The answer to Tasmania's wicked forestry problems isn't simple

The majestic Tasmanian blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus, is the island State's floral emblem, and – as a global staple of the plantation sector – its most successful export. Swift parrots migrate from the Australian mainland every summer specifically to feed on its profuse nectar, and Tasmanian foresters try hard to accommodate the management needs of the parrots, the blue gums and a host of other conservation issues as a complement to the already substantial reserve system. But the human inhabitants of Australia's most forested and most reserved state seem a little ambivalent about our contribution to the world's wood supplies and to nature conservation. It's enough to drive one to swearing. Put it this way, if Tasmania had official State f-and c- words they would have more than four letters: they'd be forestry and conservation.

But perhaps not for much longer. Tasmania is in the throes of a major restructuring of its forestry sector, ostensibly in the name of conservation. While the details of the actual agreement are still being brokered behind closed doors, we can expect the environmentalists and politicians to crow about how they've delivered peace in the forests and a win for the environment. If they do, their crowing may be premature. From where I stand, it looks as though we're headed for a poor conservation outcome, never mind whatever else the restructuring does or does not deliver. Is it really too much to ask that all the politicking deliver not just peace, but also a good conservation outcome?

Social scientists would deem the Tasmanian forestry issue a 'wicked problem'. In the words of University of British Columbia forest ecologist Professor Fred Bunnell, wicked problems comprise a 'class of social systems problems that are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing'. Sounds spot-on to me.

Solving wicked problems is wickedly hard. Forestry and conservation seem to fracture our society like no other contemporary issue. You only have to read the letters pages of our daily newspapers, or the on-line responses to articles such as this one, to get a sense of the range of views Tasmanians hold, and the solutions they proffer. The media like to characterise the issue as one of jobs versus trees, though it clearly runs much deeper than this.

It used to be like this in British Columbia, too, and in southeast Queensland. But over the past decade or two, in both regions, agreements have been forged among the warring factions, tempers have cooled and the newspapers have had to find other topics to fill their pages. However, the conservation outcomes have been very different.

In British Columbia, conservation and forestry have both been big winners. Rather than a massive round of forest reservation, forestry reinvented itself. A new forestry paradigm, informed by conservation biology, has led to less clearfelling, more partial harvesting, and greater levels of retention of mature forest in the harvesting area. Critically, two-way engagement with community groups is a fundamental part of this new forestry – it gives the community the information it needs to make a more rational appraisal of forestry issues, and to 'own' solutions, and it gives the industry the social licence and certification seal it needs to continue. While wood production levels and employment have fallen, the industry remains viable and people can use wood knowing that it comes from well-managed local forests. In Tasmania on a study tour recently, Fred Bunnell described to forestry professionals how the transition hasn't been easy, and how the journey continues, but he was emphatic that it's been worth all the effort.

Contrast this with the 1999 Southeast Queensland Forests Agreement (SEQFA), in which a more simplistic solution was brokered. In many ways the current Tasmanian process takes its lead from the SEQFA and involves many of the same players. Thus it's worth recording here the findings of a 2007 study of its conservation effectiveness. Led by Dr Clive McAlpine, then at the Ecology Centre at the University of Queensland, the study was published in the internationally respected peer-reviewed journal Biological Conservation. It found that 'ecological science suffered in the collision with the socio-political decision-making process'. In layman's terms, nature conservation lost out to politics. The public was duped.

