Excellent article sir, about a topic that most ignore. Forestry is sound resource management, buy since the days of 1960's hippy protests and naked tree hugging, has become a target for anyone who wants the Green vote. While Greenies love expensive resource intensive (rare metals in particular) that destroy distant out of site foreign peasant environments, they can't see the wood for the trees that they demonise.

Sound forest management also helps protect environments and (if allowed) prevent the unnecessarily devastating fires. Managed forests, stewarded by professionals faired much better that the abandoned overgrown native forests. If less restrained by green tape, forest fuel management could greatly lessen future impacts of fire on resources, habitat and wild life.

But the Labour Socialist Comrades of Victoria who you fellow Victorians elect want Green votes, so your renewable, well managed industry must go. Only way to stop it is to remove these ideologs your parliament. Good luck.

Where the author pontificates "Post-virus a faint hope glimmers for those who believe sustainable forestry in the state is possible."

I say - Oh goody! A virus crisis will make people NICER to trees... :)

Thank you for a well considered article. As a forester I have strived for many years to point out the almost complete absence of background context in the campaigns of environmental activists and some academics - such as the small scale and very minor proportional extent of timber production from native forests. We could never expect activists to change in this regard because it would undermine their primary premise that timber production has dire impacts on the environment, but it is disturbing that some scientists won't acknowledge such reality given the academic credibility that society bestows on them.

Like you, I have held a glimmer of hope that Australia may reconsider the value of its home-grown industries in the post- COVID world and be less willing to throw them away on the basis of spurious environmental grounds. However, an impediment to that in Victoria which you haven't mentioned is the 'greening' of the state government bureaucracy with regulatory responsibility over timber production. This is evident in the 6-month delay in starting post-bushfire salvage harvesting which will ensure that far less usable wood is able to be harvested before the burnt wood degrades to an unusable state.

It is also evident in the extent to which wildlife protection regulations are now applied to harvesting operations as though every animal, bird, reptile or insect needs to be protected in every square metre of forest. In the past, wildlife protection was a landscape-scale consideration whereby the impact of timber harvesting was accepted here because most of the rest of the forest was not used or was reserved for conservation.

Last week's Federal Court ruling based on a (misguided) interpretation of the 'precautionary principle' takes this even further and unless over-turned will make timber harvesting operationally unworkable --- much to the delight of eco-activists and Greens voters.

I am wary of the data that is cited in this article, regarding the extent of logging in Victorian forests. I recall that until the 1970's the definition used by the then Forest Commission was of trees with an average height of 100 feet (about 33m). This was then changed to trees of an average height of 10m about 33 feet. This statistical trickery then placed the mallee scrub and the devastated box ironbark forests into the mix, these forest types were of no use to the timber industry. The manipulation of the data enabled the publication of figures like logging only occurs in 6% of Victorian forests. Or the one I remember from the industry ads. 'The timber industry only logs 1/3rd of 1% of Victoria's forests each year. Technically correct but not an accurate representation of what is occurring in the wet sclerophyll forests the timber industry wants to log.
A more realistic figure is obtained if for example we look at what % of Victorian forests in areas that receive greater than 650mm of rainfall are available to be logged.
Andrew Humphreys

Indigenous peoples have been selectively logging their native forest for millennia. Without harm to either flora or fauna!

Selectively logged forests, need logging tracks that double as fire breaks.

Selectively logged forests are younger forests that outperform old-growth forests a carbon adsorbers!

Selectively and sustainably logged forests remove half the timber of clear-felled forests, Plus create double the jobs!

Finally, trees store carbon whether vertical or horizontal but only until burnt or decayed.

Ploughing also liberates soil sequestered carbon.

Time for dream castle dwellers/green devotees to make their public statements with credible scientific expertise at their elbow!

Intensive short term cell grazing, reduces fuel loads and available year-round on windy or wet days! And returns a handsome profit!

And wouldn't that expertise at the elbow, make a pleasant change from THE IDEALOGICAL PYSCOBABBLE THAT'S THE GREEN'S STOCK IN TRADE?
Alan B.

Stanon, please read your own words: the box ironbark forests are indeed forests. They were very valuable contributors to our economy when they were managed properly and used solar energy to grow large quantities of strong and durable environmentally sustainable construction materials including railway sleepers, bridge girders, wharf piles, power transmission poles etc.. Production of the new steel and reinforced concrete alternatives produces far more so-called greenhouse emissions and huge holes in the ground.

Stanon

I worked for the Forests Commission in the late 1970s and early 1980s before it was dissolved and absorbed into a much bigger mega-department. I don't ever recall that sort of discussion because native forest timber production was essential (we had far fewer plantations at that time), and the propaganda campaigns against its very existence were only just beginning.

Nevertheless you make a reasonable point - the 6% figure is based on the net available area designated for current and future timber supply (ie. ~450,000 hectares) as a proportion of the 7.1 million hectares of public forest of all types. There is also another million or so hectares of privately owned native forest which is almost all not used for any commercial purpose.

