Duncan, this comment is in response to your recent post.

It is clear that you are an intelligent individual. It is also clear that you lack practical experience in the relevant land management disciplines we are discussing. Please accept that i mean no disrespect by this.

"The unnatural forced draft holocausts used in the regeneration burns, in late autumn dry soil, destroys most of the organic matter in the top soil and associated life, taking centuries to recover ".

As a logical thinker, i urge you to conduct a broad experiment. Tasmania has recently experienced destructive fires - as a fire fighter, trust me when i say they don't get much hotter - if you think a regen burn is a holocaust, don't visit the front line of one of these beasts. Anyway, it took out 000's of hectares and by your logic it will take centuries to recover - that is simply not the case. Pick a few sites and visit them every year monitoring the recovery - you will be pleasantly surprised.

contd.

In terms of bio char. Sometimes there is a very fine line between profit and loss when it comes to extracting and processing fibre, even in instances when it is in whole log form relatively close to processing facilities. It is more than likely that extracting the material for the purpose you have described (which is not in whole log form) will cost significantly more than the return - therefore, someone has to loose money. Logically, it is not a practical solution. In any case, the science is their to support the alternative and present practice.

As i am not a Tasmanian, i cannot comment on your assertions about FT.

I think that you have made a Freudian slip. I did not say "button grass plains even though of course that is part of the 75% "locked up'".
Not to worry it's what the "lay person" has come to expect from the *experts*.

I did notice that you made no comment on the fact that FT is rogue organization.
The rest is just the usual mish mash of figures taken from various sources that are at best suspect.
Do remember the saying that "there are statistics and damn lies".

Robert

It seems too much to expect you to read and understand what I say. For your benefit again, the Australian Government's Australia's Forests at a Glance, 2012 and Forestry Tasmania's figures show that 75% of Tasmania's 'native forests' are reserved. So, no, I wouldn't have thought this includes extensive buttongrass plains, although it may include small gaps in the forest that are too small to map.

But I guess you must know better than the scientists and mappers who come up with these statistics given that according to you they are 'suspect'. Perhaps you can outline the special expertise that you must possess in order to have this belief. Sorry, but there I go again being an arrogant professional.

Forestry Tasmania as a 'rogue organisation'? Once again, I'm sure everyone would like to hear your expertise and rationale for this belief. Surely, it couldn't be simply that you've heard it parroted so often by agenda-driven ENGOs and like-minded kindred spirits that it therefore must be true?

Duncan

I must admit to being endlessly bemused by the fact whenever I write these articles, the comments soon shift off-topic and then suddenly it becomes all about me! That this happens this says far about those such as yourself who shift the discussion in that direction, than it does about me.

Just to reiterate: I wrote an article about a topic which I know a lot about. It was written in an analytical and detached manner just piecing together the evidence readily available in news coverage, and then pulled together to give conclusions from an informed forestry perspective. For my troubles, I am soon personally denigrated including misgivings about the mental state that supposedly must underpin my denial of supposedly irrefutable facts provided by persons with little or no practical knowledge or experience of the topic at hand ........ and yet I'm supposedly the one with the credibility problem!

I don't start this process, I just put up with it and respond politely and appropriately:

Exhibit A: Robert Le Page's first two comments describe me as an "anti Green, pro logging "expert" acting on behalf of big business that wants to open the forest to more destruction with the aim of bigger profits. Apparently, I am akin to other writers who've been funded by 'big oil' to allow the continuation of destructive practices.

He goes on to describe some facts provided for his benefit as 'propaganda' taken from 'various sources that are at best suspect'.

Exhibit B: Duncan Mills describes my writing as 'displaying more of a defense of his life investment in the profession of forester' based on a world view that is derived from the 'seductive ideology in neo conservative economics' which finds 'an unwitting partner in our lower brain, the home of ego' and creates a 'human frailty' including the 'lack of humility'.

Oh for the good old days, when people tried to argue with facts rather than psychology lessons.

MW Poynter: with your description of yourself :

"as an anti Green, pro logging "expert" acting on behalf of big business that wants to open the forest to more destruction with the aim of bigger profits. Apparently, I am akin to other writers who've been funded by 'big oil' to allow the continuation of destructive practices."

Well I cannot better that and I am glad that you realize who and what you are.

Now perhaps you would tell us in simple terms what your aims for Tasmanian forests actually are?

Is it to return to full scale clear felling for wood chips (up to 5 million tons a year) and the return of the pulp mill to the scene, huge fleets of log trucks hogging the roads and threatening all other users, anything that the chippers do not want burned and a handout of quality timber to the boat and furniture makers to keep them off the backs of FT?

Continuous handouts to FT from the governments to prop up a bad business model?