Unlike in a formal Regional Forest Agreement (RFA), in the SEQFA no strategic, systematic conservation planning process was followed in selecting sites for reservation, and little allowance was made for the on-going conservation management of newly reserved areas. State production forest deemed by the environmental groups to be of special conservation importance – chiefly rainforest and wet eucalypt forest – was immediately reserved. Timber harvesting in dry eucalypt forests is being phased out over twenty-five years, with a view to eventual reservation. In the mean time, the SEQFA sanctioned an increase in the intensity of harvesting, over and above what foresters had previously accepted as ecologically sustainable, to help guarantee an interim log supply for industry. The authors of the study concluded that it may take these forests centuries to recover ecologically from this one policy decision. At the same time, private landowners have been at liberty to fill the timber supply gap, with little hoo-hah from the environmental groups despite the generally greater conservation significance of the private land-base. As to the hardwood plantation estate that was to eventually replace native forestry in the region, that has proven much harder to establish – for good, hard ecological reasons as well as social and economic ones – and may never reach its anticipated target level of productivity. Presumably the growing human populations of southeast Queensland will be sourcing more of their timber from somebody else's forests instead.

If all this sounds familiar to Tasmanians, it's because something rather similar may be in store for us. But there's a crucial difference. Tasmania already has the benefit of an RFA (in 1997) as a baseline for forest conservation – it selected close to 300,000 hectares of forest to supplement what had already been reserved in Tasmania, to form a 'comprehensive, adequate and representative' forest reserve system. Following environmentalist agitation, the RFA was then supplemented by the 2005 Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement (TCFA) – which added a further 150,000 hectares to the reserve system. Between these two agreements and previous conservation measures, some 45% of Tasmania's native forest is now reserved, including 80% of the state's old-growth forest and 97% of its high-quality wilderness. To me these statistics alone make it quite clear that the current restructuring has very little to do with nature conservation, and everything to do with the politics of environmentalism and forestry in Tasmania.

Even so, since it's ostensibly about conservation, surely we can expect it to deliver some great conservation outcomes? Well, let's take a look. While the details are uncertain, it looks as though we're going to get:

• A much-expanded system of native forest reserves, incorporating at least 500,000 additional hectares of so-called high-conservation value forest
• A phasing-out of native forestry, over two decades, on the remaining non-reserved state forests while existing log-supply contracts run their course
• A continuation of native forestry on private land, unfettered by the additional reservation imposed on state forests and perhaps reinvigorated by a developing wood-supply gap accordingly
• A sizeable short-rotation pulpwood plantation estate and associated infrastructure entrenched as a long-term feature of the Tasmanian rural landscape, along with increased settlement and economic activity in the vicinity of a new pulp-mill
• A drive to expand the longer-rotation sawlog plantation estate to eventually make up the shortfall in wood supply arising from increased reservation of native forest; this will occur in the same landscapes as, and hence will be in competition with, the short-rotation pulpwood plantation estate.

Now the interesting bit. What does all this mean for nature conservation? Well, it's far from black and white. Let's break it down into its constituent parts,ordered as in the above list:

