25 November 2015, The conversation, Ashes to ashes: logging and fires have left Victoria’s magnificent forests in tatters. In February 2009 the Black Saturday bushfires swept through the Mountain Ash forests of Victoria, burning 72,000 hectares. These forests are home to the tallest flowering plants on the planet, and iconic species such as the Leadbeater’s Possum, Victoria’s animal emblem. In the six years since the fires, we and other scientists have been investigating how the forests have recovered, summarised in our new book. This research was in turn built on 25 years of research before the fires. There’s some good news and some bad. The forests and their inhabitants have a remarkable capacity for recovery from natural disturbances like fire. However, the forest ecosystem is in a precarious state, largely due to the continuation of Victoria’s logging industry. Winners and losers Some species seemed to fare well after the fires, or even to have benefited from them. In the week leading up to the 2009 fires, 18 Brushtail Possums were fitted with radio-tracking collars, and all were found alive two months later. After the fire, Flame Robins arrived in the forest in huge numbers to take advantage of hunting opportunities in the open burnt forest. The native Bush Rat and carnivorous Agile Antechinus (a minute relative of the Quoll and Tasmanian Devil), were hit hard by the fire. Their numbers were initially severely reduced but then recovered to be equally or more abundant in burnt than unburnt forest within three years. In contrast, other species have struggled in the post-fire environment, such as the Greater Glider and Leadbeater’s Possum. Read More here
Tag Archives: native forests
15 October 2015, The Conversation, Death of a landscape: why have thousands of trees dropped dead in New South Wales? Trees die – that’s a fact of life. But is the death of an entire iconic landscape of Eucalyptus in the Cooma-Monaro region of New South Wales natural? For over a decade, large stands of Eucalyptus viminalis, commonly known as Ribbon Gum or Manna Gum, have been gradually declining in health, and now stand like skeletons in huge tree graveyards. In our recently published survey we found the affected area to cover almost 2,000 square km, about the size of the area burnt in the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria or more than the area covered by the 2003 Canberra fires. Within this area, almost every Ribbon Gum is either dead or showing signs of severe stress and dieback, with thinning crowns full of dead branches. Other tree species seem to be surviving, but this smooth-barked gum with its characteristic ribbons of peeling park, once the dominant tree of the Monaro, now seems set to disappear from the landscape. Read More here
23 July 2015, The Conversation, Native forests can help hit emissions targets – if we leave them alone: The debate over native forest logging has been sparked once again, partly by the government’s successful push for wood burning to be included in the revamped Renewable Energy Target. However, the disagreement over the best way to manage Australia’s 9.4 million hectares of public native forest is thrown into sharp relief by analysis showing that ending native forest logging, and completing the the industry’s shift into plantations instead, would get Australia much of the way to its greenhouse gas emissions reductions target. Analysis done using the Australian government’s public native forest model suggests that stopping all harvesting in the public native forest estate would generate in the order of 38 million tonnes of potential credits (that is, the equivalent of 38 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions avoided) each year in the short to medium term.
While this is the technical capacity, the Kyoto Protocol’s rules cap credits from forest management at 3.5% of base-year emissions, or around 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. So if Australia ratifies the second commitment period of the Protocol, which runs from 2013 to 2020, the cap would limit forest management credits to 120 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over the commitment period. The Australian government’s latest emissions projections estimate that, in order to meet its 5% emissions-reduction target in 2020, Australia has to reduce its emissions by 236 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over the second commitment period. This means stopping harvesting in public native forests could provide 51% of the abatement task to 2020. Read More here
4 June 2015, Timberbiz, RET could revive timber in Victoria. The revised Renewable Energy Target (RET) currently before Parliament would provide a market for otherwise unsaleable timber, according to a document from Victoria’s state-owned forestry business, VicForests, obtained by the ABC. Source: ABC News. Environment Minister Greg Hunt introduced the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill and the legislation locks in the bipartisan deal for a new, lower, 2020 Renewable Energy Target. But, controversially, it reinstates the burning of native forest wood waste as a renewable energy source in the RET scheme. “There is no evidence that its eligibility leads to unsustainable practices or has a negative impact on Australia’s biodiversity,” Mr Hunt said when introducing the bill. “Using wood waste for generation is more beneficial to the environment than burning waste alone on the forest floor or simply allowing it to decompose and to produce methane a very high global warming potential gas.” The changes will help hardwood timber company Australian Solar Timbers (AST) build a two-megawatt power plant that will generate electricity onsite. AST chairman Douglas Head said timber for the plant in New South Wales’ Macleay Valley would come from existing sawmill waste that had little current value. “There is not one new tree that would be cut. Frankly you would not cut a tree to produce electricity alone. It’s got to be cut for some other high-value use,” he said. He said the wood by-products now potentially eligible for burning were “used sometimes as boiler fuels, potting mix, horse stable coverings and in the chicken industry — very low value”. The VicForests document says wood could be used as a brown coal substitute, but Nathan Trushell from VicForests downplayed the prospect of massive forest furnaces. “I think the stark reality for us is we would see some significant economic challenges with Renewable Energy Target credits or not,” he said. “I think if there is opportunity for us in that space, it’s really around small-scale local generation. I think for large-scale co-generation in coal-fired power stations the reality is timber is heavy and expensive to transport. “If we’re looking at our operations in East Gippsland we’re talking about several hundred kilometres to transport that material. I can’t see how economically that would stack up for us. Read More here