Plantation forest trees topple
Australia’s forest plantation area has fallen by 250,000 hectares since 2015, raising concerns there are “not enough” trees to meet future demand.
The continued decline of Australia’s plantation forestry estate is “extremely concerning” with the total area covered now at its smallest in 20 years, according to new ABARES data.
The Australian Forest Products Association said there were not enough trees in the ground to meet future demand at a time when native forest logging industries have been shut down in Victoria and Western Australia.
The nation’s entire plantation estate fell from 1.97 million hectares in 2014-15 to 1.71 million in 2021-22. There were almost 690,000 hectares of hardwood and more than one million hectares of softwood plantations.
The 28,000-ha removed in 2021-22 alone was balanced by only 2300ha of new plantings.
A key reason for the drop-off has been the conversion of hardwood plantation to other land uses while softwood plantation estates have remained stable for several years.
AFPA acting chief executive Natasa Sikman said Australia currently relied on imports for up to 25 per cent of the timber needed to build new homes.
“As the government looks to build 1.2 million new houses over the next five years, our reliance on imported timber will dramatically increase,” she said.
The World Bank has forecast global demand for timber and wood fibre products would quadruple by 2050.
The procurement of sustainably sourced timber is a central element of the United Kingdom’s net-zero plan.
Ms Sikman suggested the Albanese government should incorporate both plantation and native logging into its own net-zero goals.
However, while the forestry sector generated $23 billion of economic activity in Australia annually there was a strong grassroots push to end native logging at the recent Labor national conference.
Meanwhile, institutional investors owned about 60 per cent of plantation estates in 2021-22 and UniSuper were involved in the recent acquisition of forest management company Forico and its 170,000-hectare hardwood plantation in Tasmania.
Shadow forestry minister Jonathon Duniam said the Victorian and Western Australian governments had banned native forestry without “any supporting science or coherent reasoning.”
Mr Duniam and the AFPA believe the government’s Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share — Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023 will reduce investment in plantation forestry by cutting the ability to claim debt costs as tax deductions.
However, a spokesman for Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said while a senate committee recommended that Schedule 1 of the Bill be passed unamended, Treasury was following a futher recommendation and is consulting with parties on potential technical amendments prior to passing Schedule 2.
He also said the government was “taking proactive steps” to ensure future forest and wood product needs would be met with a $300 million suite of initiatives, including a four-year $73 million grants program to support new long-rotation plantation forests.
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