Environment for all is right on the money. The idea that science is objective is a vast modern myth. Science is indeed bought and sold by the highest bidder. You pro-logging anti-life people really need to feel....yes, feel...the sacredness of life. Shed a few tears. Love a little. Be vulnerable for a moment. Let go of your massively unpopular ideas and become a part of a new world...that will honour and respect our planet. Does your money and power bring you happiness and do you sleep well at night? Your science is anti science. It is an approach to life that is rooted in greed and domination. All your facts and figures Mr Poynter and friends are twisted deceptions, cover-ups, hidden agreements between power brokers who care little for the true welfare of our planet and its life forms. Yes, under great pressure you make minimalist concessions here and there. A smoke-screen. You can change...NOW!

To keithcolin
If you've been in a forest you will understand that tree trunks are roundish and reduce in diameter from the ground up. There are quality constraints on what can be a sawlog based on engineered strenth standards. And minimum size standards as well. So much of a tree stem is unsuitable for producing the highest grade product. The same applies for trees grown in plantations.

The proportion of sawlog to pulp log produced in catchment harvesting varies from 50/50 to 35/65 depending on the piece of forest being harvested.

When sawlogs are taken to a sawmill, they must be converted from their roundish shape into reectangular products so a lot of waste timber generated in off-cuts. This is also chipped and sent for export.

The proportion of highest grade target product obtained in timber production is actually high by comparison with other natural resource extraction such as mining. Even in beef production, the quantity of meat suitable for human production is minor compared to the volume of waste product such as offal, fat, and bone from each slaughtered beast.

Now we could close down the woodchip industry and just log forests for the highest grade timber as this as you seem to want. This is what used to happen. The result was an enormous amount of waste wood left in the forest from the unwanted parts of each tree, as well as waste wood generated in sawmills. But as we all use paper and there are paper makers willing to pay for woodchips, they are now sold to them. What is wrong with that?

As for who is exploiting who - don't you use wood and paper? I thought so. So ultimately, if anyone is being exploited it is because we as a society have a demand for these products. Fortunately, we have been logging and regenerating Australian forests for so long that forests are not 'destroyed' or 'raped' in this process. The same can't be said in developing countries who may shoulder our demand for hardwood if we refuse to use or own forests.

To 'environment for everyone'
Like so many 'green' advocates, you appear to be reality-dumb through having lost touch with nature (that's right) and any sense of perspective about what it is and its relationship with humans. 

If you really believe a natural product like timber is not an ecosystem service, you have forgotten the most basic fundamental that our whole lifestyle is founded around human intervention in nature - just think about agriculture for example. Perhaps instead of timber, you would you prefer steel, concrete, or aluminium and to hell with the massively greater greenhouse emissions?

So 'logging does not occur naturally' - well haven't humans been using wood to build houses, boats, weapons, bridges and all manner of essential structures for thousands of years? So just perhaps they cut a few trees down - isn't that natural? But again you view humans as being somehow seperate from nature.

So its all about feelings is it. Try telling that to those who have to get down and dirty fighting forest fires for living. Forest scientists and the timber industry are at the forefront of this, and the fewer of them, the poorer we are at it as was acknowledged by the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Public Land Management (June 2008). This isn't about science, its a reality that won't be solved by closing rural industries, and getting rid of those you know the most about forests.

Ah but there's the CFA. Well unfortunately as rural industries are closed by 'progressive green thinking' and towns become awash with cashed-up, hedonistic urban sea-changers in touch with their feelings, there's fewer CFA members, and fewer again willing to spend weeks away from home fighting forest fires for nothing.

You are right though, forestry is unpopular. This is largely because the sort of silly views which you espouse have obscured the reality of what happens in forests. As I said earlier, the real tragedy is that forest policy is ultimately being shaped by people who don't even what they don't know.

Mr Poynter

I read your last post carefully and would like to ask you a few questions.
Why can't recycling of paper replace much of the need to woodchip for the paper industries?
There is a tremendous waste here just waiting to be recycled.
Yes, I do use paper in many ways. But why should this be incompatible with my desire to see an end to clear fell logging in our sensitive native forests?
Why is the timber industry not retraining and redeploying people to develop recycle plants?
Are you not concerned by the ecological and economic decline due to old ways of thinking and doing things?
You said that selective high value timber was an old way of logging.
Would I like to see a return to that? Yes, you bet.
What would happen then to the voracious need for paper?
Wouldn't we have to then develop alternative strategies? Such as plantation timber and recycling?
Would I be prepared to undergo some hardship in the transitional period?
Yes, you bet.
The bigger picture is far more crucial than short term gains that are contributing to green house gas emissions, water depletion, native species destruction, climate change, etc.
Or would you prefer to cave into socially acquired greed and over consumption?

Whose reality?

Pt 1 From a sociological perspective ‘nature’ is a social construct and this is a legacy from the 18th century Enlightenment and a philosophy of utilitarianism [utility]. We didn’t know at the time of the Industrial Revolution how deeply damaging the industrial footprint would be. We are all of nature, which means we have to face the ‘reality’ of our own finality and the finite resources we have depended upon for so long. Humans intervene in nature and can continue to do so in a symbiotic way. However, when humans simply use and abuse there is a price to pay. 75% of Australia’s timber has gone. The rivers are drying up. Have you not seen the bald hills of Gippsland? It would appear there are more to come. The Government will be paying Hancock $5.5 million to relinquish logging rights in some areas of the Strzelecki’s and then will allow them to cut 1,500 hectares of a Rain Forest Reserve, including more than 350 hectares of land with National Conservation Significance [College Creek]. Once logged it will be handed to the Trust for Nature to manage; this is ‘greening’ Australia? I can think of only one analogy and that is people who self-harm, cut their bodies and then put themselves in hospital. It’s a cry for help!
This debate is very much about feelings, not just the expressions of feeling for the forest that one hears from the greens but also the feelings that come with cutting and killing anything, trees, cows, people. If you think that doesn’t have an impact on emotions any psychotherapist will tell you it does

Pt2 Historically, at least at the turn of the 19th Century, environmentalism was not just about nature [‘greenies’] it was about the kinds of environments that were needed to keep the new material production line going. There were two sides to the equation; the rich and the poor. As I am sure you know environmental conservation was the philanthropy of the rich. The tables turned and it is almost like the workers will seek their revenge. We can’t cut down people so we will cut down the trees instead [hence, the reference to Underbelly]. Criminals are still people, human beings who are often victims of a system of hierarchy and survival. Loggers and families are victims of the big corporations and the governments who are beholden to them.
This is an old formula. We have hewn civilisation out of the wilderness and killed any native [human or animal] that gets in the way. We still cut all the trees, over-run cattle on the land and then when it’s no good for grazing anymore we dig into the earth’s entrails to see what else we can salvage. We are all responsible. We all use the products of this pillage but where has it got us? Into a deep economic crisis! Again! We have to change.
You know the reformation burnt witches but today we still base some of our best medicines on what the witches gathered and used for their own medicinal purposes. We hold value in the medicines and forget their origins. There is a paradigm shift taking place. Some will chose to deny it but denying a sickness only brings more pain.
I apologise for my error in mistaken identity. I also apologise for my part in putting the world and many of its people in crisis, miniscule though my role might be. We are all learning and needing to improve our lives