TasFarmers Matters - Pressure on forest managers

The management of Tasmania’s forests is back on the agenda, but not by those who have the practical management of forests as their priority. It has been placed on the agenda by those who may have great concern for the natural environment, but no responsibility for it, nor any financial skin in the game.

While the conservation movement may think they are targeting forestry activities on public land, their activism also significantly impacts privately held forests, private forestry and the management of a significant tract of the Tasmanian landscape.

This point is mostly lost on the broader public and in many instances, by government. Farmers are the custodians for significant tracts of forest resources in Tasmania, around 1,000,000 ha or 16 per cent of the state, which is more than public production forests.

A full-page advertisement in a major daily newspaper on July 20 spelt out a significant disconnect between opinions and facts and the vision for the future of Tasmania, socially, environmentally and economically.

What it highlighted was the progressive change in language that now seeks to end “native forest logging’’. Two decades ago, it was “end old growth logging”, before that, it was described as “protect virgin forest”. But their language never explains what native forest logging means and why are we ending it, rather than simply doing forestry better?

What that advertisement highlights are the claims of the Australian Conservation Foundation,  the Wilderness Society, Wilderness Australia and the Bob Brown Foundation now crossing over into private forest estates. It seeks to take the management parameters away from landowners but increase the level of responsibility borne by those landowners.

Native forest logging is not necessarily clear felling. Many managers of forests wouldn’t consider clear felling as a management tool, but would use the judicious use of single-stem harvesting and the periodic cool burning of understoreys as a time-proven management tool, used for thousands of years before European settlement.

In the process, this protects biodiversity, carbon sequestration and boosts the safety of the forest and community.

This will ultimately preserve forest estates rather than conserve them – which is a very important distinction. Another term for preserving forests is to ‘lock them up”. Locked-up forests are not managed forests, and in a time of climate change to warmer and drier weather, managing fuel loads is a critical component of managing forest ecosystems. In short, if they aren’t managed, they become a huge bushfire hazard that threatens the whole community and could cause complete loss of the forest itself.

Furthermore, it lists among the demands, the increased “…long term public funding across all levels of government for the protection, conservation and restoration of native forests”.

At least they aren’t advocating for government subsidised new pine plantations…

All farmers would understand the concept of pressure. Pressure from banks, suppliers, contractors, customers, processors, governments local, state and federal. There is the constant pressure that weather brings, the pressure to get the timing right of buying, selling, planting and harvesting.

Farmers who are managing forests as a longer rotation crop, don’t need the additional political pressure of outside influences distracting government policy makers from their key objective, which is surely the sustainable and practical management of forests. 

Vocal interest groups such as the group of four that placed the advertisement in the newspaper are seeking to drive their own political agenda, but the real pressure is on forest managers, who are obligated to ensure the safety of the community, the integrity of their forests and the ongoing economic survival of rural and regional areas.