Unnecessarily alarmist headlines about forestry poorly reflect the science

The veracity of such a strong assertion as that logging “creates fire traps” is reliant on the scale and proportional extent of logging both in the landscape and in relation to human settlements

Neither the Conservation Letters paper nor its subsequent media promotion has mentioned the proportional scale of “industrial logging” across the landscape. In its absence, the unknowing community can be excused for believing that logging is a far greater factor in forest management than it actually is. This is particularly relevant to the southern Australian mainland where timber production is now restricted to minor portions of the total forest estate. For example, timber production is only permitted within a 9 per cent portion of Victoria’s native forests.

Selective logging is not the norm in Australia’s wet forests

Most of the paper’s observations about the effect of logging in changing forest structure and composition to a more flammable state are associated with selective harvesting. However, this is now uncommon in Australia’s wet eucalypt forests. For the past 50 years they have mostly been harvested under the clearfell-burn-sow regime which best matches the silvicultural requirements for full sunlight and burnt ash seedbeds needed to stimulate regeneration.

This contrasts with the earlier years of European settlement in which it was common for Australia’s wet eucalypt forests to be harvested by a “sawmill selection” process in which only the best trees were taken. As this did not easily facilitate eucalypt regeneration, harvested gaps often regenerated to more flammable scrub species. This was undoubtedly a factor in the massive bushfires of the past such as in 1898 and 1939.

Despite being much maligned by environmentalists, the introduction and use of the clearfell-burn-and-sow regime since the early 1960s has largely redressed this problem. In recent times, modifications have been introduced to soften its visual impact by retaining clumps of trees and understorey in ways that do not significantly compromise the ability to facilitate regeneration.

Nowadays, regenerating coupes in Australia’s wet eucalypt forests typically carry little fuel. As was shown in Victoria’s 2009 bushfires, it is not uncommon for dense stands of young post-logging regrowth to remain relatively unscathed while adjacent unlogged forests are razed by high intensity wildfires.

There are differences between overseas forests and Australian eucalypt forests

The Conservation Letters’ paper, and particularly its associated local publicity, has created an impression that overseas findings are relevant to an Australian context. However, conservation biologists, such as the paper’s authors, frequently caution against making such generalisations, and often point to the need for research that is relevant to Australian ecosystems and conditions.

Tropical rainforests, from which some of the studies derive, do not normally burn without significant human intervention, such as large-scale clearing or unsustainable and poorly regulated harvesting. Similarly, the ecology and management history of North American conifer forests bear little resemblance to those of Australian eucalypt forests.

In short, at other than the highest level of generalisation, the relevance of factors extrapolated from very different ecosystems and management contexts to Australian eucalypt forests should be questioned, as they normally are by ecologists.

Economic forest uses are a critical component of Australian forest fire management

Neither the Conservation Letters paper nor its subsequent media promotion has acknowledged that timber production involves government and industry workforces which are a critical component of effective fire prevention and suppression.

Although the paper defines moist forests as those which are too wet to be fuel reduced by fire, the presence of workforces capable of conducting effective fuel reduction burning in adjacent drier forests plays a considerable role in reducing the threat of fire entering wet forests during hot dry Australian summers.

With regards to bushfire suppression, the timber industry workforce has always played a major role because it has suitable machinery (often close by), and operators who, unlike most other earth-moving contractors, are very experienced in working in the forest environment. For example, during Victoria’s two-month long 2003 alpine fires, 80 of the 100 bulldozers involved in fire line construction were from the timber industry.

The paper also claimed that “road networks required for logging operations create an increased number of ignition points”. While there is some truth to this, it is arguably outweighed by the value of forest roads in providing ready access and a network of potential control lines for fire prevention and suppression operations. This is exceedingly important given that lightning is responsible for about half of the area of forest burnt each year in Victoria, usually because of the difficulty and time lost in accessing remote areas. The influence of lightning would be expected to increase if we had fewer roads.