Barnaby Joyce seems to have a grudge against cute critters, first Pistol & Boo now Leadbeater possums. The forestry industry could save itself all this grief by moving to 100% plantation timber, say on converted dairy farms. If a rare critter moved in there would be living memory of how to prepare that habitat and the critters could be relocated.

The second problem is that I thought high conservation value forest was supposed to be protected as a carbon sink as well as for biodiversity. In terms of hypocrisy over climate promises it ranks as Adani-lite.

Not much honesty from either side of this debate. Sense went out the window with the Japanese wood chip exports from the 70's. That was the catalyst for clear felling of Southern forests.
It represents such narrow and blinkered thinking selling our unique hardwoods overseas, when nothing short of vandalism is the necessary Ingredient to achieve it.
I'm on the side of environmentalists with this...

Good Idea Taswegian! The Forest Industry has established heaps of plantations on abandoned dairy farms in the Strzeleckis. They've been invaded by koalas and now you and your silly green mates are trying to use the koalas to shut down plantation forestry.

I take it the plantation is native gums. The koalas are hungry. That shows the decline of natural habitat. The idea of plantation planting is far behind what has been destroyed. So who are you blaming yourself or the kolas for being hungry.

Where did all the hungry koalas come from? There are more koalas now than there ever were before European settlement, because there are more dense young forests and sick old trees (top tucker for koalas and psyllids and beetles and stick insects and mistletoes and cherries and phytophthora and armillaria and anything else that lives on eucalypts), because of lack of frequent mild fire. Koalas were rare in healthy forests, now they're a pest.

Mistletoe toe,s and cherries. I think you are talking about mistletoe toe and snotty gobble.

There has been a rise in the mistletoe bird spreading his food supply around. Snotty gobble has declined in the last thirty years, depending on the degree of climate changes.

Are you saying the kolas have bred up locally and not migrated from other areas.
Ask the minister involved for a licence for a cull of so many koalas, very viable on world markets as fur.

Lets kill off all mining, forestry and farming. All that is needed is to explain to the Green blob that it is these industries that are financing them.
Last night the ABC ran a whole show on corruption in One Nation party rather than a programme on corruption in the ABC/SBS.
Never mind, the world recession should result in these developments anyway.

Taswegian

"The forestry industry could save itself all this grief by moving to 100% plantation timber, say on converted dairy farms".

This sounds simple but is blocked by substantial impediments such as availability and cost of land - may need 50 - 60,000 ha to replace the native forest harvest from areas where Leadbeater's Possum occurs - and the 40-50 year wait for plantation trees to grow to maturity. During that time the industry would still need to access native forests, and then there are growth and productivity risks so the plantations may not even grow as expected.

"The second problem is that I thought high conservation value forest was supposed to be protected as a carbon sink as well as for biodiversity. In terms of hypocrisy over climate promises it ranks as Adani-lite".

Not quite sure what you're getting at with the Adani reference. However, most forests are not used for wood production so do act as carbon sinks as far as they can given the propensity for regular fire in the Australian landscape. However, even the IPCC has admitted that sustainable wood production from part of the forest - as per the current situation - is necessary to maintain growth vigour in the forest and to produce a renewable material that offsets the need to import wood from elsewhere or use alternative materials such as steel and concrete that have hugely greater carbon emissions embedded in their production and manufacture.

You are missing the point of the article - if threatened species are already mostly contained in existing reserves and can co-exist in other areas alongside resource use, why do we need to close resource use industries?

diver dan

"Sense went out the window with the Japanese wood chip exports from the 70's. That was the catalyst for clear felling of Southern forests".

Actually some Southern forests were being clearfelled decades before woodchip exports began in the 1970s - there is a YouTube video of logging in the Styx Valley, Tasmania showing clearfelling in the 1940s.

In fact clearfelling is the only way to ensure successful regeneration of the wet eucalypt forests. Granted it is also efficient where there are markets for non-sawlog material such as export woodchips. However, selective logging taking out only the sawlogs and leaving the rest (as you seem to favour) would take us back to the early days of forestry when their was widescale regeneration failure in the wet forests.

"It represents such narrow and blinkered thinking selling our unique hardwoods overseas, when nothing short of vandalism is the necessary Ingredient to achieve it".

Selling hardwood woodchips overseas is not ideal but every time since the 1970s that there have been efforts to build the infrastructure necessary to process it here it has been opposed.

You may be interested to know that the non-sawlog grade logs from the harvesting of forests disputed because of the Leadbeaters Possum, is used by Australia's only remaining domestic paper producer, Australian Paper at Maryvale. So it is not exported.

I'm on the side of environmentalists with this...

Clearly you haven't read the article.