Forest Products Industry

Australia’s forest industries are the solution, this is the message from yesterday’s Federal Government Strategic Forest and Renewable Materials Partnership’s Forest Industry Roundtable in Hobart. Source: Timberbiz The roundtable highlighted the need for a coordinated Federal Government approach to support the forestry and forest products supply chain so it can deliver the best possible economic, climate and social outcomes for Australia and the world, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA), Diana Hallam said. “Growing production trees is the foundation that supports our entire processing and manufacturing supply chain and today’s Roundtable positively reinforced the need for public policy coordination across government departments and agencies so our sector can reach its full potential whether it’s for construction and furnishing timber, biomass, pulp and paper or any of our other great products,” Ms Hallam said. “Bottom line – we need policy geared in the one direction to help our sector thrive and when we thrive, the country thrives. “I particularly thank Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, The Hon Julie Collins MP for her enthusiastic participation in the Roundtable and for allowing a free canvassing of ideas and strategies for how forestry and forest products can provide solutions on a number of fronts. “A key role of the Strategic Forest and Renewable Materials Partnership is to inform the development of a new Timber Fibre Strategy and the Roundtable provided the opportunity for participants to discuss challenges and have their say on policy solutions for the Strategy,” Ms Hallam said. “As a sector we employ 180,000 Australians directly and indirectly, many in rural and regional communities that rely solely on the sector, all while providing a range of job opportunities. “We contribute $24 billion to the national economy annually, we create essential products we need every day, all while helping Australia reduce emissions and fight climate change, helping the Government work towards its net-zero goals. “Finally, it was great to see so many AFPA members involved in the Roundtable just months away from the next Federal Election – that will be very important in setting a future agenda for the sector.”

The Greens, the Bob Brown Foundation and the Liberal Government in Tasmania have been accused wanting to start another forest war. Source: Timberbiz Shadow Resources Minister Shane Broad this week said Tasmanian Labor supported jobs in regional Tasmania. “It is what we believe in and what we fight for,” he said. “We urge environmental non-governmental organisations moving to renege on their commitment to the Tasmania Forest Agreement to act with restraint. “The TFA has demonstrated that jobs, industry and conservation can co-exist.  The last thing Tasmania needs is another forest war,” he said. “It is also important to note that we wouldn’t be in this position if Minister Felix Ellis didn’t attempt to re-open the forest wars with his controversial election policy which managed to divide all sides of the debate and saw industry desert him. “The industry doesn’t want another forest war, nor do Tasmanians,” Mr Broad said. “The only groups that do are the Greens and the Bob Brown Foundation, and apparently Minister Felix Ellis.” It comes as the Greens this week accused the state government of having secret plans to release up to 39,000 hectares of native forests for logging. However, the Minister for Business, Industry and Resources Eric Abetz said it was premature to release maps the Greens sought because no final decisions had been made. “Assessments have to be made in relation to each and every proposed area and until such time as I have information I’m not going to, as a relatively new minister in this area, going to put areas out into the public domain,” he said. “I’m currently getting information and being given guidance in relation to areas, and until such time as a determination is made, there’s no real inclination by myself to talk about areas in hypothetical circumstances.” Mr Abetz defended Sustainable Timbers’ failure to gain Forest Stewardship Council certification over the last decade. “If you’re already at world’s best practice and then demand is made that you show even further improvement, it becomes difficult,” he told The Mercury. And the minister said it would be a terrible result if Tasmania followed the lead of other states and ended native forest logging.