• Reservation is good for conservation – at least for the bits that get reserved. Nature can usually do conservation better than humans, when given the space and time to get on with it. However, in the present situation the overall conservation gain through increased reservation may be slight. That's because there's a big overlap between the forest types deemed by environmentalists to be of high conservation value and those already 'comprehensively, adequately and representatively' reserved through the RFA and TCFA. Furthermore, many of the new reserves will not be in wilderness areas and will need continued management, for instance to control weeds, enhance stand structure and maintain suitable fire regimes. Otherwise, if surrounded by intensive land-uses, they will become increasingly dysfunctional ecologically. Maintaining their conservation values will require money and manpower. Neither were adequately provisioned in the SEQFA.
• Phasing out native forestry isn't good conservation practice for the areas subjected to the phasing-out. Sustainable forest management is based on ensuring that the long-term condition of the forest is not compromised for short-term gain. This plays out as constraints on when, and how intensively, individual areas of forest are harvested. But where's the incentive for long-term sustainability if there's no perceived future in native forestry? The SEQFA provides a warning of what could eventuate in Tasmania. Will the implementation of ecologically and socially acceptable alternatives to clearfelling be put on hold in a bid to extract the maximum amount of timber from the diminished area of forest available for harvest? Will we see regrowth forests harvested in their ecological youth, simply because it is too costly to wait for them to mature now that the more-mature forest that was planned for harvest is all reserved? Will standards of regeneration slip because there's no expectation of revisiting the regenerated forest anyway? Ironically, the more forest you reserve, the worse the conservation outcomes are likely to be in the un-reserved forest. The corollary to this is that you can do good conservation over a wider land-base if you have a lesser level of reservation that allows forestry to continue at a lesser level of intensity – integration is better than separation.
• Excluding private native forestry from the restructure is not good for conservation. Continuing native forestry on private land could be seen as conservation-neutral, but for three issues that turn it negative. The first issue is that if the state forests aren't capable of supplying the markets at the same level as previously, then the private forests are likely to fill some of the gap – i.e., we may see an increase in harvesting, as happened in southeast Queensland. The second issue is that private forest landholdings tend to come in smaller parcels than state forest, and managing small, isolated fragments for good conservation outcomes is a lot harder than managing larger blocks of forest. And the third issue is that the 'comprehensive, adequate and representative' reserve system is still deficient in the forest types that can only be found on private land – the incentives for landowners to reserve their forest have not been enticing enough. Conservation is also not something that many landowners can afford to do without a hard financial return. The prospect of a ready market for timber is likely to steer landowners further away from opting in to the state's formal reserve system.
• Expanding the short-rotation pulpwood plantation estate is probably not good for conservation. In terms of their conservation values, short-rotation pulpwood plantations fall far short of even the most intensively managed native forestry regime. Rather few native species can get even a toehold in these plantations between successive harvesting cycles, though feral weeds can prosper if unchecked. If the plantation is established through conversion of native forest, it's a clear conservation loss. But it could be argued that this is not the case if the plantation is grown on former agricultural land (because it's replacing one intensive use with another). This is only true up to a point. If the plantation displaces relict patches of trees, scrub or grassland, then it is a conservation loss. If it displaces agricultural production onto virgin land elsewhere (perhaps overseas), then it is a conservation loss. If it economically out-competes longer-rotation plantations, then it is a conservation loss, not only because of the intrinsic intensity of management but also because it then reduces our local capacity to make up the shortfall in sawlogs arising from reservation. On the other hand, it could be a conservation gain if the plantation helps reconnect relict patches of trees. Some species of forest birds would recolonise these fragments once they perceived the entire area as continuous forest.
• Increased economic activity associated with a pulp-mill is probably not good for conservation. Proponents of a pulp-mill tout an increase in economic activity as one of its advantages, but this could be where the conservation impact of a mill is highest, though it seldom gets a mention as it goes against the whole ethos of the 'growth is good' paradigm. As land prices rise, we are likely to see more land speculation, and more subdividing, clearance and occupation of rural and suburban blocks. In ecological terms, this means diffuse but pervasive disturbances to whatever ecosystem currently occupies that land. Often, in the Tasmanian setting, this will be forest. Lots of small clearances for dwellings on large blocks can quickly equate to massive fragmentation. If experience from elsewhere in Tasmania is anything to go by, fire regimes will change, weeds will proliferate, and dogs, cats and rabbits will increasingly prevail over devils, quolls and bandicoots. Of course these issues are not unique to a pulp-mill. But with a mill being hailed as the biggest infrastructure project Tasmania has experienced, it's bound to have a sizeable ecological footprint.
• Expanding the longer-rotation sawlog plantation estate can be good for conservation, but it depends on how it's done.Tasmanians can expect to see a renewed interest in the establishment of longer-rotation sawlog plantations on farmland, to make up for the shortfall in timber supply. Similar conservation arguments apply to these as to the short-rotation pulpwood plantations, except that the longer the rotation, the more opportunities a plantation offers for native species to colonise. Longer rotations also allow a little more wriggle-room for integrating conservation into overall management objectives, because the relative costs of doing so are smaller. For instance, patches of relict vegetation could be incorporated into the management area, and natural regeneration or revegetation encouraged in commercially unproductive areas. But these are by no means guaranteed outcomes. And not only is the feasibility of producing commercial sawlogs from hardwood plantations still questionable, but plantations aimed at sawlog production are likely to lose ground in the face of competition with short-rotation pulpwood plantations. These factors make it difficult to see how Tasmania alone could make up the shortfall in supply left by the increased reservation of its native forest, even over the two or three decades it would take to grow the trees.

