There is a slow realisation dawning amongst some in the whaling countries that whales are worth more alive than dead. Hopefully, finally this will mean that annual whale hunts will stop. Eventually too, it will dawn on our Governments just how precious for a variety of reasons just how precious and worth preserving our old growth forests are.

A few recent photos that show a little of the situation on Brown Mountain and why the fight to preserve it, and the other old Growth forest will continue.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38859456@N05/

The usual drivel on forests. Authors: please note that in commercial forestry at least 51% of logged timber is preserved essentially forever as either timber embodied in buildings, very likely in the frames of their own abodes, and the balance as paper used in books etc that can and do last millennia. Note that 100% of all commercial logging is either from sustainable logging of natural forest whereby logging rates are tied in with natural regeneration, or from plantations, whereby logged stands are replanted. I have direct personal experience of both, eg at Bulolo in PNG, Use Google earth if you can and see whether that area has been logged out over the 60 years since operations began. Or go to Wawoi Guvai, RH's operations in PNG's Western Province, S.E. corner, and see if you can spot the impact of 20 years of sustainable logging there. But you won't will you, because you prefer comments without facts.

I believe some researchers like the US Carnegie Institution have concluded that temperature forests are roughly carbon neutral. Note however that beetle infestations may now be killing North American conifer forests so their carbon uptake may go into reverse. I believe that tropical forests regrow more quickly than temperate forests. Bulldozing and burning is a longer lasting trauma for Australian forests compared to those of say PNG. Many logs sent for offsite sawing end up being chipped. Paper from those woodchips could be burned or rotted within months.

I wonder if habitat fragmentation and local drying may eventually lead to mountain ash/swam gum being protected like the Huon Pine. Saplings are unlikely to get 400 years of cool, damp, shady conditions needed to become forest giants. So there is an aesthetic and conservation issue as well as carbon capture. More bluntly the forestry industry should have got its act together by now so they don't need old growth. There is a strong suspicion that the proposed Tarkine road in Tasmania is largely a ruse to get at stands of old growth timber. If the industry was 100% plantation based we wouldn't have this suspicion.

"Use Google earth if you can and see whether that area has been logged out over the 60 years since operations began. Or go to Wawoi Guvai, RH's operations in PNG's Western Province, S.E. corner, and see if you can spot the impact of 20 years of sustainable logging there. But you won't will you, because you prefer comments without facts".

Or Tom, you could go an visit Brown Mountain, Victoria and see it all from the ground! If you do, you may become concerned that the impact of logging and burning in such areas is permanent. The area is degraded for the next few centuries.

Apart from the issue of carbon storage, areas such as Brown are bio-diversity hotspots. It would be a brave biologist who claimed that they knew it all from such an area. So we could be burning a cure for cancer.

Then there is the moral issue of whether we should be destroying trees over 500 years old. They have more value for preservation for our children and for the tourist industry. Plus if people like me are wrong about their value and climate change, whats the hurry? Some of the trees are over 500 years old, they can wait for the chainsaw a little longer. Perhaps rush might be explained in that the majority of Australians value our old growth so this is a last grab that won't be accepted by future generations. The Brumby government has something to answer for.

Brown Mountain is in the ownership of who? Don't tell me, lemme guess - government, right?

Who is the “we” that you refer to? Do you presume to speak even for people who don’t agree with you?

Wouldn’t it be simpler, more ethical and more practical for you, and all the other members of the Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation, The Environment Centre, Greenpeace, the National Parks Association, the Society for Growing Australian Plants, etc., and all the members of the public who want to use particular lands to grow native forests, to simply buy them? The support would be enormous, and the cost per contributor negligible. You could then devote them to whatever purposes you wanted. It would also have the ethical advantage that you are not forcing people who don’t agree with you, to sacrifice values for which you are not willing to pay voluntarily.

This need not be a political issue. But if you follow the path of insisting that government have control of the forests, then don’t be surprised if they then compromise all the values that you want to achieve, with all the values that everyone else in the political process wants to achieve.

By the way, the globe is not warming. It’s cooling.

