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| Forest "regeneration burns" following clearfelling in Tasmanian Oldgrowth. Photo credit Beth Heap. |
Introduction
It is fair to say that professional
foresters and environmental activists inhabit different planets; or at least
they see this one very differently. That people have different worldviews is
not a bad thing, but it can be extraordinarily difficult for any of us to see
past our worldview even if the evidence to the contrary is glaring.
Example:
- Some people continue to believe in communism even
after the collapse of the
- You can tell some Christians that you are gay, you love Jesus with all your heart, you practice an exemplary Christian life, you have prayed and fasted for healing, sought rights of deliverance, contemplated suicide, and ended up on anti-depressants, and they will tell you to pray harder for healing;
- If you an evolutionary biologist speciation proves evolution, irreducible complexity proves evolution, gaps in the fossil record prove evolution, entropy proves evolution, extinction proves evolution;
- If you are a forester and you log a forest that is seventy per cent rainforest species by canopy cover, napalm it, and plant rows of eucalyptus in its place, this will be sustainable in your eyes.
The Conservationist’s View
So on to forestry. I argued in a
previous blog (http://findinghomebookspace.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/quest-for-holy-grail-ecosystem.html)
that full ecosystem management is a distant, and in most if not all instances,
unattainable goal. It follows that a comprehensive, adequate and representative
reserve (CAR) system for the target ecosystems is essential:
- as an ecological benchmark;
- to give effect to the precautionary principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle); and
- to maintain ecosystem resilience in the face of environmental change (climate change, pollution, etc).
It also follows that extractive
activities with big environmental impacts like mining, clearfelling, or demersal
trawl, are inherently destructive.
This is essentially the world view
of environmentalists. Within that world view, activists peg themselves on a
spectrum from, on the one hand, a fairly pragmatic appreciation of the
challenges of natural resource management, to a mystical invocation of the
sacredness of mother earth on the other.
The Forester’s View
Foresters deeply oppose these
concepts. That’s a big thing to say, but it is in effect what they do say. In
this alternate world view, sustainable forestry makes otiose any form of
preservation because best ‘practice forest management’ ensures that the
environment is not harmed in any way. In this view, all issues such as
landscape values, water quality, karst, biodiversity, ground water, and soil
structure, are adequately addressed through management. Any form of
conservation is therefore unnecessary at best and counter productive at worst. This
view was put forcefully to the Legislative Council by former forester Geoff
Wilkinson. You can view Mr Wilkinson’s submission here (http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/ctee/Council/Submissions/Sub%20121%20-%20Geoff%20Wilkinson.pdf).
On a personal note I once suggested to a former district forester for Geeveston
that we should have a buffer zone to prevent logging to the boundary of the
World Heritage Area (WHA). He said that current management provided a buffer
i.e. logging World Heritage value forests is a form of conservation. He was
sincere in this statement.
Some History
Let’s start with a trip down memory
lane. Tasmania Southwest Tasmania
in 1986. Following this action the Forestry
Commission argued before the Helsham Royal Commission that protection of the
Farmhouse Creek (and Lemonthyme) forests was unnecessary. They got protected
anyway.
Then in 1989 conservationists and
foresters sat around a table to find a way forward but were unable, or perhaps
unwilling, to overcome their world view differences. At that time, and at any
time since, the Forestry Commission could have advocated formation of a
comprehensive and representative reserve system, and begun work to that end.
Had they done so, they could have prevented considerable environmental damage,
saved the community the worst of 25 years of social conflict, and undercut both
the green movement and the Green Party. Instead they went to the government of
the day with a proposal for a law that locked in destruction of all the old
growth forests that were not then in secure reserves. That was pretty much all
the old growth on Crown (public) land. This destroyed the fist Labor/Green
government and locked in community conflict to the present time.
Since then the official line has
changed from ‘we don’t want forest conservation in Tasmania
Nevertheless we have the Regional Forest
Agreement? Isn’t this enough?