So, overall, the local conservation gain from restructuring seems likely to be minor, with some conservation losses off-setting other gains. The gains will also be contingent on adequate provisions being made for on-going reserve management.

What about conservation impacts beyond our shores? To me, these demonstrate just how myopic we have become in our quest for peace in our forests. Every cubic metre of wood that we, or others, consume has to come from somebody's forest – ours or somebody else's. And every cubic metre that we decide not to produce from our state forests inevitably comes from somebody else's forest. It's quite right that we don't require our state forests to produce more cubic metres than they can sustainably supply. But to require them to produce less than they can sustainably supply assumes that we are comfortable with a trade-off that will require someone else's forest to produce more and fill the gap. The gap won't go away until it's filled – indeed, it's tending to get bigger as global demand increases. It's naïve to assume that the slack can instantly be taken up by sawlog plantations, because any such plantations that are ready for harvest are already serving other markets. Maybe some of that plantation wood will be diverted to serve our market instead, but ultimately the only sort of forest capable of taking up the slack is a 'green bank' – forest that is sitting there unharvested for lack of a sufficiently enticing market. If we've just created an enticing market, we should expect that sort of forest to be harvested. What sort of forest fits the bill? Native forest. And who has native forests in this condition? Locally, private landholders do. Otherwise, we're looking at our near neighbours in the south Pacific. Think tropical rainforests of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Forestry practices there are poorly regulated and frequently corrupt, with often dire conservation outcomes. As a conservation biologist, I don't think this is a good trade-off at all.

So how could we do things better? For a start, recalling that both conservation and forestry can be viewed as applied forms of ecology, we could try and be a bit more holistic in our thinking. I think we would be better off minimising the need for plantation expansion while maximising the opportunities that our public native forests offer for sustainably supplying wood and fibre. Native forestry in Tasmania has a proud track record in innovation, in incorporating ecological principles and in adapting to new management paradigms, while all the time producing the steady stream of wood demanded of it. It's not the dinosaur industry that some would claim. Its major shortfall is not ecological acceptability (although there's always room for improvement), but social. Some people don't like it, and they're very vocal about it. They frame the debate. They make others uneasy. So a big part of the solution is to find ways to engage with people so that management goals can be discussed in an atmosphere of trust and understanding – and if necessary altered; while different ways of achieving those goals can be tested and refined.

I've had a think about what my own, personal set of 'forest principles' might look like, because I do believe that it is possible for us to think our way out of the present impasse in a way that actually gives us good conservation outcomes as well as reducing social division. Rather than the current partisan and non-inclusive approach to a resolution, I would suggest that we need to start again with an independent, science-based review, reporting publicly, and advising our elected governments on the following points (and then trusting them to make the right decisions for us accordingly):

