is being disrupted by logging won’t pertain if and when the area is permitted to regrow.
(I) Which I understood is the case (that clear felling is suspended at present). I would also expect that salvaging logs from burnt areas will take precedence over continued logging of BM (though I don’t know).
(2) Which of these are endangered species, Helen?
(3) Wilful asks, quite correctly, why a 500 year old tree is of more importance than a 300 year old tree – where do we draw the line? Do we know how many 500 year old trees there are? How many are already protected? Should I get a Heritage Vic person out here as a matter of urgency because I have a couple of them in my bottom paddock?
By all means, let’s pause and think about it, and make a decision based on clear, scientific values, but let’s not go with the knee jerk reaction of ‘it’s old, therefore it’s valuable’.
(4)No, water isn’t a species, and calling it one won’t make it so. If you have evidence that logging BM is affecting the catchment, report it to the regional water authority. There are several legal requirements logging companies must observe to protect water catchments. If they’re not doing this, they’re breaking the law.
(5) Honestly, I’m driven to an ad hom attack here. Can’t you read? Wilful didn’t, I did. Twice. Which is scarcely harping.
This was in response to your repeated claims (harping?) that regrowth forest is the same as a plantation. Which it isn’t. But we’ve been over that.
(6) I’m not pro logging. I’m anti spurious argument being dressed up in green and pushed as serious comment. I’m trying to point out that this sort of thing makes it difficult for the real conservation issues to be heard. If you take an argument to the government which is clearly silly and they know is clearly silly, they might write you a polite letter but they won’t act. The internet is a great tester of arguments – if I’m shown to be wrong, I accept that and change my approach. If you don’t do that, you are not an effective activist.
I’m not afraid of the term ‘clear felling’ (gee that was brave of me, wasn’t it?) Clear felling – in some forests, not snow gum or mountain ash – is the most effective and natural form of logging. Selective logging has been shown by some studies (I’m not saying they’re right, just that they’re there) to produce better results than selective logging. Fire is a part of the natural system, and the best way of regenerating most Australian forest environments, especially those which have suffered damage.
Clear felling mimics intense bushfire, which is a natural event.
Anyway, please point out for us the arid, treeless (fern tree less, even) deserts left behind after clear felling. I don’t know of one, but then again, I do know that that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
(7) You can’t (or peterc can’t) keep taking people out of context, verballing them, make random and unsubstantiated accusations of conspiracy and corruption etc without people finding you a bit frustrating. If you keep pointing out to people that they are doing these things and they keep doing them, you are inevitably driven to conclude that the problem is the person, not the argument.
Mehitabel & wilful,
The reference information you ask for, with external sources listed, is available here: [link]
Putting aside your very agressive language, I am happy to commend the State Government for their 2006 election promise/policy to “protect the last remaining stands of old growth forest in East Gippsland available for logging”.
Unfortunately, with the logging of Brown Mountain, and now the Delgate cathcment forest, they have broken that promise. This is no joke.
I think Labor thought they had solved the “political” problem of logging old growth with their protection of the Otways during the 2002 State election. But they obviously left out East Gippsland and numerous other forests across the state.
In response to public pressure and concern about old growth logging during the 2006 election, they decided to do something.
The resulting 40,000 odd hectare very patchy “promise” in East Gippsland still has not been delivered 3 years later – even though they released draft maps in 2006. I will be happy to congratulate them when they actually deliver.
Brown Mountain forest is quoll and potoroo habitat. There was a positive hair tube sample recently for the endangered Long Footed Potoroo, in addition to the gliders and crayfish evidence.
As I stated previouly, I am unaware of where DSE’s survey activities are at. I just heard they were in progress. The shroud of secrecy that surrounds the (mis) “management” of our public forests is a real concern.
Wilful, you may be happy with 500 to 600 year old trees being killed, along with endangered species, for woodchips. I and many others are not happy with this atrocity. It is a crime against the environment.
I’d surrender mehitabel & wilful. I also find this sort of non-logic provocative but some people are beyond help.
Have a look at the various accusations of dishonesty, bad faith etc Helen has made. If you get annoyed with her uncivil behaviour, it is you who are attcking her ad-hom and she is therefore the victim.