AAP reports that “At least 5000 koalas were killed in the 2020 Black Summer bushfires and a subsequent parliamentary inquiry found they would be extinct by 2050 without urgent government intervention to stop habitat loss”.1 Consequently, the Great Koala National Park will be finalised within weeks to ‘save’ them. Australian Forest Products Association estimates that it will cost more than $1 billion and more than 2,000 jobs in the native timber industry. They’ve identified an alternative “acceptable” option which would cost only about $400 million and 700 jobs. The Government has allocated $80 million to establishing the Park. Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said there were “a number of figures floating around … The thing I’ve learnt in forestry is that there are never any agreed facts and never any agreed figures”.2 But Sharpe says she will deliver “the government’s biggest environmental commitment”, adding that “We have always been clear that we need a comprehensive assessment process which takes into account environmental, economic, social, ecological and cultural issues”. Unfortunately, this process has ignored the main issue. The Government’s own data from surveys using drones and sniffer dogs show that koalas are not endangered and there is no need for a new park. There are more than 12,000 in the targeted 176,000 hectares of regrowth forests and plantations. That’s an unnaturally high density of one koala per 15 hectares.3 NSW’s native timber industry is doomed to follow Victoria’s and Western Australia’s into oblivion because the process is purely political and utterly lacking in science. The Black Summer fires burnt a lot of koalas, more than one would expect given expert estimates of low numbers through most of their range. Their Endangered listing was based on an estimate of only 36,000 koalas in NSW before 5,000 or more were killed in the fires. The estimate for the whole north coast from the Queensland border to the Sydney Basin was only 8,000. Now, with the imminent delivery of the Great Koala Park, three experts have published a scientific article claiming that it’s “dangerous to put numbers on koalas”.4 It says accurate numbers are not available, “Media seized on ‘guesstimates’ from any source, however dubious, and resorted to calculating numbers from habitat statistics and general population estimates without including the caveats that scientists included with these estimates…The obsession with numbers has left a legacy that can drown out the more considered narrative of science and lead to distortions of policy and management”. Daniel Lunney, the corresponding author for this article, was also co-author of a ‘study’ which led to the Endangered listing. They concluded that, “It was not necessary to achieve high levels of certainty or consensus among experts before making informed estimates. A quantitative, scientific method for deriving estimates of koala populations and trends was possible, in the absence of empirical data on abundances”.5 Minister Sharpe now has real data which show that the experts underestimated koala numbers by an order of magnitude. CSIRO analyses6  also indicates that numbers are 10 times higher than Koala Industry guesstimates used to support the listing.7 But the Great Koala Park will go ahead despite huge cost to the environment, economy and society. The Black Summer fires were a consequence of our ‘Lock It Up and Let It Burn’ conservation paradigm. However, koala numbers continued to increase on the north coast and elsewhere despite losses in the fires.8 Accurate numbers from post-fire drone surveys of more than 5000 hectares in two areas near Goulburn and Cooma found koalas at an average density of one per 37 hectares.9 This is similar to densities near Campbelltown where koalas are measurably increasing and female home ranges are about 20 hectares. But researchers there fear the “dangerous idea” that koalas are sustainable at what they regard as low densities.10 These researchers “predicted” that a viable low-density koala population extends all the way from Sydney to Victoria through the South-Eastern Highlands. Their predictions are supported by the accurate post-fire surveys, though numbers are three times higher than they expected and obviously very much greater than the expert guesstimate of 1363 koalas for the whole bioregion. No matter what the cost of the Great Koala Park it’s a scam and NSW’s Environment Minister has real numbers which prove it. Unfortunately, the numbers will no longer be politically dangerous once the park has been legislated and the renewable timber industry has been destroyed to appease the Greens. Their claims of socioeconomic benefits have proved false after every major ‘environmental’ decision on forests since Premier Wran ‘saved’ sustainably logged rainforests in 1982. But we continue to use illegal timber got by destroying rainforests and orangutans. References Australian Associated Press (AAP), At least 5000 koalas were killed, – Search Luke Costin, Australian Associated Press (AAP), Fur flies over billion-dollar koala park cost claims, 27 November 2024. Vic Jurskis, Ecological History of the Koala and implications for management, CSIRO Publishing, Wildlife Research, 12 December 2017, https://doi.org/10.1071/WR17032 Eleanor Stalenberg, Daniel Lunney, Chris Moon, `It’s dangerous to put a number on them’. Media coverage of koalas during the 2019-2020 `Black Summer’ bushfires in Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Pacific Conservation Biology, 25 November 2024, https://doi.org/10.1071/PC24019 Adams-Hoskings et al, Use of expert knowledge to elicit population trends for the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), Wiley Online Library, Diversity and Distributions, 5 January 2016, https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12400 CSIRO, 2024 update of National Koala Population estimates, Progress Report, 15 April 2024. Jason Ross, CSIRO: Aussie Koala Numbers Are 10x Higher Than Estimate, Wood Central, 9 July 2024. Vic Jurskis, NSW Koala Strategy – Extinguish native forestry, Australian Rural & Regional News, 24 April 2024. Cristescu et al, Difficulties of assessing the impacts of the 2019–2020 bushfires on koalas, Wiley Online Library, Austral Ecology, 29 October 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/aec.13120 Robert Close, Steven Ward, David Phalen, A dangerous idea: that Koala densities can be low without the populations being in danger, Australian Zoologist, 1 June 2017, https://doi.org/10.7882/AZ.2015.001   Vic Jurkis is a former senior NSW Forestry Commission professional forester. In 2004 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Joseph William Gottstein Memorial […]