• Revisit some old Agreements. Environmentalists have accepted as fact several conservation-relevant conjectures that are used to justify an anti-forestry stance, yet which others in the debate see as groundless. Let's get to the bottom of these once and for all. How well do they actually stack up? Did the Regional Forest Agreement actually deliver us a 'comprehensive, adequate and representative' reserve system on state and private land, according to nationally agreed criteria, or did it not? Were the original recommendations of the World Heritage Commission (WHC) fully adhered to in the designation of wilderness areas in Tasmania, or were they not? If implementation differed significantly from what was proposed, and if this had significant conservation impacts, then what steps would need to be taken to fix it up?
• Consider the findings of any further credible conservation planning processes. Conservation planning in Tasmania is of interest to many academics and professional planners, including those in the Tasmanian government. Recent planning exercises have considered the desirability of additional reservation of various vegetation communities in different parts of the state, for their representativeness, their connectivity value, their importance to threatened species or a combination of these reasons. In a cool-headed evaluation of conservation priorities, these exercises ought to carry much more weight than the ambit claims of environmentalists. What do these exercises have to say about the need for further forest reservation in Tasmania: how much, why and where?
• Consider other institutional models. Environmentalists also claim that the current institutional model for forestry (production and regulation) in Tasmania is dysfunctional, failing conservation and in need of an overhaul. Others claim that this same model represents world's best practice. So is there or isn't there any other model that we could adopt that would deliver better conservation outcomes but would still allow forestry to remain innovative and competitive in fulfilling its primary role? Let's consider the options.
• A permanent forest estate. Tasmania does not yet have a delineated permanent native forest estate, though it has a policy on maintaining one of a certain size and set of forest types, and of ensuring that no more conversion to other land-uses can occur if it threatens to eat into this estate. Conversion of native forest to plantation has almost ceased in Tasmania (it ceased on state forest several years ago), and it would be a conservation loss if it were to ramp up again as a result of forestry restructuring. Perhaps the time has come for the estate to be defined and delineated once and for all? What are the risks in delineation, and if the risks are manageable, how could delineation best be achieved?
• Appropriate sustained-yield targets. Harvesting levels on state forests have long been determined by the legal requirement to meet a target of sawlog supply set by the Tasmanian parliament, ostensibly based on the principles of sustained yield. The target does not segregate sources into native forest and plantation. Is this target structure appropriate for current conditions in which the balance of production from native forests and plantations is shifting? Or is it more in keeping with principles of sustainability to have separate long-term targets for native and plantation forests? What checks and balances are, or should be, in place to assure Tasmanians that the target levels are not set so high that they stifle silvicultural innovation and reduce options for integrating conservation into production? Is parliament the appropriate judge of target levels, with foresters' wood-flow modelling restricted to figuring out a way to deliver the target? Or should there be a more explicit role for forest growth-and-yield modelling in determining the target?
• Best-practice afforestation. How can we ensure that plantation establishment and other forms of afforestation are conservation-positive rather than negative? Is the current Tasmanian Forest Practices system up to the task, or are there other regulatory changes that would help?
• Help our neighbours. How valid is the argument that importing more of our wood from overseas comes with big conservation losses that outweigh the supposed gains from increased local reservation of native forest? What more can Australia do to help our Pacific neighbours improve their standards of forest management and conservation so that their ecological footprint – and our own – is reduced?
• Engage!If there's one thing the current forestry situation demonstrates, it is a need to develop ways to enhance meaningful community engagement in forestry matters. It's not just about providing a soap-box for existing foes with firm views – the media do that well enough already. It's about recognising that actually there exist a range of perspectives, a range of fixedness of opinions, a range of levels of knowledge and understanding, a range of concerns. It's about keeping the channels of communication open. It's about trust and openness. It's about respect for others' values. It's about short-circuiting the social forces that currently lead to continued hardening and polarisation of opinions. What models exist that we can learn from? How and when can we make a start in applying them?

I'll finish by recalling here the concluding remarks from that study of the conservation effectiveness of the Southeast Queensland Forests Agreement. The authors' own words are that 'Regional biodiversity goals may be better achieved by implementing sustainable forest management practices across all ownerships and involving all stakeholders and the broader community'. In other words, the authors conclude that you'll get better conservation outcomes if you avoid the simplistic thinking that implies that more reservation equals more conservation; and if you involve ecologists, foresters and the broader community in the decision-making process. I couldn't agree more. Perhaps it's time we looked to the forests of British Columbia, not Queensland, for a way forward in defusing forest conflict in Tasmania.