Just how many of these plantations will ultimately provide quality sawn timber, veneer, fibreboard or preserved posts is questionable. Unfortunately, by 2020, too many will succumb to poor advice, selection, spacing, pruning, thinning and general management. Even the better plantations may not avoid a woodchip fate if the volume offered is too small or too remote.
The release of East Gippsland royalty figures ranging from nine cents to $1.38 per cubic metre leaves little hope for chipping returns (The Age, 27/1). It could take up to two 20-year-old trees to make one cubic metre of saleable plantation wood. Even at the Central Highlands high-grade rate, the Government's native forest woodchip royalties would currently value a good tree of that age at about $5, excluding road charges.
It is widely recognised that farm forestry will provide considerable
economic and environmental benefits to the region, but it won't while we
continue to sell native forests for next-to-nothing and neuter the department
with staffing cuts.