Mark, if you are as you say, a forester, how is it you spend so much time online? Do you carry a laptop around with you in the forest? Every thread in every online publication that has anything to do with plantations, chemical sprays, logging and even the pulp mill has your name in there, attacking everybody with an opinion other than your own. If you are paid to manage forests, which is what a forester does (not clearfell log it) you would be far too busy working at forest management to spare the time. Foresters spend their days looking after roads and tracks, wildlife, water courses and managing the trees for safety and the health of the forest. According to Master Forester, Frank Strie, foresters are concerned with ecosystem service values and Logging is only a small part of the overall management process.

Perhaps this is the same Frank Strie who featured in the discredited and biased ABC Four Corners ‘Lords of the Forest’ and was introduced as a Master Forester who advocated single tree selection.

From his web site we find that he trained in Germany, completed a Forstwirt apprenticeship and worked as a professional forestry worker. Who studied at the Tech. Forestry School Diemelstadt. In 1987 he immigrated to Tasmania and now puts the letters FWM after his name, which stands for Forstwirtschaftsmeister.

A German vocational qualification gained by training as an apprentice as a Forstwirt and some time later after relevant experience and a technical college course, the supervising qualification.

Whilst it is a easy mistake to translate FWM as Master Forester, unlike Mark Poynter’s degree, this is not a university qualification, nor one that studies the ecology and regeneration of Australian Eucalypt forests.

Contrast this to, Dr. Andreas Rothe of the Fakultät Wald und Forstwirtschaft (Faculty of Forestry), University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan, Germany at the 2008 Old Growth conference applied the lessons from the European experience to ask the question ‘Is single tree selection suited for Tasmania´s Wet Eucalypt Forests?’

He concluded:
Single tree selection leads to inadequate eucalypt regeneration and that Single tree selection is not sound from an economic point of view.
see http://oldforests.com.au/pages/Presentations/Rothe.pdf

Mark, do you know what proportion of total original carbon remains on site after clearfell logging?

What is the total area logged by selective logging in Tasmania each year? What is the total volume of logs recovered with this method?

What is the total area logged by clearfelling/group selection/seed tree/shelterwood/aggregated retention in Tasmania each year? What proportion of these coupes is left to regenerate without regeneration burns? What is the total volume of logs recovered with this method?

We need to give your last response context and detail so I know you'll endeavour to provide this information.

I also see that you want to judge carbon, as it relates to forestry, on a landscape scale (that's convenient because carbon sequestration in areas that you can't log make you look better), but you don't want to look at the landscape scale implications of focusing logging on elevated, high rainfall, wet and damp forests in Victoria (see questions at TT link).

As for this quote, "The alternative promulgated by the ENGOs, that leaving all forests unlogged will mean increasing carbon storage in perpetuity is simply not true because of the propensity of our forests to periodically burn."

You may recall my comment that "Even if we accept the argument that “forests will only burn anyway”, before climate change and global scale deforestation and forest modification brought about by human activity, the carbon cycle, as related to forests, was a closed system. As such, forests had burned for millions of years without a significant impact on atmospheric CO2 concentrations because the system was relatively stable."

Current logging practices are exacerbating the impacts of climate change by making forests more fire prone. I believe that is why you have avoided answering my questions about the concentration of logging operations on elevated, high rainfall, wet and damp forests. What are the landscape scale implications of focusing logging on, and thereby modifying, forests that naturally mitigate mega fires?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognised the value of forestry addressing greenhouse gas emissions, in its 4th report:
‘'In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks' -'while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.

The Australian Greenhouse Office, which is now in the Department of Climate Change, conducted an analysis of the emissions intensity of different Australian industries, which is contained in Appendix D to the Australian Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme green paper. Of 115 industries, forestry was recognised to be the only one that is not a net carbon emitter.

In 2007 Forestry Tasmania commissioned a report into the amount of carbon' - projected to be stored in State forests and resultant wood products.
The MBAC Consulting report, Forestry Tasmania's carbon sequestration position, estimated that 31 million tonnes of carbon or 114 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent would be added between 2007 and 2050.

Added to this consensus is the Forest Dialogues Initiative on Forests and Climate Change which brought together more than 250 leaders of environmental and social groups, business, Indigenous people and forestry community groups, trade unions, forest owners, governments and international organisations, to discuss the opportunities and challenges for forests when considering their role in addressing climate change.

The FCC initiative agreed on a number of key messages, including how sustainably harvested forest products and wood based bioenergy can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by substituting high-emission materials such as petrol, steel or concrete for neutral or low-emission renewable ones.

Cinders, you must spend your entire life looking up papers that suit your arguments. Frank is one of the only people left in this state who can call himself a forester. He is not a Phd. Nor does he spend his life reading worthless reports, drafted by equally worthless people, about subjects that do not tackle the real problems faced in our forests. A degree means nothing, I have two and you treat me like an idiot. As I said before, come out of your office, away from the internet and filing cabinet and take a look. I have also read the IPCC report and many others and deforestation, Tasmanian style, is recognised for its high contribution to CO2 emissions.

Cinders, I dare say the IPCC's comments on the potential role of forestry in carbon sequestration didn't refer to transforming primary forests into virtual wood lots such as we do here in Australia? I must have missed that bit...what page was it?

Also of note is that the report was released in 2007 and recent research shows that the amount of carbon stored in temperate forests is far higher than previously thought (especially the tall wet and damp eucalypt forests that are the focus of the timber industry's devotion).

With regard to the carbon equation and logging of previously unlogged native forests, I think I'll trust my instincts and "back of the envelope" calculations rather than a misrepresentation of some IPCC motherhood statements that were actually about potential sequestration from reafforestation and new plantations.