There is a current study on the relationship between the growth of eucalyptus and CO2 being conducted by plant physiology researchers from the University of Sydney.
Apparently eucalyptus most efficient growth is when CO2 concentrations are around 700 ppvm, roughly double the current level.
There is also research from Spain and Brazil into the increase of growth rates in plant life in high CO2 atmospheres.
Is this just a fortuitous occurrence or have eucalyptus evolved in a higher CO2 environment?
I have changed my mind on the increased risk of bushfire's in the future.
It appears that our native forests will be growing and renewing faster, using less water to do it, so it will the increase in fuel in the bush rather than temperature will be the driver of increased fire risk.
Our forests appear to like what is being predicted in CO2 levels.

The people of Victoria own Brown Mountain as it is Crown land. Unfortunately the Victorian Government doesn't recognise that it (and all other native forests) are sensitive ecosystems that store large amounts carbon. They treat these forests as "resources" - which end up as about 2% high quality wood products and 80% woodchips. The very high carbon emissions - scientifically proven - is not factored in to their logging regime and forest destruction.

This is good article.

I wonder when Enviroment Minister Gavin Jennings will release the DSE report about threatened species in Brown Mountain's forest - a proportion of which was logged late last year?

It is past time for native forest logging to stop

Wing Ah Ling
Says that the earth is cooling.

So why is the last ten years the hottest on record and last year was the eighth?
Do you know better than NASA at?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

Peter
It is a complete fiction that "the people" own state property. The state does. If you think you own a proportional share, try and take possession of your property and see what happens.

It is nothing but ignorance to think that the issues are the scientific ones of how much carbon is produced. Because even granted all that you say on that... so what? That is not the issue.

The issue is not whether native forests produce this or that, but whose values are to be preferred and how are we to decide?

The issue is not whether logging should be stopped, since it could be stopped either way - by buying them, as I suggest, or by imprisoning anyone who disagrees, as the greens advocate. The issue is whether you should be able to force other people to pay under compulsion, for values you are not willing to pay for voluntarily.

You have not given any reason why the stopping of native logging should not be by way of those in favour of stopping it, buying the relevant lands.

It is precisely the fact that the state, not the people, own the land that is causing the problem. Yet the greed of the greens, in wanting to force others to pay for their values, is what causes them to embrace big government, in the hope that it will confiscate from others, the funds they are too hypocritical to provide themselves.

When the result of government control is, yet again, planned chaos, they affect outrage based on phony moral superiority.

If you will only give up your fascist tendencies, and adopt the principle of respect for the values of others, and responsibility for your own, you can have what you want.

I for one will contribute to buy the forests in those circumstances.

This article illustrates the pathetic state of Australia's environmental movement and the niavety of its supporter base. Sadly, there is no other way to describe a movement that is so hung up on an ideological objective that it advocates a "solution" that is counterproductive to the very outcome it is striving for.

Misrepresenting Australian timber production (in which harvested forests are immediately regenerated), as being akin to permanent deforestation in developing countries, is simply deceitful.

Equally as deceitful is avoiding proportionality and perspective. My understanding is that the disputed Brown Mountain coupe is just 18 hectares, whereas the whole East Gippsland region has 225,000 ha of old growth forest - over 90% reserved - as well as a further 120,000 ha of reserved forest which is expected to become old growth in the next 50 years. Clearly, logging is an issue of very low environmental significance.

Killing off our own timber industry to satisfy perverted political activism will simply encourage more timber imports arising from tropical deforestation, as well as greater use of emissions-rich alternatives such as steel, concrete, and aluminium. Is that really the way to fix climate change?

Fortunately, the IPCC is able to distinguish the fundamental difference between sustainable forestry and land clearing. If Australia's forest activists believe they are doing the IPCC's bidding, they should think again:

"In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit." IPCC, 2007

The central premise of this article is that if we stop logging, all our forests will become 'old growth' and store carbon forever. This is an incredibly niave given what we know about fire. It was hoped that the 2009 bushfires would finally knock some sense into a movement that is denial about the role of fire as the ultimate arbiter of Australia's forests. We simply cannot "preserve" forests, they are not museum pieces.

Wing Ah Ling,

Crown land is land that is owned by the Crown. This land is set aside for public purposes and may become freehold land by the issuing of a Crown Grant.