About 15-years ago when writing a book on this subject, I subtracted mallee and other unharvestable forest types from the total public forest area and came up with a figure of about 13% of the potentially harvestable forest area that was available for use. It would quite a bit less now given the extent of reserve expansion since then, and the forced closure of the industry from other areas, such as the Wombat Forest where there are substantial areas of harvestable forest types that have yet to be added to the conservation reserve estate.

As for the wet sclerophylle forests in the Central Highlands, which are arguably Australia's most valuable native timber resource -- somewhere between 70 and 75% is either reserved or not available for use due to management constraints -- and this is increasing on an almost daily basis as new reserves are declared around each new Leadbeater's Possum detection -- there have ~650 of these since 2014.

So, yes the 6% figure is technically correct albeit a bit misleading, but whichever way you look at it the vast majority (~90%) of potentially usable forests are not available or suitable for use.

1/The forest definition I described ie 100ft came from an official Forest Commission resource kit for schools from the 1970's. The debate regarding these issues was part of the Forest's Education Project of the Kirner era prior to the introduction of the VCE Environmental Studies course.
2/ I see a need to factor in areas now in national parks which have already been logged.
3/ Despite winding back the rotation times in the Wombat forest it could not supply the permitted timber allocations.
4/ Much of the timber resources in high rainfall areas are off limits because they are in vital water harvesting areas, where the water is of more value than the timber.
5/ Rotational harvesting on cycles of 100 years or less converts native forest into even aged juvenile forest. These unless thinned have a much greater tree density, a lower canopy, much diminished soil moisture, runoff and water quality see 4 above. They also have an increased flammability and reduced species diversity.
6/ The required flora and fauna surveys have often not been carried out by Vicforests prior to harvesting thus private bodies have conducted these and then taken legitimate court action to see the Act is obeyed. Resulting in a number of losses in court for Vicforests.
7/ I think the only stand of old/growth box/ironbark forest in the state is on a small area of Mt. Rushworth.
8/ A more useful figure to publicise would be what % of old growth wet sclerophyll forest remains from what existed at the time of settlement

Stanon, explorers and pioneers called mountain ash blackbutt. When they started clearing Strzeleckis in 1870s they found scattered old trees and two age classes of young regrowth as well as clay ovens, stone axes and spearpoints and grindstones. First megafire was about 1824 after Aboriginal burning in Strzeleckis and Central Highlands was disrupted by 1789 smallpox epidemic. Next in 1851, less than 2 decades after Europeans arrived - 5 million hectares. Then 1898, 1926, 1939, etc. etc.. Megafires have virtually eliminated old growth so-called wet scleropyll. Logging impact has been miniscule in comparison.

Stanon - response to some of your points
2) Surely, the main point is that forests in NPs won't be harvested again. Forests are inherently dynamic and always changing in response to disturbances. Areas regenerating after past timber harvesting may be 100 years old or more and have regained their pre-harvest values. There would be few records of extent of older harvesting, and in any cases such areas have probably also been impacted by subsequent fires. The reality is that without past harvesting of native forests, we would not have developed as a society given that up to the mid 1990s it was our primary source of wood, and was virtually our only source of wood for most of the time since European settlement.
3) The Midlands Forest Management Plan prepared in the early to mid-1990s placed about a quarter of the Wombat State Forest into conservation zones where timber production was suddenly excluded. There was a corresponding bureaucratic failure to reduce the timber allocations in accordance with the suddenly reduced resource base, which then led to a period of over-harvesting which was then corrected in the early 2000s.
4) Yes, but 12% of Melbourne's water supply catchments are still used for limited timber harvesting. The other 88% are now national parks -- so they provide for both water and conservation.

Stanon - continued response to your points:
5) Fire can also convert older forest into young even-aged regrowth, and does so on a far greater scale. The 2009 Black Saturday fires, from memory, burnt, in just a few days, an area of forest that it would have taken 150 years to harvest and regenerate at the then annual harvesting rate. A bit of perspective is needed on this.
6) In fact, VicForests have won most of these legal challenges. Environmentalists are able to mount such cases despite having no assets and often with the help of pro-bono legal services. In one of biggest cases, the group My Environment lost and was required to pay VicForests costs - from memory $1.2 million - which has yet to be paid because they have no assets. These cases are a blight on the Victorian taxpayer forced to foot the bill to defend them.

Overall, your comments suggest a lack perspective on these matters -- as another comment has noted fire and even past human activities in the pioneering era are mostly responsible for the lack of old growth forest. For example, the Wombat forest was completely felled for mining timbers and firewood between 1855 and 1900. I would imagine similar pressures were endured by the box-ironbark forests. The managed harvesting and regenerating of forests for wood products under the stewardship of foresters over the past century has had a comparatively minor impact.