Looks as if the forests are getting a break.

The dirty secret the Greens don't want you to know is that the cost of "saving" Australia's forests is moving logging overseas to places where standards are lower. But from a Green's point of view that "doesn't matter" as it doesn't affect their Australian political ambitions.

"Looks as if the forests are getting a break."

Forest .. yes, forests no and only if you're myopic and don't adopt an holistic approach. Its the worst of outcomes. The result is to offshore to places like Cambodia/Indonesia where they just rape the forest with no thought to sustainability. "Not our fault, they have to get their own house in order" YES IT IS OUR FAULT. We shut our industries down but still demand the product. Should we be value adding to the products, of course we should but very hard, nearly impossible to do in Australia's regulatory and IR environment. eg who would bother to set up a new high end furniture making business using Tasmanian hardwoods... as one example.

The Greens are the worst of the worst in terms of environmentalists because their only "solution" is to offshore primary industry and bring in tourists, never mind they all fly in on commercial jets that are incredibly polluting, some sort of cognitive disconnection happening ?

Marine Parks are another area of concern, they campaign to close areas off to fishing but no opening off more fish farms, the result, more imported seafood. The Gulf of Thailand suffers again !

The fast tracking and unaccountable forestry management in Tasmania set the industry on a course with an unsustainable future where no one wins. Led by Gunn’s, with its long history of corruption, it was inevitable that the decision to stop unsustainable native logging would be a unanimous decision in the national interest. The industry can whine and protest all it likes; you only have yourselves to blame.

" unaccountable forestry management in Tasmania"

This would have to typify the sheer ignorance as represented by the ENGO argument and the 'deceit' as discussed in the article.

We're the author of this comment ever to have even lightly perused the 'Australian Forest Standard' he/she would cringe with embarrassment at the stupidity of the statement. The Australian Forest Standard is incredibly stringent in every aspect of forest management, in every aspect of sustainability, in every aspect of environmental reponsibility, from regular survey and protection of endqngered and threatened flaura and fauna species to continual monitoring of water quality and revegetation/rehabilitation. These responsibilities are continually audited by external agencies.

It would be hard to find a more regulated industry. As Valley Guy says, ignorant myopic arguments by the likes of Batu creates an environment rich in forest destruction in many areas of the world.

Does anyone serously believe that there will be peace in the forestry debate if another 570,000 ha is put into park? The ENGO's will go after the next piece of forest once that is locked away.

Good article; the Greens want no foresting, no mining or any development which encroaches pristine nature. The renewable, 'sustainable' energy sources they advocate do not work and in any event require huge areas of land because they not energy dense. As well, they often produce extreme pollution.

The absurdity now is that Greens are even objecting to wind and solar farms because they take up too much room. They are irrational and have distorted not only economic appraisal and process but the integrity of the social structure

While Tasmania is different from other States in many ways, Victoria’s native hardwood industry has also been subject for many years to similar battles with so-called ‘green’ ENGOs. The city-centred push to place more and more native State forests into National or State Parks was very successful under the green-friendly Labor State government (until late 2010). Victoria saw much highly productive native forest become ‘out of bounds’ for sustainable timber harvesting: think Otway Ranges, along the Murray River, the forest near Portland, and areas of East Gippsland. However, the Coalition government appears to have “drawn a line in the sand” and is supporting the (now much smaller) native hardwood timber industry.

This of course only spurs The Wilderness Society and other ENGOs to battle harder to stop ‘nasty and destructive’ timber harvesting, despite it being subject to strict environmental regulation such as a Code of Practice, Australian Forestry Standard certification, detailed forest management prescriptions and regular audits, not to mention that it is a very ‘greenhouse gas-friendly’ industry.

A case in point was the recent effort (although it was unsuccessful) by an ENGO to stop VicForests’ harvesting in Mountain Ash forest near Toolangi. A nearby blockade of harvesting, supported by Bob Brown, was also attempted. Protests in East Gippsland have occurred over many years and don’t look like stopping until all the forests are turned into parks waiting to be burnt in the next big bushfire. Mark Poynter has described the sorry situation in Tasmania. Unfortunately Victoria is also not immune to misguided attempts by ENGO activists to ‘save the forests’.

The 2004 Federal Election saw a total of 1.47 million ha or 47% of Tasmanian forests reserved for conservation. Voters were given a choice between labor's adoption of a Wilderness Society plan to add 600,000 ha of forest to the reserve, or the more modest 170,000 ha addition of the iconic forests of the Styx and the Tarkine. We know that Latham was defeated and his political career destroyed by kow-towing to the greens.
Yet is Julia Gillard repeating the same mistake? She promised an independent verification process to determine the values of the re-jigged 2004 demand for more reserves, but then appointed a former National director of the Wilderness Society to oversee the process and a host of former green consultants, employees and activists to write the "independent" report.
One of the authors, former Wilderness Society activist Sean Cadman, is even said to have been the initiator, along with Gunns of the flawed and expensive process, see http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45786.html