Have a look at Helen’s comment at 44, where she says I haven’t quoted her, after I quoted her at 42. That whole post is classic passive aggression, esp. the response to the sock puppet thing, while deftly dancing away from responsibility for her own written remarks. If you could really corner her through a personal relationship, a typed copy of her own words and irrefutable logic, the best you could hope for is the old totally qualified apology, “I’m sorry you misinterpreted my comment but it’s your fault for not understanding what I now want my words to mean.” Or:
It’s Asperger’s. Give up.
4)No, water isn’t a species, and calling it one won’t make it so.
*Groan*
*Headdesk*
I suspected if I made that tongue-in-cheek remark, either W or M would take it literally in another attempt to make me look stupid. See the quotes around the word “species”? *Headdesk*
I’m sure other readers understood what I meant.
Remarks like “Can’t you read?” are clearly ad hominem and intended to provoke.
Please state where I said that regrowth = plantations. They may have some similarities e.g. growth age but I have never said there are the same, so we have in no way “been over it”.
OK, now the ball’s in your court: What are the real conservation issues that you claim to espouse and which PeterC and I are failing to address? What would you like to see happen in the East Gippsland forests / Errinundra? And are you local to that area?
And if you’re not planning to remove the 500-year old trees in your bottom paddock, then good on you, and where is the controversy?
Oh, and the “Asperger’s” comment was in clear violation of the comments policy, Sean.
OK everyone, I believe that this is the sort of debate where we have decent people with strongly held views on both sides. Nobody will be in any doubt about the “strongly held views” bit, so in my capacity as thread moderator can I ask that we also remember the “decent people” bit when we’re choosing our forms of words.
Yes I apologise, it was uncalled for. People who actually have that disorder can’t help it.
I just noted that when you, Helen, and Peterc are asked to justify your insults to others (accusations of dishonesty, bad faith, lack of intellect etc) your response is that it’s because we have it coming, if we give back it’s a violation of your rights or “aggression”.
You just did that again at 88. Perhaps the comments policy should be considered to be like equity: let (s)he who comes to it have clean hands.
As I was saying at #89…
Of course I realise what you meant about water, Helen, and I clearly addressed your argument, which demonstrates that I understood it.
I’m sure other readers understood that I understood it.
Yes, comments like ‘can’t you read?’ are ad hom and I said it was. Can’t you read? I’m sure other readers understood what I meant.
‘We have plantations already. There’s no need to cut down old-growth to generate more.’ (Helen) ‘You can split hairs and say that that coupe over there is not plantation but managed regrowth forest…’ (Helen) clearly imply that, to your mind, there is virtually no difference between regrowth and plantations.
I’m not using this blog to push any personal conservation barrows – that would be a fairly pointless exercise for me, I have much better channels which I can use. However, I have played important roles in campaigns such as the removal of cattle from the High Plains, bringing climate change issues to the attention of Government, the reallocation of water to the Snowy River (off the top of my head) and locally in smaller ways, pushing for weed control programs, the protection of imporant local environments, environmental rating systems and the like. I work as a local adviser on climate change impacts for a major University and have recently been invited to speak to another on my work in this area.
I’m an advocate, lobbyist and policy writer albeit on a small scale.
So I understand the importance of good argument, which is what I’m after here. I also understand that bad argument and fuzzy thinking can set back a cause many years.
Sean, thanks for your concern, but I’m finding all this rather funny.
‘We have plantations already. There’s no need to cut down old-growth to generate more.’ (Helen) ‘You can split hairs and say that that coupe over there is not plantation but managed regrowth forest…’ (Helen) clearly imply that, to your mind, there is virtually no difference between regrowth and plantations.
No, you have not understood what I was getting at there. I was addressing the fact that forest that’s cut down does not necessarily return as the mature wet schlerophyll that was there before. Whether this is regrowth or plantation. Of course the two are different. I was lumping them together for the purpose of this specific point.
I wonder whether State Anti-Discrimination agencies are aware that some people on this thread are encouraging biggertree.
OK, Helen, in that case give me examples of cut down forest that did not (when allowed to regenerate) return as the forest that was there before. I gave you an example of a forest that did, so it’s only fair.
Since you didn’t address the other points I made, did I win on those ones??
I’m not sure how you could possibly point to a forest which has been cut down in the 20th or 21st century and has regenerated to fully mature wet Mountain ash type forest, unless you had a tardis. That kind of precludes the 500-year monsters.
My understanding is that clear-felled cool temperate rainforest will regrow as mostly dry sclerophyll, or drier than what was there before, and that this tendency will be further exacerbated by climate change.
