Unnecessarily alarmist headlines about forestry poorly reflect the science

The comparative effects of logging and fire in creating regrowth need to be acknowledged

In view of the Conservation Letters paper’s hypothesis that regrowth is more flammable than older undisturbed forest, it should be acknowledged that bushfire creates far more regrowth than logging because it affects far more of the landscape each year.

For example in Victoria, the area of forest burnt in the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires was equivalent to about 80 years of logging at the current statewide rate; with the area burnt severely enough to have stimulated a regrowth event being equivalent to about 20 years of logging at the current rate. Even greater areas of regrowth were created by the much larger 2003 and 2006-07 bushfires. This would continue even if logging were to cease.

The proffered solutions are largely already in place

While the Conservation Letters paper mentions some general fire policy implications, it makes no specific references to Australia. However, the subsequent media pronouncements leveraged from the paper have claimed that several “new management strategies are needed” to reduce the threat of fire in Australian wet forests.

They include excluding logging from the old growth forests of Tasmania and eastern Victoria, as well as creating “extensive buffer areas that exclude logging near human settlements”.

However, these suggested “solutions” are already largely in place when the extent of old growth forest reservation is considered - about 85 per cent in eastern Victoria, and 80 per cent in Tasmania. Also, particularly on mainland Australia, the proportion of forest now available for timber production is now so small that there are already extensive areas of reserves where logging is permanently excluded. For example, in Victoria, just a 9 per cent portion of the total forest area is used for sustainable timber harvesting, so it is unusual for extensive logging to occur in close proximity to a township.

Given the points made above, it is disturbing that the publicity generated to support the Lindenmayer et al Conservation Letters paper has given the community such a skewed view of the link between timber production and fire in Australia’s wet forests.

While the paper acknowledges that its preparation was “informed through discussions” with 13 colleagues, its wording suggests that none was especially familiar with timber production and silviculture in Australia’s wet eucalypt forests.

Several questions surround the rationale for promulgating such an alarmist assertion about logging and fire:

• Was it merely coincidental that a media campaign promoting a causal link between logging and fire was conducted at the same time that the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission was considering the effect of land management policies and practices on the magnitude of the “Black Saturday” bushfires?
• Was it just coincidental that this was also just a few weeks before the Tasmanian state election in which opposition to forestry and logging was a significant issue?

While these questions are unlikely to ever be answered, it is pertinent to ponder whether this episode signifies a new era in how conservation scientists engage in environmental policy formulation.

This is certainly an interpretation which could be drawn from the concluding remarks in Lindenmayer et al’s Conservation Letters paper which asserts that “… conservation scientists must strongly engage with these issues in public fora. They need to argue that environmental context is critically important to guide considered actions.”

Unfortunately, this episode demonstrates how such engagement should not be done. The manner in which the findings of a scientific paper have been promoted in the media and hence to the public, does not reflect the rigour which its authors would normally apply to their own work or expect of others. In particular, the promotion of the finding of an international literature review as demonstrating that “forest logging creates fire traps” in the Australian context, is both misleading and irresponsible.

While we have come to expect such behavior in campaigns run by mainstream environment groups, pushing unsubstantiated sensationalism is unbecoming for credible scientists. It simply dumbs-down complex issues to create headlines that will be every bit as divisive, and ultimately, unhelpful in informing sensible environmental policy. Of considerable concern is that it also diminishes the respect which the community currently affords to scientists and their academic institutions.