Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Myths, politics, and Leadbeater’s Possum

By Mark Poynter - posted Monday, 29 October 2012


This was evident in the recent Age article in which Lindenmayer described the Victorian Government as an “environmentally bankrupt administration” whose efforts to guarantee a future for the Central Highlands’ timber industry “will lock-in the extinction of Leadbeater’s Possum” within 20-years.

What such a view ignores is that most of the Victorian wet forests which provide possum habitat are simply not used for timber production, or are excluded by prescription. Indeed, in the Central Highlands, all present and future timber harvesting is limited to within a net area comprising only about one-third of the region’s wet forests, with the other two-thirds being comprised of formal and informal parks and conservation reserves, closed water supply catchments, and management reserves where timber harvesting is excluded.

In those wet forests where the timber industry is permitted to operate, harvesting is restricted to regrowth forests, with any larger pre-1900 origin trees being identified during planning and excluded from harvesting. Along with streamside reserves and exclusions due to other Code of Practice requirements and management prescriptions, this provides current and future nesting habitat for birds and arboreal mammals in the designated wood production forests, and complements the much larger area of protected habitat residing in neighbouring parks, closed water catchments and other reserves.

Advertisement

In view of this, the Baillieu Government’s support for a sustainable timber industry which is restricted to approximately a net one third of the Central Highlands’ wet forests will not make the Leadbeater’s Possum extinct as Lindenmayer has claimed.

Professor Lindenmayer’s resignation was also covered as part of an ABC TV 7:30 Victoria segment several days after The Age article mentioned earlier. Lindenmayer is no economist, but the propensity for inappropriately straying away from his scientific expertise was exemplified on this program when he remarked that, “Most Victorian’s would be unaware that VicForests (the state’s commercial forestry agency)…has been running at major losses over the past 10-years”.

While this claim has also been widely promoted by the environmental lobby, it is incorrect. As was briefly mentioned later in the 7:30 Victoria segment, VicForests has returned a profit of $11.6 million over the eight years since it was established in 2004. While this is an admittedly modest result, it reflects the struggle that they have had in dealing with a range of factors largely beyond their control.

These include two huge bushfires in 2006 and 2009 which significantly impacted on wood production forests; an unfavorable business climate; and the costs of dealing with incessant anti-logging activism including several very expensive legal actions brought against them in the past few years.

The 2011-12 financial year provides a good example given that VicForests suffered a significant financial penalty from lost productivity associated with the drawn-out sale of the state’s largest sawmill (formerly owned by Gunns Ltd); and from having to expend several million dollars on legal actions brought against them by environmental lobby groups. These legal costs essentially prevented VicForests from recording a multi-million dollar profit rather than incurring the $96,000 loss that it recently announced.

Professor Lindenmayer’s ill-founded attack on the financial performance of VicForests mirrors a long-standing tactic of the environmental lobby to misrepresent the returns from selling logs as the ultimate measure of the worth of timber harvesting. In fact, timber harvesting’s socio-economic value is overwhemingly based on the subsequent utilisation of those logs by a diverse industry which includes businesses associated with forest harvesting, log haulage, primary log processing, secondary timber manufacturing, and retailing; as well as the government-employed resources associated with planning and managing timber harvesting and securing forest regeneration.

Advertisement

The socio-economic value of Victoria’s native hardwood sector is estimated to encompass at least one billion dollars per annum in economic activity and up to 5,000 jobs including secondary timber processing, retail, and indirect employment. It is this, rather than just the currently modest returns from selling logs, that would be lost if timber harvesting was to cease in response to the incessant calls to close VicForests being made by environmental lobby groups.

Even though attempting to pin the decline of Leadbeater’s Possum solely on the timber industry is demonstrably wrong, concerns for the possum’s future are not unfoundedgiven that 43 per cent of its habitat was reportedly burnt in the 2009 bushfires. However, is important to acknowledge that the possum is ultimately dependent on severe bushfire as in its long-term absence over several hundred years, its preferred wet eucalypt forest habitat will eventually revert to an unsuitable non-eucalypt vegetation type.

In the decades after a severe bushfire, developing regrowth amongst older standing dead or alive trees provides ideal nesting and feeding habitat. Accordingly, the upshot from the 2009 bushfires should be future high quality Leadbeater’s Possum habitat in the tens of thousands of hectares of wet forest which was burnt in closed water catchments, national parks, and other reserves. Admittedly though, this will take time to develop and relies on an absence of follow-up severe bushfires which cannot be guaranteed.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. All

This article is a modified version of one that was first published by Quadrant Online on 2 October 2012.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

8 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Mark Poynter

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Mark Poynter
Article Tools
Comment 8 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy