Excellent article sir, about a topic that most ignore. Forestry is sound resource management, buy since the days of 1960's hippy protests and naked tree hugging, has become a target for anyone who wants the Green vote. While Greenies love expensive resource intensive (rare metals in particular) that destroy distant out of site foreign peasant environments, they can't see the wood for the trees that they demonise.

Sound forest management also helps protect environments and (if allowed) prevent the unnecessarily devastating fires. Managed forests, stewarded by professionals faired much better that the abandoned overgrown native forests. If less restrained by green tape, forest fuel management could greatly lessen future impacts of fire on resources, habitat and wild life.

But the Labour Socialist Comrades of Victoria who you fellow Victorians elect want Green votes, so your renewable, well managed industry must go. Only way to stop it is to remove these ideologs your parliament. Good luck.

Where the author pontificates "Post-virus a faint hope glimmers for those who believe sustainable forestry in the state is possible."

I say - Oh goody! A virus crisis will make people NICER to trees... :)

Thank you for a well considered article. As a forester I have strived for many years to point out the almost complete absence of background context in the campaigns of environmental activists and some academics - such as the small scale and very minor proportional extent of timber production from native forests. We could never expect activists to change in this regard because it would undermine their primary premise that timber production has dire impacts on the environment, but it is disturbing that some scientists won't acknowledge such reality given the academic credibility that society bestows on them.

Like you, I have held a glimmer of hope that Australia may reconsider the value of its home-grown industries in the post- COVID world and be less willing to throw them away on the basis of spurious environmental grounds. However, an impediment to that in Victoria which you haven't mentioned is the 'greening' of the state government bureaucracy with regulatory responsibility over timber production. This is evident in the 6-month delay in starting post-bushfire salvage harvesting which will ensure that far less usable wood is able to be harvested before the burnt wood degrades to an unusable state.

It is also evident in the extent to which wildlife protection regulations are now applied to harvesting operations as though every animal, bird, reptile or insect needs to be protected in every square metre of forest. In the past, wildlife protection was a landscape-scale consideration whereby the impact of timber harvesting was accepted here because most of the rest of the forest was not used or was reserved for conservation.

Last week's Federal Court ruling based on a (misguided) interpretation of the 'precautionary principle' takes this even further and unless over-turned will make timber harvesting operationally unworkable --- much to the delight of eco-activists and Greens voters.

I am wary of the data that is cited in this article, regarding the extent of logging in Victorian forests. I recall that until the 1970's the definition used by the then Forest Commission was of trees with an average height of 100 feet (about 33m). This was then changed to trees of an average height of 10m about 33 feet. This statistical trickery then placed the mallee scrub and the devastated box ironbark forests into the mix, these forest types were of no use to the timber industry. The manipulation of the data enabled the publication of figures like logging only occurs in 6% of Victorian forests. Or the one I remember from the industry ads. 'The timber industry only logs 1/3rd of 1% of Victoria's forests each year. Technically correct but not an accurate representation of what is occurring in the wet sclerophyll forests the timber industry wants to log.
A more realistic figure is obtained if for example we look at what % of Victorian forests in areas that receive greater than 650mm of rainfall are available to be logged.
Andrew Humphreys

Indigenous peoples have been selectively logging their native forest for millennia. Without harm to either flora or fauna!

Selectively logged forests, need logging tracks that double as fire breaks.

Selectively logged forests are younger forests that outperform old-growth forests a carbon adsorbers!

Selectively and sustainably logged forests remove half the timber of clear-felled forests, Plus create double the jobs!

Finally, trees store carbon whether vertical or horizontal but only until burnt or decayed.

Ploughing also liberates soil sequestered carbon.

Time for dream castle dwellers/green devotees to make their public statements with credible scientific expertise at their elbow!

Intensive short term cell grazing, reduces fuel loads and available year-round on windy or wet days! And returns a handsome profit!

And wouldn't that expertise at the elbow, make a pleasant change from THE IDEALOGICAL PYSCOBABBLE THAT'S THE GREEN'S STOCK IN TRADE?
Alan B.

Stanon, please read your own words: the box ironbark forests are indeed forests. They were very valuable contributors to our economy when they were managed properly and used solar energy to grow large quantities of strong and durable environmentally sustainable construction materials including railway sleepers, bridge girders, wharf piles, power transmission poles etc.. Production of the new steel and reinforced concrete alternatives produces far more so-called greenhouse emissions and huge holes in the ground.