David

Re: Old growth forest definition:
Contrary to your assertion, the 'forest industry' has not 'changed the rules to suit themselves'. The definition of 'old growth' is a scientific (not industry) matter and it aligns with the JANIS criteria used to create the CAR reserve system during the Regional Forest Agreements. It hasn't changed, but how it translates at the coupe level has been problematic because coupes may contain a few old trees or a patch of old trees, but how much was required for the coupe to be designated as on 'old growth' coupe? My understanding is that at first, an 'old growth' coupe had to be at least 25% comprised of 'old growth' trees, but later this was altered to 15% - a change which favoured more environmental protection, not disadvantaged it as you seem to be saying.

Re: The Tarkine:
Again, this is another invention of the environmental movement who simply pointed to a region on a map of Tasmania and gave it the name Tarkine for marketing and campaign purposes. Evolving in such a way as it has, there are problems with where the boundary is, and that lies at the heart of your allegations about logging. Can you tell me where the bounday is? Also, your other allegation about the Tarkine being all rainforest species is way off the mark, the majority is eucalypt forest.

David, continued response

Re: the 'sheer scale and waste'.....
Of Tasmania's public forests, 74% are already either in formal parks and reserves, informal management reserves, or are effectively reserved by being unsuitable for logging. So, only about a quarter are actually to be used for timber, plus the timber production that occurs in privately-owned forests. This is hardly worthy of the concern you have ascribed to it.

Also, the majority of Tasmanian logging is selective logging, not clearfelling as you have implied.

Your assertion that '96% of trees go to the wood chipper and only 4% are sawlogs' is also wrong. In fact, Forestry Tasmania figures are that its about an 80:20 pulp log:sawlog split , but then further wood chips are produced from off-cuts of the sawmilling process which converts round logs to sawn boards.

Re: Chinese exports
If you know that 'some of the smaller and less attractive logs go to china' why did you assert in your article that very large, high value Mrytle logs were to be exported?

Mark, I can think of a couple of reasons why you didn't respond to my questions at TT.

1/ The data is not collected and collated. This would make a mockery of your claim that (conservationists) "don't know what they don't know".

2/ The data is collected but supports my assertion so you chose not to confirm it.

My on ground experience and rough extrapolations drawn from publicly available data suggest a combination of both.

Surely a forester is better positioned than a "rank amateur" and outsider such as myself to produce these statistics (if they are collected)? I pretty much gave you carte blanche in that one comment at TT. If it was a game of poker, you didn't even bother folding, you just legged it from the table...and you're still running. I'll take that as confirmation and vindication.

Cinders, you can deride "poorly researched" articles at TT all you like. I made some rough calculations and anyone is free to refute or challenge them. Even better if they provide peer reviewed papers to refute them.

I asked the question, why would you release approx. 99.725% of sequestered carbon in a given forest in the hope of temporarily sequestering approx. 0.225% temporarily in fence rails, pallets and perhaps, if you're lucky, some hardwood veneer, flooring and furniture?

I based my rough calculations on;

a pers. comm. with researchers in East Gippsland who were finding approx. 80% of carbon in these temperate forests was stored in the soil. (not sure if paper has been published yet)

which appears to be supported by recent research showing "2700 Gt of carbon is stored in soils worldwide, which is well above the combined total of atmosphere (780 Gt) or biomass (575 Gt)".

Around 33% of biomass is root systems.

Presumably a similar % in crown and non-target species.

A significant proportion of boles (trunks) are left in coupes and burned along with slash comprising of crowns, bark and under-story thus releasing into the atmosphere a significant proportion of the carbon remaining on site after logging.

Of logs removed around 85% ends up as woodchips.

If the remaining 15% of logs removed are sawlogs, amount of sawn timber recovered from those logs will be in the order of 30% (70% waste)

Government research shows paper has a average life of 3 years before ending up in landfill where decomposition releases methane and CO2.

etc etc

Feel free to challenge my figures and provide an alternative figure for potential carbon sequestration from clearfell logging.

maaate
Keep going ... you are only proving the truth of my earlier post that it is pointless to engage with someone who prefers to play games than actually address the matters raised in the article. And from my past experience of engaging with you, I know your tangents will require me doing a lot of research about obscure questions that you raise, only for you to ignore the results while raising evermore obscure questions. No thanks.

I think anyone going to the Tasmanian Times link you have provided will see what I mean. You seem to presume I spend my time monitoring these sites (perhaps like you do) – I don’t, and I’m not even sure of the questions I’m supposed to be running from, but have no intention of revisiting the said article to find out. As I said earlier, I have other things to do – like earn a living.

I’ll just say one thing about your post in response to Cinders, and particularly your views about soil carbon. It seems that you believe that forestry activities have a major impact on soil carbon when in fact forest soils can be many metres deep and the effects of a slash burn, for example, really only affects the surface layer. You can’t just presume that forestry causes all carbon in soils to be emitted as you seem to. You also forget that carbon is sequestered in the subsequent regrowth, thereby making logging, if conducted sustainably, a carbon-neutral activity.

Actually Mark, my figures should not been seen as <1% carbon sequestered (positive) so much as 99% carbon released (negative). Clearfell logging of undisturbed mature and older native forest is not even close to carbon neutral let alone carbon positive.

Supposing a tall wet eucalypt forest stores 1200t/ha carbon* and contains 200m3/ha of commercial logs. * (can be as high as 2800t/ha)

Using a coupe of 40ha as a basis for calculations, a potential 48,000t of carbon will be unlocked upon clearfelling. On average, of 8000t of timber recovered, 6800t will end up as chip logs and 1200t as sawlogs. Assuming 30% recovery rate, that's 360t of merchantable sawn timber. So, of 48,000t of carbon about 360t has a chance of being sequestered in sawn timber products. Around 99% of carbon within a stable cycle is released in the process.

How many years does it take a clearfelled forest to resequester all the carbon that was released when it was first logged? "The average net primary productivity (NPP) of these natural forests was 12 t C ha-1 yr-1 (with a standard deviation of 1.8)." At that rate it would take 100 years to sequester 1200t C. It's a physical impossibility to return to pre-logging carbon levels if you then re-log that area in short rotations (approx. 60 years) and that's what happens in managed forests. Every rotation will decrease the amount of carbon stored in that forest.

Now I'll concede that not all carbon stored in the soil will necessarily be released by clearfelling. But, seeing as I'm a mere "greenie", and "don't know what I don't know", you're going to point me toward the definitive research and predictive models that can accurately determine the proportion of soil carbon that will be released by clearfelling in various forest types?

Admittedly, my figures are rough by design but every paper I have read on this subject makes the timber industry's claim of being carbon neutral or positive seem ridiculous.

My other questions stand, no amount of ducking and weaving invalidates them.