Native forest logging: ANU academic’s claims on timber industry scrutinised
Timber workers and foresters want the distortions to end, when it comes to ANU academic David Lindenmayer’s claims against the impact of their industry on native forests. The Weekly Times analyses some of his claims.
NOTE: The Press Council has upheld a complaint about this article. Read the full adjudication here.
THE academic who first called for an end to native forest logging across Victoria’s Central Highlands to create a new 355,000ha Great Forest National Park, has been accused of distorting facts to further his arguments.
Evidence has emerged which appears to show Australian National University Professor David Lindenmayer is feeding environment groups and the media information on logging, fire harvesting and threatened species that contradicts critical facts.
Prof Lindenmayer sent media and environment groups information in the wake of this summer’s bushfires, which proclaimed that as an expert on the issue: “trees cut after fire are fire-damaged – so they cannot be used for sawn timber – rather they are chipped (wood chips)”.
Yet timber haulage and harvest contractors, as well as saw mill and wood chip exporters have dismissed the claims.
Australian Sustainable Hardwoods managing director Vince Hurley said his Heyfield sawmill had paid VicForests more than $600,000 for 3285 cubic metres of fire-salvaged saw logs from fire damaged forests around Corryong, Dargo and Swifts Creek.
“We’re doing it, taking fire-salvaged logs from this summer’s bushfires,” Mr Hurley said. “(The) Ash is cut to make high value products – components for stair cases, windows, doors and furniture.”
Corryong sawmill operator Graham Walker said he had taken in 4518 cubic metres of fire-salvaged mountain ash logs in the three months to March from Victorian forests hit by this summer’s inferno, with even more coming out of NSW bushfire hit forests.
He said all logs have been debarked by VicForests to remove any ash or charcoal and used to make building materials, floors, CHEP pallets and fencing.
But Prof Lindenmayer said his email about sawn timber referred “to the current East Gippsland operation” and that ABARES figures showed just “13 per cent of Victorian logged forest becomes sawn timber”.
Prof Lindenmayer’s work is repeatedly quoted by ABC and Fairfax journalists, as well as referenced in legal cases, most recently by Justice Debra Mortimer, who cited the ANU academic’s work 69 times in her recent judgment stopping native forest logging in 66 VicForests coupes across the Victoria’s Central Highlands.
The Weekly Times analysed some of Prof Lindenmayer’s other claims.
IN JANUARY 27, the ANU academic stated: “There are just three contracting crews in East Gippsland at the moment = 15 on-the-ground employees” in an email to environment groups.
Yet figures supplied by East Gippsland forest industry consultant Gary Squires show there are 118 people employed in harvesting and hauling logs, while others are employed in saw mills Brodribb and Newmerella (both just outside Orbost), Nowa Nowa, Bairnsdale and Swifts Creek, who all take the logs from East Gippsland.
ON JANUARY 22, Prof Lindenmayer told the ABC: “We won’t lose a single job, in fact it will grow the forest industry to be more substantial than it is now, but using plantation feedstock, rather than using native forest”.
Yet the Victorian Association of Forest Industries has repeatedly stated the Government’s plantation estate has barely been established and will take 30 years to develop to a point where it could realistically supply timber to industry.
Timber workers in Warburton, Noojee, Violet Town, Powelltown, Corryong, Orbost, Benalla and Heyfield face joining the dole queue after Premier Daniel Andrews announced cuts to the annual supply of native forest logs from the current 253,000 cubic metres to 140,000m3 by 2025-26 and down to zero by 2030.
JANUARY 29, in an ABC opinion piece Prof Lindenmayer said: “salvage logging is the most damaging form of logging in native forests. Its impacts can last for decades or centuries and seriously impair the recovery of animal, bird and insect populations. With so little intact forest left, this will spell disaster for native wildlife”.
Professional Forester Mark Poynter said the claim was interesting given major salvage logging which occurred following the 1939 bushfires has created advanced regrowth forests (80 years old) which is being proposed as the so-called ‘Great Forest National Park’ because of its huge environmental values, especially for endangered species such as Leadbeater’s Possum and Greater Glider.
University of Melbourne forest fire scientists Kevin Tolhurst said the 2019-20 fires in southeast Australia burnt about 4.3 million hectares of conservation areas, 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land, and about 1.8 million hectares of forest and plantation areas.
“It would appear that the impact of timber harvesting is far less significant to the extent of bushfires than areas managed primarily for conservation,” Professor Tolhurst said
PROF LINDENMAYER continues to insist the Leadbeater’s possum population is crashing and “it is absent from sites and landscapes burned in the 2009 fires”.
Yet Victorian Government and community group surveys show a more than five-fold increase in known possum colonies from 153 in 2014 to 828 this year.
Prof Lindenmayer has dismissed these survey results saying they are “repeats or triples or quadruples of animals we’ve already seen”.
The surveys also show the Leadbeater’s Possum is found in regenerating forests (either from fire or logging) after about eight years of regrowth.
Despite repeated requests, Prof Lindenmayer refused to comment for this story.
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