Given that governments are supposed to represent the people of the state it is clear that the majority of Victorians who want their forests protected are entitled to expect them to be.

But the government does deals with the logging industry, whose nonsense about being "sustainable" and "carbon neutral" are palpable and provable lies, as a reading of MWPOYNTER post reveals. By the way, he was (possibly still is) a paid PR person by the logging industry.

The issues at play here are multifaceted. There is government mis-management - and possible corruption - which is leading to the destruction of native forests.

There are political considerations - the CFMEU strongly influences Labor government policy in favour of native forest destruction, even though employment continues to fall in the sector, and very few are actually employed in it.

There are scientific considerations and impacts - climate change, threatened species, water loss. All proven by science yet ignored by Government, or given lip service.

There are business considerations - Japanese companies make a lot of money from woodchips from our forests.

It really isn't clear to me where your accusations about imprisonment, compulsion, phoney moral superiority, fascist tendencies are based on.

Since Crown land cannot be purchased, the logging should just be stopped, as Labor promised to do in 2006. This will be a topical issue at the 2010 election.

For more information and photos on Brown Mountain see http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Brown_Mountain_old_growth_forest

There are a couple of issues to be considered when comparing logging V no-logging.

Firstly, I believe carbon is only released from timber (trees) when it is burned. Even the timber used to build houses stores carbon.

Secondly. I also believe it has been proven that a hectare of crops exhaubs more carbon than a hectare of forrest (due to growth rates). Bamboo (grass) exchaubs more carbon that trees.

Trees only exhaub carbon when they grow and, they do most of their growing from seedling to maturity. After this their growth rates slow like most other growing things, so to does the amount of carbon they exhaub.

The whole 'save the forrest' agrument to 'save the planet' is over stated.

Having said this I think 'old forrests' should be saved, but not for the benefit of the environment.

Now Mr Campbell - perhaps you should get your facts straight before making personal accusations such as 'he was and maybe still is a paid PR person for the logging industry'

I am in fact a forester with 30 years experience, so I suspect I know far more about forestry issues that you do. Perhaps you could state your level of actual experience of forests beyond just administering various activist websites.

I do write quite a bit about forestry issues in newspapers, on blogs such as this, and even a book. I do this voluntarily on behalf of the Institute of Foresters of Australia in a media liaison role. The IFA has been around since the 1930s and represents 1300 forest scientists who work right across the sector for both industry and government in plantations, native forests, and research. I shouldn't have to justify myself, but have become well practiced in responding to activists who are good at shouting abuse so they don't have to actually respond to facts.

I note that you did not respond to anything that I said in my earlier post beyond just implying that I am lying. Sadly, this is typical of a movement that relies on simple public relations because it cannot argue the facts.

Peter C.
Very beautiful forest; and terrible to see it logged. It should be preserved, so we are agreed as to ends. The question is as to the means: whether it should be preserved by the people in favour of preservation simply buying them (simple, ethical and practical); or by the political process (complicated, corrupt, divisive, cumbersome, dilatory, and frustrating).

Crown land is owned by the Crown, in other words, the State. That does not mean it is owned by the people; but even if it did, it would not follow that the people’s interest in the lands is best served by forest preservation, or by timber, or by grazing. That is precisely what is in issue.

Since it would take political action to sell the Crown land, and political action to stop the logging, it by no means follows that the solution is the latter political action rather than the former.

“Given that governments are supposed to represent the people of the state…”

We need to stop a moment right there, because that is the root of the entire issue.

It *is* given that governments are *supposed* to represent the people. It is *not* given that they *do*. Obviously, as concerns native forests, they don’t represent you, nor me; nor many other people besides. So what makes you think the supposition is right? In fact if we examine this assumption, it crumbles to nothing, because it is not supported by evidence or reason. It is a fiction. For this reason, it should be rejected, and replaced with theory that has more and better explaining power.

For starters, a state always includes a claimed legal monopoly of the use of force and threats. The reason people resort to government is they think it will be easier to use (legal) force to get what they want from others, than it will be to obtain their consent. They don’t want to have to pay fair market value: just as the greens are doing here.

“The issues at play here are multifaceted.”