Mehibatel,
No forest cut down in Ausralia is left to regenerate to old growth, due to the logging rotations of 30 to 120 years, unless it has been added to a National Park or Special Protection Zone.
Industrial logging of our native forests turns them into de facto plantations that get regularly clear fell logged and burnt.
Some logged and degraded forest has been added to National Parks such as Errinundra NP. Some more of this is included in the 40,000 hectares yet to be protected, but this did not include Brown Mountain, Jungle Creek and other old growth. If protected, these forests could take 200+ years or more to approximate what they were before they were logged.
Of course it can’t regenerate to old growth. It can, as the Black Spur did, regrow to a perfectly good, functioning forest.
It’s a bit like the people up my way, who after the 2003 fires went around solemnly shaking their heads and saying how depressing it was, with all the trees burnt down, “It will take one hundred years before the forest gets back to how it should be” – when, in fact, the forest was as it should be right at that moment in time. Just because it didn’t look like they wanted it to look didn’t mean it wasn’t the way it was meant to be.
Peterc, your first sentence is a dead giveaway. We know that lots of regrowth forests have been added to National Parks or Special Protection zones, so we must be able to find an example to prove or disprove the question – have the forests which have been logged and then protected regenerated into natural systems?
Another question raised by 500 year old trees – how much older are they than the forest around them? If they’re 500 years old, say, and the trees around them are 100, that suggests that the forest has been disturbed in this period. Are they then truly old growth? Just asking.
“Another question raised by 500 year old trees – how much older are they than the forest around them? If they’re 500 years old, say, and the trees around them are 100, that suggests that the forest has been disturbed in this period.”
mehitabel, the likelihood of mortality for a 90 year old human is much higher than it is for, say, a 70 year old human. So it is among perennial plants. Quite simply, once it has reached maturity the probability of mortality for an individual tree increases with time. And old trees that die may be replaced by seedlings of the same species – at least under some circumstances.
In most cases it is not necessary to invoke disturbance to explain observations of mixed age structures in populations, just as it is not necessary to invoke war or pestilence to explain the predominance of 65-70 year olds amongst pensioners.
I’ve just learned that the DSE survey on species at Brown Mountain is with the minister now and findings haven’t been released to the public yet.
Ta, feral. I ask questions because I want to expand my knowledge, not to be silly.
Thanks for the update Helen. It will be interesting to see what happens next. If the minister doesn’t release the report (and logging continues) I think we can assume he has something to hide, that would be extremely suspect.
If he releases the report, at least there will be some transparency in the process. And as we taxpayers are footing the bill, I certainly would like to see it.
I see two possible outcomes. They don’t release the report and continue logging, or they release the report and add Brown Mountain to the areas to be protected. I certainly hope for the latter. Having visited the forest, it is one of the best areas I have ever seen. It is absolutely magnificient – the old growth walk would be a very popular tourist attraction.
no probs mehitabel. wish I had the time & energy to make a more substantial contribution….
Mehitabel,
much of Black Spur is planted. Next time you drive up the Spur from Melbourne and can find a small layover, check. The trees are in rows (My mother can remember the regen efforts and seeing the trees when they were saplings).
And no, clearfell does not mimic wildfire, except in the grossest sense.
And no, the current short rotations in wet sclerophyll forests do not follow the timing of pre-European fire cycles, according to the evidence currently available. They appear to be much shorter. The evidence, I’ll admit is not comprehensive. As I implied earlier in this thread, I suspect research in this area has been discouraged. There is a great deal of technical material on forestry and forest production – I have some of it saved from a library cleanout – that part of the science is well understood.
At the Ecological Society of Australia annual conference in 2005, I remember seeing a presentation on pre-logging fauna surveys in Tasmanian old-growth forests and post logging surveys. The invertebrate fauna is almost totally different. The old growth specialist species are mostly undescribed.
Wood production can be maintained on 80-120 year cycles, but the forest ecology is very different. We don’t know what the long-term impact of shorter forestry cycles is. We need longtitudinal monitoring, which is not sexy and is expensive, to monitor and understand the impacts of global change in any case.
From what I can gather from this discussion is that it seems to be about the forests and the trees. We understand one side of it (scientifically) much better than the other.
Roger, local to that area, am very familiar with the background – yes, it was handplanted after the 1939 fires, as the ash seedlings were not mature enough to have set seed since 1927. So my point was that a forest could be totally devastated and then regenerate (naturally or not) to a state which is indistinguishable from a ‘natural’ forest.
