G. Norman Huon, of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, writes (20/11) that the recent increase in woodchip quotas is not major. He fails to mention that most of these woodchips will come from forests of high conservation value, much being old growth and endangered species habitat that have evolved over millennia.
Every day, these forests are becoming rarer due to excesses of an uncontrollable timber industry that regards Australia's sacred forests as nothing more than a cash cow.
With the latest increase in woodchip quotas, more of these publicly owned forests will be destroyed than ever before. The industry will be taking more timber from ever shrinking areas and attempting to replace these once biodiverse areas with forest monocultures.
Most of Australia's remaining high conservation forests, outside token reserve systems, will soon be gone. These forests will, in tum, end up in Tokyo garbage bins and rubbish dumps after lining the pockets of a timber industry elite with a lot of easy money.
Mills buy a tonne of woodchips for about $25, out of which workers fees, transport, other costs and Government royalties are paid. The price that tonne is sold for is about $75, meaning a $50 gross profit.
If you multiply that profit by 6 million or the amount of tonnes the industry says they export, you get a gross profit of something like $300 million. That profit mainly goes to woodchip company shareholders and company owners, subsidised by Australian tax-payers.
And what do the taxpayers get for their money? Answer: An ecological disaster!