Yes. However all the different issues: political, corruption, industrial, scientific, aesthetic can be boiled down into one simple fact: different people see different values in forests, and have different interests in what to do with them. Some values must prevail. The question is which, and how to decide. It is not an answer to say the forests are on Crown land. That is the problem, not the solution.

Hence the references to compulsion, fascism etc. There is no need for this entire conflict. It could be solved at one stroke by the state selling the lands, and the conservation movement buying them.

But if the greens don’t want to do that, because they are afraid that the social forces in favour of buying the land for other purposes, are greater than the social forces in favour of buying them for preservation, then that disproves the greens’ assertion that the social value placed on preservation is higher than that placed on other purposes.

The reason the greens urge for a governmental solution is precisely because they want to force others to pay under compulsion, for values that the greens assert but are not willing to pay for voluntarily: hence the references to compulsion, imprisonment etc. which are the ultimate foundation of the governmental action they advocate.

By the greens embrace of big government, they are hoist on their own petard.

The solution is more freedom, not more government.

The passion of the wilderness society employee and the BA student needs to also embrace some analysis of the issue to achieve real solutions.

On a world scale, Australia is not a major contributor to greenhouse gas either from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) or from other major human activities caused emissions.

The World Resources Institute in its cumulative emissions data since 1950, demonstrate this fact http://earthtrendsdelivered.org/node/44 where Russia, China, Indonesia and Brazil are identified as major emitters from LULUCF.

The WRI (Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore is a director) also published Navigating the Numbers. Its Chapter 17 http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter17.pdf shows that whilst 18% of world emissions may be due to deforestation, sustainable forest management including harvest and slash emissions are completely offset by regrowth and reafforestation.

The IPCC in its 4th assessment report shows that over half of the 18% deforestation is from peat burning and decay.

All the data points to Reducing emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing tropical countries (acronym REDD) can make a significant difference.

Australians are already investing in giving PNG, Indonesia a hand in order to reduce emissions. We also need to use products that remove CO2 and store carbon and there is no better product than solid wood that is 50% carbon. It is these products that are the target of harvesting in mature forest such as Brown Mountain. The alternative is furniture and sawn boards from the tropics.

What we need are passionate activists to promote sustainable forest management increasing carbon stocks while producing solid wood, fibre and renewable energy in these developing countries. To continue to protest about forest management in Australia with it extensive reserves system that exceed international benchmarks diverts scarce resources away from the major sources of GHG emissions.

Scarce resource such as academic research at ANU with the support of the Wilderness Society about Australian forests, their latest report is on the O’Shannesy dam catchment in Victoria that has been reserved for over 100 years and will never be harvested, although 93% of it was destroyed by wildfire in February’s disastrous bushfires.

Cinders
If the passionate activists owned the lands that the forests were on, would they need to be involved in passionate activism and promoting sustainable forest management? No, of course not! They would own the lands and could manage them as appropriate. There would be no need to fight, or to persuade others that it's in the public interest, or to compromise their values.

I don't understand why this idea is so foreign to the conservation movement. It seems to me to be staring us in the face.

This means that the only reason there is a need for 'passionate activism' is to try to stop forests that are in government hands from being destroyed, or compromised with other values such as for timber. But this is to be expected from vesting the lands in government.

By the nature of the political process, politicians must try and do what they think will get them the maximum number of votes, otherwise they will lose their seats. It doesn't matter if it destroys old growth forest per se. What matters to them is their parliamentary salary, parliamentary travel allowance, access to the parliamentary dining room, their big super and pensions and so on. They need to try to guess what a majority would vote for, regardless of principle. Why the green movement keeps on insisting on this method of managing natural resources is a complete mystery.

Can someone please tell me why the greens seem to be so opposed to simply buying the lands in question? Is it because you think that the total buying power of everyone who wants to use the forests for timber would be greater than that of everyone who wanted to preserve them?

Of the authors, I fear from her resume that Amelia is too far gone. But when arts student Lucy graduates and finds herself educated, she could add employable to that by appending a postgraduate unit from the Forestry Masters Program. She could tell herself she's getting to know the enemy, if that helps rationalize the risk of learning the truth. And yeah yeah, us foresters wrote for Farrago too.