Logging No Threat To Bush Area - Foresters
The Age
Sunday June 26, 1994
Foresters have fended off conservationists' claims that logging threatens to destroy the Wombat Forest's ecosystem by the turn of the century.
The Victorian Association of Forest Industries said the forest, a belt of eucalypts between Daylesford and Woodend, had been brought back from destruction by sensible management.
Conservation groups this month reacted with alarm to a State Government admission that logging is taking more wood from the forest than grows back.
But the association's executive director, Mr Norman Huon, said claims that the forest was being wiped out defied the history ``of the successful rehabilitation of a once brutally degraded forest".
Mr Huon accused conservationists of ``amateurish extrapolations from misunderstood data ... and primitive assumptions about forest productivity".
He said a maximum 1000 hectares were scheduled to be logged this year, half that claimed by environment groups. It did not follow ``simply because at various times during the full logging cycle the actual annual cut is above or below the annual sustained yield, that the yield for that whole period will be unsustainable".
According to Natural Resources Department figures, ``biomass regrowth" for the 39,000-hectare forest is about 190,000 cubic metres a year. The amount of wood taken from the forest, according to the department, ``is approximately 191,700 - roughly in balance".
Mr Huon said the industry's two-stage ``shelterwood" logging system meant that 1000 hectares might not be fully logged. He said the industry was sawlog driven. Woodchips were made from material which otherwise would be burned or allowed to rot.
Mr Huon said the forest had recovered after being badly over-logged late last century by ``tragically destructive" forest practices.
The Government has conceded that its timber yields are based on the number of sawlogs taken from forests, without considering woodchip and firewood production and burnt waste.
The Australian Conservation Foundation says this admission, combined with evidence of poor forest regeneration, meant large areas of state forest were at risk of being turned into virtual plantations.
The director of the Wombat Forest Society, Mr Alan Gray, said the department had indicated its concern about ``the failure of the shelterwood system" by initiating a review of the process.
He said Mr Huon should be ``embarrassed to recall the sad history of the forest, because under the current unsustainable practices history is being repeated". Water quality and the habitat of vulnerable species such as the tiger quoll and powerful owl were being threatened by the extent of logging.
The department says its 80-year sustainable yield logging rotation for the Wombat forest is on target. The amount of the forest logged would fall over the next few years to provide a better balance between production and regrowth.
© 1994 The Age