hazza, for once, I totally agree .. and think the forestry thing in Tasmania, apart from timber for housing, is just a dumb idea.

It distracts from all other potential business and industry down there to the point no one want to invest.

Maybe if forestry goes, they WILL actually develop other industries, I mean, buggy whip manufacturers eventually moved on didn't they.

I wonder how great it will be after Australia turns against sectional enviro-interests who think they know best?
It must be comforting for the folks who live day to day lives, who know that regardless of what happens, there will always be people who know better than they do.
Those wonderful new green jobs supplied by market capitalism will provide the education to work out all manner of problems facing a small and prosperous population.
Unfortunately we'll have to cut a few adrift along the way.

Having a referendum would bring us to a genuine democracy would it not?
I don’t think the pollies and their hangers on would like that too much.
Buggy whips might be back in one day with peak oil.

So "logged forests regrow"?

Grow as timber, for further logging, as monoculture stands of boredom, or grow as fully complex and exciting places, full of what they used to be full of?

No, Mr Forestry Guy, I do not agree with your basic premise, so I cannot buy what you are spruiking.

The tone of this article is clear, and it is:
Tasmanians are right, Mainlanders are wrong.
Tasmanians are united in favour of native forest logging.
You Mainlanders don't know what a forest is... trust me, I've chopped down heaps of them.
As a forester with 30-plus years of experience, the author is part of the solution, and this solution is "more of the same".

The Tasmanian forestry industry stands alone as an example of an industry which has set its own rules for far too long, has permitted, even encouraged, demonising of its opponents and refused to work with them, and has held Tasmania back for decade after destructive decade.

At the very least, when OLO publishes such partisan matter, a contrasting contibution should appear in the same edition. Lift your game, OLO.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216583

taswegian, what utter drivel, many tourists love sustainable, selective, logging of old growth forests because they don't even know when they are in a national park that was logged in colonial times.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216584

rpg, some of them are day dreaming about a "green job" the international socialist/banksters told them they could have photographing the forest ocasionally to prove it is still there, sequestering carbon, so Pitt/Wall street can trade in "carbon default swaps" with billions of your dollars.

These idiots have obviously never heard of satelites doing it by remote control. The only green jobs will be in China making the "Big Screen" solar panels & wind turbines we will be importing.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216585

Philo, correct, try telling an econazi that, in one ear & straight out the other.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216588
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216591

sarnian, selective logging is quite sustainable forever, even after peak oil, our agriculural industries could produce enough biofuel to run a few chain saws.

After GFC#2 & the quarries running out of rocks to sell, our economy will look like that of Greece, forever, that is what the RED/green, international socialist/banksters are planing for.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216602

KH, maybe but only after the sheeple have been fed ALL sides of the story, instead of just the econazi spinganda weasel words.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216606

Amicus, why does ANYBODY have to shut down ANY industry, if it is sustainable &/or not damaging anything?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216611

Cheryl, i am sure the econazis could do a lot of manual labour planting trees with hand tools at contract rates.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12528#216614

johnbennets, spoken like a true econazi, do you even know what "selective logging" is? have you ever heard of free speech? your right to debate the article? regardless of who wrote it? what bias it allegedly has?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCRZLr9oRw many MEN have not "given up" on a job in their decendent's future.

Of course the forest grows back.

Of the 572,000 ha of forest claimed to be of high conservation value over 40,000 ha is from timber harvesting since the early 1960’s when clearfell burn and sow silviculture was introduced to ensure regeneration of Wet eucalypt forests.

The forests demanded by the Greens to be placed in National Parks and described by the Prime Minister as ancient and iconic include forest that has already been harvested before that date. The greenies used to claim industrial forestry destroyed; now claim that it creates HCV forests.

Have a close look at the Styx valley in a video at http://www.forestrytas.com.au/topics/2011/05/a-job-well-done that shows a forest coupe that was clearfelled and then regenerated to supply the pulp and paper mill at Boyer and is now identified as High Conservation Value.

The first map of high conservation value forest released in 2010 a included a coupe in the Picton Valley, that had been photographed and used in a postcard campaign to demand forest lockups in the 1990s. Compare the image at http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/ae542e/ae542e18.jpg , a coupe harvested in 1989 and subject to regeneration burning, to the image in 2003
and http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/ae542e/ae542e1a.jpg

Now forest and timber workers have to rely on the independent verifier appointed by the Prime minister. When he was National director the Wilderness Society, Jonathan West was quoted as stating:
“The Wilderness society knows what it wants and there will be no second grabs for more if it gets it. Leave untouched the National estate [forests]..., there will be total peace.
West said the area represented only 10 per cent of the forests available to logging”

Tasmania only has 2.2 million ha of public forests so 10% is 220,000 ha, will the greens hand back most of the 1.4 million ha already reserved?