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The Forum > Article Comments > Managing our forests for their true value > Comments

Managing our forests for their true value : Comments

By Matthew Lincoln, published 8/8/2014

Unsustainable logging practices are destroying Victoria's native forests. They are being mismanaged because the importance of the natural environment is drastically undervalued.

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I think climate change and pressures of human intrusion means we will never again see E. regnans get to 100m in height. We are essentially mining live wood, a bit like catching undersized fish. With actual mining of rock there is no pretense the activity is sustainable. However we kid ourselves that trees that took 200-400 years to grow will be replaced by similar trees centuries from now. In all likelihood the tree species mix will become less aesthetically pleasing. At the same time carbon uptake, biodiversity, shade and average soil moisture will decline.

Old growth logging is like bulldozing Sydney Opera House to put up a block of flats. It destroys something we should preserve and is a lazy way to make a buck.
Posted by Taswegian, Friday, 8 August 2014 8:36:15 AM
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It is pretty simple really, no clean green environment, no us.
What could be easier to understand?
Posted by ateday, Friday, 8 August 2014 9:42:31 AM
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I fundamentally disagree with the Author's take, and see it as yet another recipe for a major bush-fire event; but particularly as forests are now dryer and wind speeds are higher!
One remembers well when a large area of mostly inaccessible Victoria's upland forests were locked up, and for much the same reasons advocated here, with the only possible result; millions of hectares burned, in an impossible to control fire storm, that destroyed flora and fauna on a hitherto, unprecedented scale; including endangered and threatened species!
Further, timber stores carbon whether vertical or horizontal!
Young vigorous forest, [and no we are not talking about plantings/saplings just inches high,] harvest more atmospheric carbon, than any old growth forest.
Indigenous peoples have been selectively harvesting their forests for millennium, without harm to flora and fauna, just multiple benefits.
Trees fall by them selves, and fauna is then obliged to find new homes; and, with the natural falling of forest giants, huge open spaces are created, for new life to force its way through, and for fauna to graze!
All part of the natural order as are we.
Yes, we should manage our forests, to maximize their productive capacity and value as valuable timber.
And that just has to include the construction of many new dams, or should I say wetlands?
Wetlands that quite massively increase the landscapes ability to collect and store water, and then release it in dryer times.
Patently, wet green land, is a lot harder to burn, than timber that is so dry due to the ravages of enduring drought, that it explodes into flame/firestorms!
Logging roads act like fire breaks, and loggers are many more experienced eyes, looking out for and protecting our, not green devotees assets! And simple logging roads, make formerly inaccessible land, accessible!
Moreover, controlled cell grazing eliminates fuel loads far more safely, and thoroughly, than so called controlled cool burns, that can and do get out of control, and always with disastrous results!
Goats and very rapid, very intense cell grazing, my first choice fuel load reduction strategy, followed by soft footed Lamas.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 8 August 2014 9:56:11 AM
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Matthew

I could easily write an essay of similar length discussing the shortcomings of many of your assertions, but central to it all is a complete lack of proportion.

In Victoria, just 6% of the native forests are being managed for long term timber supply - so, 94% are already available to provide the full gamut of ecological services you are arguing for. In 1986, 31% of Victoria's forests, or five time more than now, were being managed for timber.

The current rate of timber harvesting is already 80% lower than what it was in 1980, and is arguably the lowest that it's been since WW2 - and yet you are advocating a further 70 - 90% reduction to supposedly save the environment!

You talk about reserving more areas as being essential for combatting climate change. However, greater use of timber is acknowledged to be one of the solutions to climate change given that it is renewable, stores carbon, and its production and manufacture requires only a fraction of the carbon emissions used for steel, concrete, aluminium.

Much of the research that you allude to is considered to be highly contentious amongst scientists who are not driven by the same agenda to lock-up more forests. I can only hope that as you grow and graduate as a scientist you become far more questioning of research sponsored by ENGOs with a 'save-the-world' agenda.
Posted by MWPOYNTER, Friday, 8 August 2014 11:01:57 AM
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It is depressing to read this garbage from a naive brainwashed kid. Like MWPOYNTER I could write a thousand words & still not cover all the misinformation in this article.

I see the kid is already on the bandwagon, flying around the world funded by the promotion of this garbage. I can only wonder if this is actually the reason for this article, or is it really possible he actually believes what he wrote.

I do find it hard to believe that anyone could really fall for this stuff without an ulterior motive. Well I did, until I talked to a couple of young lady environmental science graduates, recently employed by the Queensland government.

They were nice sweet young ladies, who's heads had been filled with utter rubbish at a Gold Coast university. They had to have a senior bloke at water resources confirm that increased tree growth, & ground litter, actually reduces runoff from a water catchment. Like our author it appears, they had been taught exactly the opposite.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 8 August 2014 11:48:30 AM
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What could be easier to understand?
ateday,
Nothing really but what needs to be made clear is that it's not nature/forests that need to be managed, people need to be managed & we're not doing that because our experts are too insipid to understand.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 9 August 2014 7:40:15 PM
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