I do support sustainable forestry operations in Australia. I also disagree with the notion that forests can be "protected" by drawing a line around them on a map, declaring a national park and then left undermanaged (PR at low cost - "win/win" for attention-seeking pollies). That being said, there were two points I would like to make about the paper.

The fact that there is a year between a paper being submited and being published is not unusual in peer-reviewed journals. To imply a conspiracy weakens your argument. The other point is that the issue of fire is addressed in the paper, where it points out that the majority of the resulting dead biomass decays at the slow rate found in moist temperate forests.

I must correct an error in my last posting, by "original authors of this thread" I meant to refer to the disgraceful authors cited by the admirable Mark Poynter, namely the ANU "scientists" Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith, Sandra Berry, and Professor David Lindenmayer, and their orginal paper published in August 2008. Their follow-up paper published just days ago (in late June 2009) - entitled Re-evaluation of forest biomass carbon stocks and lessons from the world’s most carbon dense forests, by Keith, Mackey, and Lindenmayer, is just as bad.

The Wildcountry scientific council of academic volunteers justified their activism and reports like this latest study and last year’s green carbon in their paper 'Applying landscape –ecological principals to regional conservation' published in 2007 by calculating that only “about 6 percent of Australia is in a secure protected area.”

This claim was made despite the results of the 2006 Collaborative Australia Protected Area Database (CAPAD) showing 8,780 formal protected areas, covering 89,528,859 hectares or 11.64% of Australia.

These figures do not include informal reserves for example in Tasmania CAPAD only counted 2.7 million ha of protected area or 39.79%, yet when informal reserves are also counted; conservation reserves are 2.9 million ha or 44%.

The Wildcountry council is also critical of the comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) reserves created by the Regional Forest Agreement. Yet they fail to compare percentages of forest reserves against international benchmarks.

Again for Tasmania, the independent Commonwealth statistics are:

Native forest 3.1 million hectares
Native forest in reserves 1.4 million hectares (47%)
Old-growth forest 1.2 million hectares
Old-growth forest in reserves 970 000 hectares (79%)
High quality wilderness reserved 1,880,800 ha or 97%

This outstanding achievement compares with the CBD, IUCN and WWF target for forest conservation of 10% by 2010.

Australia’s forest CAR reserve targets were also praised at Earth Summit 2 by Dr Claude Martin, Director General of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) - International, who said Australia’s policy for the conservation of forest biodiversity significantly exceeded the WWF’s minimum goal, and then Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, who praised Australia’s leadership in forest conservation.

Yet these academics have ignored these achievements and continue to waste scarce resources in support of the Wilderness Society agenda against Australia’s sustainable forest management record, when these resources are claimed to be needed to combat REDD, Reducing Emissions due to Deforestation and degradation in Developing countries that the ANU authors state that the IPCC reported as contributing up to 18% of the World’s GHG emissions.

Another concise, straight-forward, excellent case presented by Mark Poynter. I'm not a forester, but it seems clear to me where academic standards are being maintained, and where they are not.

To Anthony:
Re How the ANU researchers have addressed fire

Professor Mackey et al completely and quite deliberately ignored fire in their major paper - the Green Carbon paper - published last year.

However, I agree that their less comprehensive, recently released second paper did mention fire. As you say they noted that fire in an "old growth" forest does not remove all carbon because much can remain stored in burnt trunks. (Note: They could scarcely ignore fire this time because their study area - the O'Shannessy catchment - was largely cooked in February's "Black Saturday" fires).

What they say may be true of an "old growth" forest, but where foresters are critical of the paper is that it fails to address the role of fire in preventing forests from becoming "old growth" in the first place.

The frequency of severe fire is such that it is simply implausable to expect all forests to reach "old growth" if left undisturbed in national parks - yet that is essentially the central thrust of the Green Paper and the associated Wilderness Society forest carbon campaign.

Also, although dead stags may remain standing after fire, the damage they sustain initiates an accellerated process of rot and decay which must equate to carbon loss from the system.

I heard that the CO2 emissions from the Victoria bushfires was so high as to rival the entire country's annual emissions. I also heard that Rudd wanted to exclude these emissions from Australia'a measured carbon footprint.

Unless the trees are harvested and the carbon captured in some form such as paper or wood, at some point the tree will burn, or die and decay.

Sustained forestry is more carbon positive than old growth.