Let's look at both specifics and generalities in relation to Tasmania. The removal of the superb swamp gums at Camp Florentine means that thousands of visitors can no longer see those iconic trees in the wild without leaving a bitumen road. Loggers assured us that the trees would be used for timber but apparently 80% went to the chipper. They even stuffed up the no-go area and wasted public money on police and failed prosecutions. Now everyone suspects the Tarkine Road in the northwest is a ruse to get out the large stands of red myrtle. To get a few dollars in woodchips out of hard-to-replace 400 year old trees tourists are upset and find their Tasmanian experience unsettling. Thankfully the internet may be reducing the need for newspapers.

Whether mature Tasmanian forests continue to be net carbon sinks is moot. However when they are clearfelled and burned there is a large CO2 surge. Plantation timber may grow fast but it will lack the biodiversity of the original forest. Trees will be harvested as adolescents, not adults, and the carbon stored in living tissue may be permanently less than before. The carbon sink of forest floor and the benefit of damp shady soil may also be lost with the burnoffs. Iconic species like E. regnans will almost certainly not grow to heights of 100m by the year 2400 unless humans make themselves extinct first.

Thus I suggest that old growth logging should stop immediately. Encourage visitors to enjoy the big trees. Let the old trees fall over and be absorbed back into the soil. Fires more frequent than every 30 years or so should be put out by helicopter, not deliberately lit. Living trees are more valuable than woodchips and biodiversity deserts .

Taswegian
With great respect, you have not commented on the article, but simply used it as a platform to raise your own concerns about forestry. In so doing you (perhaps inadvertently) embody the point that the article is making which is that much of the public discussion about forestry from the environmentalist's viewpoint is deceitful.

In this case, you have omitted key information which would put your comments into their proper perspective. For example, your comment about logging in the Upper Florentine fails to mention that 90% of the forests that area are reserved and will not be logged (from the Forestry Tasmania website).

You imply that logging is a total carbon emission when in reality most of the carbon remains stored in some form of wood-based product. Even paper products can store carbon for decades in-service and then in landfill. Also, structural wood products reduce demand for timber imports and alternative products such as steel, aluminium and concrete. If all these things are considered, the carbon benefits of producing wood products outweighs that of not producing them.

You want to protect all E.regnans forests from fire despite the reality that this species needs fire to regenerate. Down the track, there will no E.regnans forests unless their is a catastrophic fire, or they are actively regenerated after logging. It is simply unrealistic to expect carbon stocks to be preserved in forests and it is surely sensible to at least transfer forest carbon from part of the forest into more secure storage in the community.

MWPoynter is spot on. The problem with the Greens (and Taswegian certainly writes like one) is that their understanding of natural processes in the forest is founded in faith not science.
Fire fighters tell me that helicopters are useful in protecting an asset such as a shed or home but not a lot of use in the forest where they rarely hit the fire and often leave unburnt areas that, later, when dried, will ignite.
As recently as Winter 2008, the TWS magazine was calling for more aerial firefighting aircraft. What happened in Victoria in January/February this year? Did you notice, Taswegian that 173 people lost their lives after 25 years without fuel reduction burning.
In 1981 when it was stopped they were cool burning up to 400,000 ha.pa. Look at the fire record from 1944 to 1981. Not too many fires lasted more than a couple of days and the cost was confined to humans with beaters, rake hoes and knapsacks.
Google "Project Vesta" and start learning something about scientific research into bushfires.

I am somewhat opposed to plundering.

Tasmania has quite an enviable record on conservation.

People do have a right to survive from the land. People are part of the natural environment.

You take the people's right to a living from the land away from them they move to cities for employment and this is the real environmental issue. People in cities have no natural resources, they need to plunder.

So these silly protests are aiming at the wrong sinners.

If only local people had used the local timber for housing and furniture in my backyard, the wet tropics, we still would have the mature red cedars but they were required for the furniture of queens and kings in London. If the people in England could have only ever used local timber they would have ensured that it was replaced. If you have a pond with only a few fish left and it is the only pond you can fish from then self survival suggests you allow the fish to breed. If you know you can feed from a pond on the otherside of the globe then you eat the last remaining fish.

Same with water, now we have people talking about diverting water from the tropics to the cities down south. Plundering. Why not live where the water is? If you can only ever use the local resources a natural balance is maintained. Cities end this natural logic. Self survial is up to someone else to worry about. Seeing we have all but destroyed the natural balance Tasmania is an excellent example for taking responsibility in the era of globalisation and should be used as a template rather than being attacked.

It is not my ideal, but with a backdrop of reality Tasmanians have given much for not a lot in return.

So my bottom line, there needs to be balanced consideration and the fruit loops have no clue. Same with Wild Rivers.

For more than 30 years, there has been an intense conflict over forestry. This conflict has set sections of our society against each other, and has created division and uncertainty. As we grapple with the global financial crisis, climate change, and a world full of uncertainty – we should ask the question as to whether we are capable of solving the issue that has divided us.
Is a solution to the conflict over forestry possible?