Neither mountain ash or snow gum forests regenerate after frequent burning (certainly the BS history suggests mountain ash cannot be burnt in 12 year cycles) and I would never advocate clear felling techniques for forests of this type.
But the Spur is a very ‘wet’ forest which has come back after complete devastation (I don’t think the tree ferns and other understorey plants, blackwoods etc were handplanted).
Certainly believe there is room for a lot more research (there is almost none, for example, on whether or not fuel reduction actually has an effect on fire intensity, a very important question one would have thought. I don’t think there’s any need for conspiracy theories here, just the woeful lack of funding for research in Australia in general (same story when you look at research into native fauna).
Slightly off topic, but before we commit to burning 3 times as much forest in Vic each year in the name of fire prevention, I would really like to see some major research dollars being spent to show that it’s beneficial.
BTW, have repeatedly said on this thread that I’m not pushing any barrows, just trying to point out poor argument.
Mehibatel, I agree with your comments on there being more research needed on the topic of fuel reduction burning. For example, extensive reduction burning has been conducted around Marysville over the last two decades by DSE, who had a regional office located in the town. Some of them were very hot; a few nearly got out of control. They did nothing to prevent the destruction of the town on Black Saturday.
Also, about two thirds of the area of the Bunyip fire (the southern part) was on farmland, and basically unstoppable until the wind changed. I heard this directly from a CFA volunteer who was fighting this fire. They couldn’t stop the fire, so they protected a property instead.
So the proposition put by some that the fires were due to high fuel loads is questionable.
Interestingly, large areas of the Armstrong Catchment seem to have resisted burning much better than the drier “production” forests around Marysville, which have basically all been completely burnt.
mehitabel,
the point I was making was that if you look at the trees, you get one answer, if you look at the whole forest ecosystem, you get another. The former is relatively well researched and understood, the latter quite poorly.
I reckon this underpins the debate you and others have been having with Peterc and Helen. Such an argument will always clash, especially when scientific evidence is used to back specific views on what is being conserved (It’s essentially habitat/ecology vs renewable resource). Correct me if I’m wrong.
My view about this type of debate is that the timber resource view narrowly applied reduces the flora and fauna that rely on forest structure to collateral. It also suggests that the fauna has the same distribution patterns as their host tree species (i.e. if old growth is reserved in one region, the fauna is likewise reserved). That may be so for many vertebrates, but not for the smaller species.
Roger – as I said, I’m not arguing a position here. I’m trying to point out argumental flaws, because I’m aware how damaging fuzzy thinking is to the wider environmental debate.
Yes, the average person on the street thinks you log a forest and the animals simply move elsewhere, but they don’t. It’s like saying that if someone knocks down my house, I’ll just move into the neighbour’s.
If peterc and Helen were using real arguments based on science rather than emotive and questionable ones based on polling, abuse of public officials and conspiracy theories, I wouldn’t have entered the debate at all (I was a lurker for a very long time!)
As I keep trying to point out to you, peterc, I’m probably on your ‘side’. I’m just trying to point out the flaws in your argument. If you fix them here, you won’t use them in situations where they do real harm.
I have presented a body of evidence, none of which has been substantively challenged. And I have pointed out that this evidence indicates the very serious mismanagement of our remaining old growth forests by government – resulting in their ongoing destruction.
I’m curious, what do you think the flaws in my arguments are?
Also, what are the “situations where they do real harm” that you are referring to?
Bottom line is that old growth forests – and their ancient trees – are suffering real harm right now. They are being destroyed.
Peterc
reread my posts. If you don’t understand what I’m criticising about your arguments, then there’s no use me explaining.
Mehitabel,
You haven’t explained which of the scientific evidence I have provided you have any issues with.
Making general criticisms about emotive arguments doesn’t really contribute to the debate.
In any case, I think the public liking their forests (which could be described as emotive) and wanting them protected is very relevant. They are our forests after all – not the governments or the woodchippers – even though both are effectively colluding in their destruction. This is also supported by facts – or more particularly, deliberate lack of information and consultation on this matter by government.
When was the last time the state government had any consultation on the destruction of old growth forest? They don’t even pretend to.
I wonder when the Brumby government will release the DSE report on threatened species in Brown Mountain forest, and their intentions regarding protecting this forest from destruction by logging?