Standing forests are a major carbon sink which will be essential to achieving net zero emissions if that is possible. Forests also have aesthetic, recreational, soil conservation, water filtering and wildlife conservation values. If the building industry needs more timber it can come from fast growing plantation species such as bluegum perhaps laminated with plastic in high strength applications.

Relentless logging and clearing for cattle is why the Amazon rainforest is no longer a net carbon sink. Perhaps the author wants that for Australia as well.

Taswegian. Forest growth i.e. carbon sequestration peaks at a young age - by 20 for timber producing forests in Tas. By the time trees are big enough for timber, growth has declined by a third. The best carbon sinks are timber producing forests which maximise sequestration in forest and storage in timber products. The biggest sources of atmospheric carbon are megafires caused by stupid policies of lock it up and let it burn in conservation's name.

How many people will actually enjoy or go anywhere near these "tree heavens"? Australians are urban creatures, whose contact with the bush is a myth.

Nature is there to be tamed and to serve us. A timber shortage in a country that keeps increasing its population (when it's not crapping itself over Covid) by a quarter of a million each year is unbelievable.

The nutty mania of saving animals and insects that 99.9% of the population will never see - even if they were the slightest bit interested - is also unbelievable.

The natural environment is dangerous to mankind. We should not be letting it rule our lives.

"Nature is there to be tamed and to serve us"
What an arrogant, ignorant and selfish comment.

"The natural environment is dangerous to mankind."
Only if you are stupid enough to let it be.

What peasant you are, ateday. Ignorant, with nothing to be arrogant about: not even an opinion on the subject.

Nasty, nasty.....

Fuel hazard reduction using fire has a very short window and growing shorter! Whereas intense short term grazing by herd animals, i.e., goats can continue the year-round!

You start with a firebreak that's controlled by portable electric fencing and you not only reduce the fuel load but most woody weeds as well! Then move further and further in. Around finish time, it's time to repeat same! And means we need permanent herdsmen controlling and moving the herd as needed.

As these herds produce offspring, some can be culled as an ever-continuing source of protein!

Short term intensive grazing cuts up hardened ground making it more permeable, soaking in more rain as and when it falls!

Herds assisted by dung beetles and worms, also return organic matter to the soil making it more and more productive. And in every which way, a vastly superior land management practise than burning! Albeit, backburning is still a useful tool to control forest fires! Protect homes, livelihoods and lives.

Fires, even cool ones, remove vital minerals (iodine magnesium etc) that are just never replaced. Whereas regenerative farming practice not only keeps them insitu but makes farms store enough carbon, if done on a global scale, to reverse climate change on their own!

House frames should be metal! Metal does not readily burn and is very unappetising to termites! Some frames come with a fifty-year structural guarantee.

After that, forests need to be selectively logged as part of a continuous management paradigm.

Forest sequester carbon and younger forests sequester more P.A than old forests.

Indigenous peoples around the world have for millennia selective logged their native forests, with neither harm to flora and fauna, but rather the opposite.
Alan B.

So many facts ignored in this it is depressing.

For instance supposed caring for our water catchment when the science around the heavy impact of clearfell logging on water yield is well known.

We gave investment companies billions in tax write offs in order to create a plantation industry. This was to take pressure off native forests.

But still they want more.

Clearfell forest management is stupid! It doubles the timber felled and halves the forestry jobs! Whereas selective logging halves the felled timber and doubles the forest jobs!

Timber stores carbon whether horizontal or vertical! And only stores carbon until burned or decays like those old forest giants that fall by themselves then rot or burn! And as they fall as they always do! the fauna that mad homes in them need to find new homes as they also do in selectively logged forests!

Locking up forests is a recipe for disaster as wildfires that feed on that we've tried to protect, in vain. Over a billion animals were destroyed by the last wildfire! Many humans lost their lives and livelihoods. Some 444 died of smoke inhalation.

Many of our wildfires started as cool burns that got away with this or that wind change or sudden increase in windspeed!

Some grasses are highly inflammable and also get away!

Sometimes these pockets of grass burn like kero! and burn as hot as hell!! Moreover, these highly inflammable grasses are so unpalatable not even starving herbivores will touch them?

I'm not sure but I believe they could have the natural oils removed via steam-assisted distillation? And the remaining fibre become the source of a linen industry?

Or otherwise, best controlled with repeated mowing or being ploughed under or covered with black biodegradable plastic.

Ploughing releases carbon from the soil! So if soil is being asked to store carbon? Then no-till farm practice is required.
Alan B.

Nice article Viv.

It has elicited some comments, which appear to be intemperate, so I thought it would be useful to summarise some points of yours and others to aid commentators who appear to have reflexly criticised you.

•Carbon is locked in living trees and in timber used for building and furniture
•The carbon 'offset' is greatest when trees are growing fastest and so it is sensible to selectively log some trees before they grow too old for building
•Carbon in older trees, some of which will not go back to the soil or into photosynthesis, is released as CO2 and CH4 (termites) when the wood decays
•Megafires such as those experienced in Eastern Australia or West Coast America release far more CO2 than that released by the sum of other human activity. This is a good reason for foresters and forestry to reduce fuel load. It is environmentally counterproductive to completely lock up all forests.

As a geologist, Viv has done a pretty good job in summing up the problems with native forest management in Australia.
But I would remind Viv that trained professional foresters can also be employed to properly manage national parks - and don't they need it!

The timber shortage is a real problem, not only of pine for house framing, but also of native hardwood. Not only are good timber-producing forests such as the Wombat State Forest in Victoria being turned into untouchable National Parks, but the Vic Labor government wants to close down all native forests to harvesting by 2030.

Why would a Labor Govt do this when the native forest timber industry employs large numbers of 'blue collar' workers, and produces valuable and sought-after timber? I think it is something to do with going after Green voters preferences.