Clearly establishing plantations and reserving forest has not created a solution. In 1989, magnificent stands of tall wet eucalypt forest were reserved when Tasmania’s World Heritage was increased to cover 20% of the State. These forests are now forgotten.
When that didn’t work the National Forest Policy Statement was designed to resolve the conflict. National criteria was developed for reserves, and implemented through the Regional Forest Agreement and Tasmanian Community forest agreement (see http://www.daff.gov.au/forestry/national/cfa/info/a_way_forward_for_tasmanias_forests )

Yet having 47% of its native forests reserved including a million hectares of old growth, has not stopped Tasmania’s reputation being trashed in a bid for more reserves. The latest ambit claim includes reserving “wilderness’ that visitors can experience without leaving a bitumen road.
So perhaps the first step to a solution is not reserving more forests but as the author points out, not being deceitful. It is time for the wilderness society to tell the truth.

The Society solicits more than $10 million each year in tax deductible donations to ‘protect and promote’ wilderness. In Tasmania, 97% of high quality wilderness is reserved yet struggling for resources for effective management, the taxpayer has already forked out over $100 million, but education, health care and vital infrastructure are desperately needed.
The wilderness society’s major expenditure in Tasmania is against a pulp mill; a factory approved to the latest environmental design, to be built in a heavy industrial estate,it will have no impact on Wilderness or old growth and will save more than a million tonnes of Greenhouse gas each year.

Telling the truth is a prerequisite in ending this decisive debate!

Whilst I have strong reservations about forestry, and I'm particularly opposed to Gunn's pulp mill project, I am nonetheless appalled and outraged when Green-Left activists - who I would otherwise count as likeminded fellow travellers in many ways - resort to lies and distortions as iniquitous as any peddled by corporations and conservatives, whilst still assuming a mantle of piousness and purity of purpose.

Whilst my heart is more naturally inclined to the treehuggers and not the woodchoppers, it remains the fact that this is particularly true of anti-forestry campaigns.

A sterling example of such sophistry on OLO can also be found in this article: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8902 , which I tackled in the comments.

As much as I like trees, I dislike bullsh!t more.

Indeed it seems strange to lie about deforestation numbers being 9000 Hectares a year when clearing 100 football fields a year (which you yourself provided) isn't quite a dandy figure either.

It is typical of the Australian Left - which includes the sour-faced Greens and much of the media - to defame their own country and try to make out that Australians are the worst people in the world.

It is also typical of the Rudd Labor Government: the latest apology for something none of us did to child migrants is just another instance of digging up and publicising as much dirt about Australia as Rudd and his cronies can.

Good article Mark, given some of the great topics for public debate at this time; it is also a timely reminder of the mischief being peddled.

I think the “protest industry” is suffering a credibility crisis in general, not just conservation. This is now a truly international movement that seeks to represent many of the issues of concern to humanity on local and global basis. It often reflects the genuine concerns of everyday people in relation to conservation and every other hot topic.

Many of today’s protesters whip up a frenzy of emotive rhetoric and dogma to gain passionate support. Unfortunately for the protest industry, they are increasingly dealing with a modern, well educated, balanced and relatively well informed public audience, which might not be the case with the protesters. They still seem to believe that facts and balance should not be allowed to get in the way of a good old emotive protest.

Unfortunately for the “great causes”, the protest industry is, at every level, miserably inept, emotionally dysfunctional, ill informed, manipulated and totally irrelevant, other than for the immense damage they inflict upon perfectly valid public concerns. Not to mention the support they get from an equally inept media.

You should always hug a local before you hug a tree. I am a tee nut, a rainforest advocate and would die without my forest. It feeds my soul. Would chain myself to a tree unless that tree represented food on the table of a local family. Then perspective is required.

I went to Styx Valley in Tassie maybe 5 years ago, depressing and wonderful at the same time. Did it in a 2wd, Not sure on recent conditions but just because there was no bitumen did not not mean lack of access to some magnificent old growth swamp gums trees for those that are interested. Tourists want everyhting on highway, why worry about them. They want big tree theme parks. Best kept off road if you ask me.

It's regrettable that what I've said is regarded as further proof of deceit. Incidentally I live 20km from the Styx Valley. Rather than repeat myself point for point let's just look at one claim. I've implied that E. regnans (the world's tallest flowering plant) doesn't like frequent fires. Read the following link under 'Habitat'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans

The article is the usual propaganda from a vested interest.

There are so many environmental concerns with old growth logging that there can't be any credible case made for it.I wonder how many of the commenters above have seen the destruction from clear felling.How many of you have stood on a mountain top in Western Tasmania and seen the scars going to the horizon?

The statement that clear fell in old growth does not increase carbon emissions is pure bull.The waste is incredible and it is burnt.

What is needed is a cessation of clear felling in old growth forests.Some selective logging for speciality timber would be acceptable.

We need more plantation plantings to cater for timber needs,not pulp mills to feed the voracious appetites of exploiters like China and Japan.

Above all,we need massive reafforestation on our clapped out marginal agricultural and pastoral lands.

