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.