The Emotional Hard Line On Native Hardwood Does More Damage Than Good

The Age

Thursday August 14, 2008

THE progressive downsizing of Victoria's (and mainland Australia's) native hardwood timber industry (BusinessDay, 4/8) is difficult to reconcile against our $3 billion trade deficit in wood products and the fact that we have the world's sixth-largest forest estate. It also raises questions about the sense of reducing production of our most greenhouse-friendly building material, and the morality of increasing timber imports from countries with poor environmental records.

The political kudos gained from "saving" forests through national park expansion has been typically short-lived before anti-logging activists have identified their next target.

The most serious consequence of their campaigns for a future of "locked-up", vacant forests, has been to weaken the critical relationship between human management and conservation. This is leading to forests being severely degraded by unnaturally intense or infrequent fire, feral animals and weeds.

Environmental activism must look beyond emotion and gain some perspective of the wider damage it does by overturning well-managed forest use in Australia.

Mark Poynter, Victorian media spokesman, The Institute of Foresters of Australia

Water values crucial

THE decision to end logging in the Otways was a victory for logic and common sense. The old Otway Forest Management Plan had failed to protect these beautiful forests from aggressive woodchipping, and the proposed Western Region Regional Forest Agreement attributed almost no significance to the two most important forest values - water production and tourism. Water values alone in the Otways were far higher than the timber values, and the threat posed by clear-fell logging to the large and growing Otway tourism industry was very real.

Forest industry arguments about its importance as a regional employer and value-adder were also shown to be untrue. It is hardly surprising that the Otway communities, including the main councils, overwhelmingly favoured an end to logging.

Unfortunately, short-sightedness is still driving much of what passes for management of Victoria's native forests. For example, we are still logging Melbourne's forested water catchments, mainly to produce woodchips that are used by APM to make Reflex photocopy paper. We are willing to spend billions on desalination plants and water interconnections, but we won't take the obvious, low-cost steps to maximise water production from natural sources.

If the forest industry wants continuing access to community-owned native forests, it must demonstrate more imagination and a much closer alignment with the values of the wider community. Increasingly, carbon abatement and water production will drive the native forest policy agenda, which is entirely appropriate.

Christopher Tipler, on behalf of the Melbourne Water Catchment Network and the Otway Ranges Environment Network

Desalination madness

I HOPE Mr Brumby read Kenneth Davidson's excellent, commonsense article on the proposed Wonthaggi desalination plant (BusinessDay, 4/8). The desal plant is impractical, environmentally reckless and fiscally irresponsible. The Government doesn't seem to have noticed that we're on the brink of a recession and it won't have taxpayers' money to burn forever. Bring on the dams.

Jenifer Sharp, Hampton

Sceptics essential

ORIGIN Energy's chairman, Kevin McCann, must have rocks in his head to suggest that corporate Australia cannot afford to harbour climate change sceptics.

What he blissfully overlooks is that there is a greater cost in having corporate Australia harbour climate change preachers.

Why? Because if he is to run a business on solid principles, he will need to have people in his ranks who will ask the hard questions to discover the real situation. Without that, he cannot run the company in the interests of his shareholders.

Politics rather than science will dictate what costs are imposed on companies like Origin Energy and people like McCann should admit that.

Noel Jackson, Ringwood

Energy tax hurts all

THE problem with, or perhaps the purpose of, Professor Sinclair Davidson's suggestion (BusinessDay, 31/7) of taxing all energy use is that it would, by taxing energy from non-polluting sources, financially inhibit the development and use of such non-polluting sources. There are methods at the pilot stage by which carbon dioxide can be efficiently collected from power station emissions and also methods by which bacterial activity is used to convert carbon dioxide into transport fuel. The development and use of such technology could make the reduction of pollution from power stations a profitable ancillary industry rather than a cost.

Brian Collingburn, Albert Park

© 2008 The Age

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