"Academic credibility". Now there's a laugh. Academics don't have to fight bushfires - thankfully - and they should not be interfering with those people who do. Logging causes fires? No. Nature causes fires, and ignorant academics, ecologists, activists and sundry other ratbags make it harder to control and fight them. Aided and abetted by politicians

Whether or not you agree, it's good that OLO will publish this line.

As the author says, not that much state forest is open to log. So don't massively blame fires on logging.

But even disregarding ecology, there is also a long line of argument (Ajani etc) that native forest logging is not a particularly brilliant enterprise anyway, especially for chips. Factually, ever more of our timber is coming from plantations.

Native peoples have for millennia, selectively logged old-growth forests without harming either flora or fauna.

Trees store carbon whether horizontal or vertical. That is until they burn or decay. Soil carbon is progressively released with every ploughing.

Selective logging takes less than half the trees of clear fells and creates twice as many jobs. Moreover, creates logging roads that also serve as natural fire breaks. As for regrowth? The trick here is, protect the young trees you want to keep and allow grazing herds of goats to clean out the rest, along with all the woody weeds.

Fire as a land management tool comes straight from the pages of stone-age culture and used as a last resort. Given how the soil is progressively degraded with every burn. As increasingly scarce trace mineral elements go up with the smoke to never ever return. And burning only available for more and more limited occasions during shorter and shorter safe burn seasons.

Then there is the question of, sustainable soils! Full of biomacrodial life, until it's burned out of existence in fire-hardened, impervious topsoil.

But no such problem with goats as herded managed herds, complimented with dung beetles. And available the year-round to reduce fuel loads!

One notes, of the death toll during the last bush season, 444 of them were due to smoke inhalation!? And even so-called cool fires make smoke! And have, on numerous past occasions, gotten out of hand. A problem not assisted by, lock it and leave it, greenies!
Alan B.

Native peoples have for millennia, selectively logged
Alan B,
Come again ??

Steve S.
The fact that most timber produced in Australia comes from plantations, does not mean that native forest timber production should cease. Plantation timber is almost all pine softwood ( which of course Australia needs) but we also need hardwoods that come from the native forests. To supplement our small hardwood production, Australia has to import large volumes of hardwood from tropical areas to meet the local demand - so does it make sense to close the limited access to our native forests?

Messmate,

And re-plant at least an equivalent amount of hard-wood plantations ? How hard would that be ?

Joe

How hard would it be to find suitable land for a hardwood plantation? Clear some native forest perhaps? What of the fauna in plantations? Are they somehow better protected than those in native forests where every harvest plan has exclusion zones and is sensitive to fauna presence? What is so wrong with current native forestry which reduces fuel loads, ensures minimal disturbance to native fauna, provides employment in regional Australia, and provides access and firefighting expertise and machinery in times of bushfire?

Hi Joe
Growing hardwood plantations is an apparently logical solution, but finding about 3000 suitable hectares each year for 50+ years in Victoria alone, would be nigh on impossible. Can you suggest WHERE that area of already cleared land that would grow quality sawlogs could be found, let alone finding the FUNDS to buy/lease and plant it and protect it from wallabies and fire?