The extent to which the RFA
provides adequate forest protection is a complex question. What I will say here
is that I was a Wilderness Society Activist for the five years preceding the
RFA. Industry fought against the proposal that
became the RFA tooth and nail. Foresters were rather silent. In other words it didn’t come about through the conscience of
enlightened forest managers. It came about because of a national groundswell of
protest in which tens of thousands of people marched in the streets in cities
around the nation and hundreds of activists went to jail (or at least remand)
for forest conservation. These were at the time the largest protests since the
moratorium marches of the Vietnam war. Prime Minister Keating needed to diffuse
the issue before the next Federal Election. The Regional Forest Agreements with
the States was his compromise solution at that time.
Put bluntly, if it were up to
foresters, there would be no Tasmanian forests reserved from logging at all.
Trust and plausibility?
It is always dangerous to make
broad brush statements (and hard not to in short blog essays)! The ‘forest
management’ argument is certainly more plausible in some circumstances than
others. For example, when applied to forest that has been extensively
selectively logged and burned, forest management may in some instances improve
the forest. The argument is stronger for logging in dry forest types if there
are small coupes, careful selection of replacement species, adherence to the Forest Practices Code, long rotations,
and adjoining un-logged forest. The argument becomes steadily less convincing
as you progress into pristine old growth, wet forest types, and rainforest. It
becomes absurd when replacing one forest ecosystem with another, such as plantation,
and when there are systemic breaches of professional standards.
Even if you accept the forest
management argument in some instances there is still an issue of trust. Foresters occupy a strange position . They both inform policy and implement policy. They are forced to respond to public demands that forest be taken out of production but must also honour supply contracts. They both determine forest practices, implement forest practices, and police forest practices all at the same time.
Despite the best professional efforts of many in industry, it is hard for informed observers to take foresters seriously when, for example, they:
Despite the best professional efforts of many in industry, it is hard for informed observers to take foresters seriously when, for example, they:
- want to log glacial refugia rainforest communities;
- find the largest living thing in the southern hemisphere (El Grande http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Grande_(tree ) and set fire to it;
- use cable loggers on precipitous slopes and only stop when embarrassed by publicity stemming from a blockade by The Wilderness Society (at Hellyer);
- obtain exemptions from planning laws, freedom of information laws, and laws concerning threatened species;
- self regulate; and
- ostracise whistle blowers.
One forester who broke the
unofficial code of silence that surrounds forestry mismanagement in Tasmania
To quote: “…the forest industry has become so woefully
negligent in its practices that it has been forced to be exempted from all
other state environmental, planning and land management legislation for the
simple reason that were it to be judged by the legislation that other
Tasmanians have to abide by, it would be found to be comprehensively in breach
of Tasmanian law. From my extensive in the forest industry, I believe that
corruption of forest management in Tasmania [is] such that there is no
enforcement of this weakened code of forest practice, and no silvicultural
outcome other than the clearfelling of native forest for plantation…the
decimation of habitat for endangered species…and finally a culture within the
Tasmanian forest industry of bullying, cronyism, secrecy and lies.” (Quote
from Senate Hansard, Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References
Committee, Plantation Forests Industry, 8
October 2003 , at page 501).
Mr Manning documented over 100
alleged breaches of the Forest Practices
Code, including alleged serious corruption and criminal activity. A
profession as diligent as that suggested by Mr Wilkinson’s submission might be
expected to support a full enquiry, rally behind their colleague, and press the
authorities to investigate thoroughly these allegations. Instead Mr Manning was
ostracised, sacked, vilified, and when I last heard, was unemployed and suffering
depression.
There was no investigation, and there have been no prosecutions. Mr
Manning’s notes are presumably sitting at the bottom of someone’s filing
cabinet. Is there any reason to suppose that ten years later anything has changed?
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| Cable Logging in World Heritage value forests, Florentine Valley Tasmania |
Tag line 1: forest peace talks, silviculture, forest practices code, florentine valley, world heritage, forest protest, Ta Ann, old growth forest logging, clearfelling, El Grande, World Heritage Area, RFA, Regional Forest Agreement, corruption, Legislative Council.
Tag line 2: forest peace deal, Christine Milne, Terry Edwards, Vica Bailey, Bob Brown, Dr Pullinger, old growth forests, high conservation value forests, The Wilderness Society, Tony Burke, Michael Hodgeman.
