Peter Wright
Woodchipping: what went wrong?
In a tragic irony, the biggest environment campaign for many years resulted in the federal government dumping its policy to phase out export woodchipping by 2000, and replacing it with a plan to entrench the industry indefinitely. Except for the southern forests in Western Australia, the industry has been given access to most of the high conservation value forests it was seeking. And woodchip licences have been issued without the states agreeing to reserve 15% of all forest types (contrary to the Commonwealth's forest reserve criteria).
The root of the forest conflict lies in the industry's interest in the tall moist forests growing on fertile soils. These have been targeted in the past because they are the forests with the highest economic value. Now they are among the forest types most in need of protection. This is their last chance.
The National Forest Policy leads to resource security — an outcome where logging and conservation areas are defined for all time — so we have to get it right this time. The deferred forest areas were supposed to have identified, on a scientific basis, all areas needed for a national forest reserve system. But science has been misused to justify the continued logging of high conservation value forests.
The Commonwealth says there is sufficient area of each forest type, including old growth and wilderness, to meet its reserve criteria within the 6 million hectares it has deferred, but this figure is very misleading. It includes most of the forest clear-felled since woodchipping came to Australia 25 years ago, large areas of plantation and some areas which are not forest at all.
While it may also contain enough remnants to meet the 15% target for some forest types, the remnants are scattered across the landscape and cannot be viable in the long term. Larger, consolidated areas which have better survival prospects have not been given protection from logging if they happen to be on this year's logging list.
And while the government had said that the critical habitat of endangered species must be reserved, not one was identified for reservation in this process.
The small gains in the Commonwealth's forest package will not halt the degradation that the industry is causing. Woodchipping did fall by 20% in New South Wales, but solely in response to the NSW government's forestry reform plan.
The Commonwealth package provided incentives for farm forestry, and will lead to an expanded plantation industry, but no attempt has been made to use this and our existing plantations to speed the move away from unsustainable native forest logging.
The federal government approached the woodchipping of Australia's native forests as a political problem rather than as a critical ecological and social problem. The result is a political solution. The industry has security for three years while further assessment is done. In the meantime, environment groups have been branded as insatiable for seeking to protect what little is left of those highest value areas.
Any valuable areas which were wrongly placed in the logging zones are sure to be woodchipped before they can be protected. A valuable opportunity to turn this industry around is being lost.
[Peter Wright is ACF biodiversity campaign convener. This article first appeared in the February issue of Habitat Australia.]