The Forest Wars
By David Lindenmeyer
Allen & Unwin, 2024
288pp. $34.99
“The native forest logging industry has more problems than a maths textbook.” This quote lays the foundations for David Lindenmeyer’s The Forest Wars, as he exposes the prevailing myths behind native forest logging that keeps this destructive industry alive. He also offers a new vision for management of Australia’s native forests that will increase employment, promote carbon capture, manage fires, enable First Nations knowledge and involvement and incorporate sustainable tourism.
Lindenmeyer is a world-leading expert in forest ecology and management. He lifts the lid on the destruction of native forests by government corporations and a logging industry that makes bushfires worse, decimates wildlife populations and costs taxpayers million for the sake of woodchips for export. His impeccable experience and research create an evidence-based account that is supported at the end of the book by nearly 30 pages of references.
Using the framework of “myth busting”, short chapters probe specific information that has been promoted over many decades and readily accepted by the mainstream population and media as fact, including myths about regulation and forest laws, the logging and employment connection, forest fire management and Rural Forest Agreements.
While the myths raised in The Forest Wars are Australia-based, this book has international relevance and is reviewed against the recent backdrop of out-of-control bushfires in Canada. Like Australia, Canada super-exploits its native forests then greenwashes this destruction with large-scale mono or duo-culture tree planting, making the forest more susceptible to fire.
Lindenmeyer looks at the cosy relationship between the small cohort of forestry heavyweights gaining financially from old-growth logging and the complicity of governments, some unions and the prolific lobbying that supports and perpetuates the industry.
That our magnificent old-growth trees are felled to overwhelmingly make woodchips and produce pulp to make paper and box liners, makes absolutely no economic, ecological or environmental sense.
For information and background on the lies, deceit and obfuscation behind Australia’s native forest logging industry, this is a must read. The links between poor native forest management and the increased risk of fire is given particular explanation in The Forest Wars and support given to improved fire preparation rather than disaster funding.
Of particular interest to environmental activists and those keen to address the age-old myths that sustain native forest logging, Lindenmeyer ends The Forest Wars by offering a vision and call to action. He appeals to “decision-makers” and politicians, who have lacked vision about what a future without native forest logging might look like.
A different future would be jobs-positive, providing new employment in forest regeneration, repairing the damage done from intensive logging operations, feral animal and invasive species control, creating jobs for First Nations people managing Country, developing elite fire-fighting crews and increasing employment in tourism in regional Australia that helps connect people to the natural environment.
The myth that native forest logging versus conservation is a jobs versus the environment issue, and that native forest timber harvesting does not increase the risk of devastating wildfires, is blown apart in The Forest Wars. Instead, stopping native forest logging and directing efforts toward a vision of radically improved forest management as outlined by Lindenmeyer, is a jobs-positive call to action.