To Manorina
Your comment: "The usual propaganda from a vested interest"
As a forester, yes I do have a vested interest - it is in ensuring that the public discourse about forests is accurate and factual. My profession has been demonised for decades by the spread of misinformation about forest management, and we are sick of it.

I am not advocating more harvesting of native forest beyond what is already planned in accordance with government policies and management plans. At a national level, only 6% of public native forest is now available for this use.

Looking specifically at old growth forest - in Tasmania something like 85-90% won't be harvested, and in Victoria the figure is >95%. Yet environmental campaigns continue to imply that unless we close the native hardwood industry we will have no old growth forest.

What seems to be forgotten in the old growth debate is that this forest type it is not finite, but is growing all the time as forests age.

For example, in East Gippsland there is 225,000 ha of old growth forest - 190,000 ha of this is already reserved, unsuited or inaccessible for timber production. Within the region's protected parks and reserves there is a further 123,000 ha of mature forest that is expected to have become old growth by 2050 (these are 2006 figures).

So hypothetically (as it is subject to bushfire), if old growth harvesting was to continue in East Gippland's avialable areas at the present rate of 200 ha/yr, by 2050, about 9,000 ha would have been harvested and converted into regrowth forest. Meanwhile, in the region's parks and reserves there would be 123,000 ha more old growth - a net gain of 114,000 ha.

So, while I accept that many people don't like logging, it is hardly having a significant affect on the future area of old growth forest.

Responses here are not addressing the OP. The question is do the conservationists have credibility? Not one has addressed the claims of the OP regarding exaggerated claims.

I do feel that overall, anywhere you go, there is a feeling the conservation industry has run out things to do and to acquire further financing needs to get a little over creative with emotional blackmail.

I did see clear felling in the Styx Valley. Very ugly. It is an emotional reaction. If I went screaming through the streets of Sydney dressed as a cow to stop people eating meat because I was traumatised by seeing a cow prodded enroute through the outback, probably only committed vegetarians would support me. It is not likely to stop many eating meat. Same with being totally against logging.

So we are not going to stop logging or the use of paper. So being totally anti-logging is not going to get anyone anywhere. Better to work within reason and with due respect to people earning a living.

I did read the wiki link, My 2 minute reaction is that clear felling is not necessarily bad for the swamp gum but would appear not to preserve water catchment integrity if over large areas. So it should mimic nature and be staged so that no large area is cleared at any one time. I maybe well off course but an example on how compromised solutions can be sought rather than pure anti-anything and all things with inaccurate claims.

Same up here with the Barrier Reef. It is dead, it is dying, it is never go to recover apparently. People say oh well better go to red sea instead to snorkel. The Great Barrier Reef is the most pristine and healthiest coral reef system in the world. Convincing people of that fact is near impossible due to overzealous fear mongering by those that jump on any nature conservation program. I do not know what the unhealthiest reef system is, you never hear about it. No money in it probably.

Mark’s challenge to simplistic and often misleading messages about forest management is spot on. Yet imagery and glib one- liners have strongly influenced the public against the scientific basis of current practices that have seen demands for alternatives to clear fell burn and sew regeneration of wet eucalypt and mixed forests.

The comment on the Upper Florentine Valley, the site of the latest protest action in Tasmania can be compared with story of the production of sawlogs, craft wood and pulp from the variable retention harvesting, see http://www.forestrytas.com.au/topics/2009/01/upper-florentine-valley

Even Wikipedia falls to the trap of simplistic statements and claims of vested interests. The page of Eucalyptus regnans fails to give a citation to the statement on fire, despite the article relying on fiction novelist, Richard Flanagan’s opinion.
Another search on Mountain Ash (Regnans) on Wikipedia links to David Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants (Part 4-6) - The Social Struggle, features the regeneration of E. Regnans by fire from the 31 minute, 30second mark at http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=7842699323637962234&ei=wGQES__1CZrwqAPM3ZXeCQ&q=private+life+of+plants+eucalypts&hl=en#

Forest science agrees with Attenborough’s observations in regards to the Eucalyptus regnans genus such as "The threat to the survival of the spectacular forests of noble mountain ash is not, in fact, fire. It is the absence of fire," and "Paradoxically, such a forest will not survive unless much of it is first destroyed."

A detailed look at Tasmanian Bush fire heritage and the impact of fire on its environment is available from the publications page of the Forest and forest industry Council’s web site, (www.ffic.com.au ) written by a forest scientist after a lifetime of research and study of Tasmanian forests in places such as the Styx and Florentine Valleys.
Access to such knowledge allows informed debate as reflected in Mark’s article.

It is obvious that the governments are out to make money from whatever means of environmental issues as possible & if it isn't oil, it has to be through a bogus campaign for carbon tax. At least that is the sales pitch. A ETS that will pay for clean energy & make the governments richer is about as far as I would go in saying that is true because one only has to look at the demographics of the trade environment to weigh up the odds. If it is a viable product, clean energy that is, it will sell & create a sustainable market but if it comes with a third tier tax, it will make it too unaffordable & depress or destroy the products ability to get off the ground. It is the governments desire to keep off loading fossil fuel & that is the means behind it's madness.