David Suzuki, a Leading globe-trotting conservationist, is on the public record saying, "that indigenous populations the world over, have been selectively logging their forests for millennia, without harm to flora or fauna". Quote, unquote.
In fact, such harvesting invests in and or adds to the proper management and health of forests, which store carbon, whether vertical or horizontal.
Were we not to ever log our forests, old trees would still fall over, others would break off branches as a survival mechanism, during dry times; and the fuel load would become almost unimaginable!
And another indescribable Victorian black Friday disaster in the making.
Another National Park wildfire that destroys millions of hectares, and all the threatened flora and fauna that resides within.
Following said massive, indefendable, unstoppable wildfire, feral species were able to gain a considerable foothold, that upland summer grazing effectively prevented.
The Brown Greens claimed, that tourism would replace the jobs lost to logging.
Arguably jet-setting tourists add more carbon than selective logging?
And like Northern Q'ld, talked out of local hydrocarbon harvesting by the promise of improved tourism, still waiting for these hordes of mythical tourists and their billions of dollars.
The jobs offered by tourism are in the main, very menial table and drink waiting, toilet cleaning and other equally or more demeaning, invariably seasonal, low paid jobs, and a pathway to a Banana Republic!
The greens have often been referred to as eco-fascists.
Listening to that LADY, in HER tree, you begin to understand why.
That said, the future for Tasmania lays in intensive irrigation assisted farming, and dozens of irrigation projects and DAMS!
And the Greens have a record of resistance to dams, however logical the arguments put, for either improved environmental outcomes, considerably less erosion and far less alluvium heading harmfully out to sea, to kill off the sea grass, which by the way, mops up three times more Co2, than all the forests in the entire world!
Rhrosty.

You cannot call any endeavour that seeks to destroy the natural capital of milions of people (even billions globally) for the enrichment of a few men and women: an industry .. ITS A CRIME.

Put your humanity back in and Find some other way to make money!

But in a country where successive schizo PMs :

*Make $billions from coal exports while spruiking votes for OUR carbon tax

*Turn a democracy into a dictators nightmare by immigrating Islamic and other religious and racial VOTE BLOCKS to gerrymander key seats while telling us of all the blessings of multiculturalism. All we see is economic growth from the clean up of crime, knife and gun fights over some foreigners precious sister or the building of roads to nowhere and unsewerable Paramatta Rd Mumbai slum plans.

*Lip service to making banks, miners and other rich listers pay their fair share of tax while letting them get off scot-free because they essentially represent foreign dictatorships and Ponzi enterprises like China and Indonesia who can PAY because of the hardships they inflict on their people.

*Privatise everything except Tax Collection, armed forces and Police so that voters can't compain about crap services because they are all under private non-negotiable contract to the government. This emerging Clayton's Democracy is the death of freedom, truth and sustainability of an Australia free from Civil strife and war.

We have to ask what kind of Government will stop all the lies and deal with the Greed based Schizophrenic of our so called politicians.

For starters it would be a Government that converted Tasmanian loggers into Geothermal Heat miners so that Tasmania could be economically viable with an endless supply of free energy.

Continues,

Continued..

As for our politicians, NEVER VOTE THE SAME PARTY TWICE . Keep changing them over till we can get rid of Privatisation and be able to depend on self reliance and JOBS that come from getting kids out of class and into industry and even on overseas training. You can't get skill by immigration . All you will EVER get is opportunism, lies and MORE leg-ins to privatisation.

Go Tassy. Make a mark in the right direction: convert forestry to GEOTHERMAL heat mining and JOBS.

And South Australia: Ex-Olympic Dam, Lithium mining of the big salt lakes and the heat mining at the foothills of the Flinders are State Boosters. Go for it and get SA kids out of malls & helping and LEARNING in these environs & ventures.

Give Australians a future. Current Govt policies are offshoring jobs & dehumanising & enslaving Australian workers in a deeply unhappy "Consumerisation" schema that has become an even bigger money spinner for Rich minorities & foreign investors than Tasmanian Forestry Crimes.

Replace Tasmanian forestry with Thermal mining KAEP? So, that's around a thousand holes at the very least?
And they would have to be very deep and almost prohibitally expensive, to tap into natures thermal resources?
Who would retrain loggers, so that they became competent drillers, handling diamond head drill bits that cost many millions ea, and are so easily and repeatedly destroyed by learner driver drillers?
What do you do with them once all the drilling's done?
Lithium mining?
Rare earth deposits usually include thorium, a radioactive product.
Where would you dispose of or store this by-product?
Where does the money come from to kick start or conclude any of these proposed projects?
Where's the business plan, the research and the profitability prospects/prospectus, without which, little if any investment funds would flow?
Or are you proposing proceeding on blind chance; and or, we further mortgage the future incomes of a steadily decreasing tax paying demographic.
I mean, I quite like and approve of some of these proposals and their long term income stream prospects.
However, One would become much more sympathetic to your ideas, [excluding the racist rant,] if you could just flesh out some of your more worth while ideas.
How do you propose to finance them, who would do the work, and or pay for, the environment impact study, and the years of retraining? Is earn or learn part of the plan, to more or less compel redundant former loggers to comply, with your plans for them?
What happens if the drillers strike significant oil reserves, before the thermal deposits?
I've read one geological survey, which proposes significant oil deposits beneath Tiny Tassie!
And what alternatives would you propose, if any of your interesting innovative imaginative ideas, proved commercially or environmentally, Non-viable?
Rhrosty.

Rhosty,

The whole concept of SUSTAINABILITY is RACIST under your limited intellect.

Yet sustainability is the duty of each and every one of us.

Australia cannot carry more than 20 million souls without competition (for scarce resources) that will turn even the Murray Darling into a dustbowl. Oh it already is I hear you say! YOU are the one with unsustainable ideas and concepts.

Additionally only ONE geothermal site using Hydrogen plasma drilling could totally replace Tas forestry as State income. 3 Gigawatts of power could be exported to Victoria at premium prices to save the Vics from brown coal imposts.

Its NOT that hard. Its not hard at all.

Australia is linked to global financial systems run by computer trading and that is supposed to abbrogate our politicians duty to think. There's the problem and my ideas can and WILL give Australia future security and ONSHORE JOBS in a world teetering on fiscal and civil-law COLLAPSE.

And another thing Rhosty:

Our species was BORN of geothermal well (Africa Rift Valley) Braer Fox!

Kaep
You know how to kill off debate and discussion. Please try to keep to the issues raised by the author of the article.