Pioneers Have A Vision Of The New Forest
The Age
Saturday February 11, 1995
Rowan Reid and Andrew Stewart are what green groups would call SNAFs sensitive new-age foresters.
Their pioneering work could help end the bitter row over the logging of native forests.
Mr Reid and Mr Stewart are farmers, more accustomed to raising sheep than trees. Yet on their properties in the lush valleys of the Otway Ranges near Geelong they are growing highly prized hardwood eucalypts for local sawmills.
Their aim is to impress two powerful, sceptical groups other farmers and the native forest timber industry. And they can see a lucrative business opportunity emerging from the native forest debate spiralling demand for fine furniture and cabinet timber.
``The price of timber has never gone backwards and the real deficiency is going to be in hardwood timbers which we now get from tropical rainforest and native forests," said Mr Reid, who is also a lecturer in agroforestry at Melbourne University.
``But both of these sources will decline and the boom in demand for hardwood timber is going to be far bigger than for softwood pine."
Australian farmers, unlike those in New Zealand and northern Europe, have rarely grown trees on their land for commercial purposes. They are reluctant to surrender their valuable grazing and cropping land, which provides them with an annual income.
Foresters are sceptical about the strength and quality of plantation-grown eucalypts compared with much older gums in native forests.
Mr Reid and a group of farmers who belong to the Otway Agroforestry Network are hoping to prove them wrong. The farmers in the area are growing shining gums, blackwood and mountain ash.
The hardwoods are scattered near other species of trees and plants grown in land-care plots along creeks and on hillsides.
The trees are pruned to make their trunks grow fat and reduce the number of knots in the timber which suits the local sawmillers.
CSIRO tests show that the trees are strong enough to be harvested after 20 years.
© 1995 The Age