Ten Common Forest Myths Dispelled

Source: Forest Friendly Building Timbers, edited by Alan T. Gray and Anne Hall, Earth Garden Books, Trentham, Victoria

1. Plantations are bad because they're a monoculture
2. It's okay to log regrowth native forests as long as you buy from small sawmills and save the oldgrowth forests
3. A carefully-managed forest is better for the environment than a plantation because they're clearing native forests to replace them with plantations
4. Woodchipplng simply uses the waste on the forest floor that sawmillers can't use.
5. Softwoods just aren't stable enough for building
6. Because we use wood products we have to log native forests
7. If we stopped logging native forests, there'd be terrible job losses
8. 20 years after they've logged a forest, it's all grown back again
9. You have to log those old forests, because they'll fall over anyway
10.Australia's native forests are managed on a sustainable basis

MYTH 1: "Plantations are bad because they're a monoculture."

FACT: Most plantations are monocultures, but so are potato and cotton farms (and apple orchards, and wheat fields, and ... ). Until we get all our timber from mixed-species plantations (the ideal) we have more than enough timber from existing monoculture plantations. We can start growing mixedspecies plantations, but once our native forests are logged, they're gone forever.

MYTH 2: "it's okay to log regrowth native forests as long as you buy from small sawmills and save the oldgrowth forests."

FACT: All native forests are worth saving. Only around 18 per cent of Australia's eucalypt forests (including reserved areas) have not been logged, and less than 50 per cent of unlogged eucalypt forests are protected - less than a third of one per cent of Australia's land area is covered by protected, unlogged eucalypt forest. So if we target regrowth forests, we're committing most of our forests to logging. Some people say it's okay to buy native forest timbers from small sawmills in regrowth forests, but such forests still support rare wildlife, like the powerful owl, brush-tailed phascogale, and tiger quoll in the regrowth Wombat Forest of central Victoria. When you search Australia for the mythical regrowth forest that can supply all our timber needs without threatening native wildlife or water quality, you can't find it.
-- Kirkpatrick,'A Continent Transformed: Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 1994, P 53; D. Lunney (editor), 'Conservation of Australia Forest Fauna: The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Mosman, 1991 pp. I-2L

MYTH 3: "A carefully-managed forest is better for the environment than a plantation because they're clearing native forests to replace them with plantations."

FACT: There is no environmental justification for clearing native vegetation to replace it with plantations, however existing plantations can already supply all our timber needs. 'Managing' a regrowth forest for logging eventually leaves trees of all the same age and size (a plantation!) with little biodiversity.

MYTH 4: "Woodchipplng simply uses the waste on the forest floor that sawmillers can't use."

FACT: Around half the wood logged from native forests is woodchipped currently around five million tonnes a year are exported to Japan to make paper. That's around two million trees each year just for woodchips.

-- Australian Forest Products Statistics, Australlian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Canberra, June quarter, 1998. In many forest areas even less ends up as sawn timber. For instance, less than 18 per cent of the average East Gippsland oldgrowth coupe [area earmarked for logging] ends up at a sawmill [and half that 18 per cent ends up as sawmill waste]. The rest of the timber in the oldgrowth coupe is either woodchipped, burnt, or left to rot.
-- 'Statement of Uses, Resources and Values: Victorian State Government, 1999, p. 135.

The only reason there is 'waste on the forest floor' to justify woodchipping is because the native forests have been clearfelled to start with.

The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) admitted in 1995 that native sawlogging operations relied on woodchipping. Their comments were reported as follows:
"The chief executive of NAFI, Dr Robert Bain, said yesterday the native forest logging industry depended on woodchips. 'Most of the native forest industry would not be economically viable (without woodchipping),' he said." -- The Australian 22/1/95, p. 5.

MYTH 5: "Softwoods just aren't stable enough for building."

FACT: Many softwood products are in fact more stable than their hardwood counterparts. For instance, a plantation scaffolding product called Hyplank has "higher structural reliability than sawn timber"; laminated beams and engineered 'I' beams need smaller sections than hardwood to provide the same strength, and Microllam LVL floor joists yield 50 per cent more structural value per cubic metre than sawn timber.

MYTH 6: "because we use wood products we have to log native forests."

FACT: More than two thirds of the wood and wood fibre processed domestically in Australia already comes from plantations and recycling; less than one third comes from native forests. - J Clark, Australia's Plantations: Environment Victoria, North Melbourne, 1995, p 3.

MYTH 7: "if we stopped logging native forests, there'd be terrible job losses."

FACT: Employment in the plantation sector is expected to increase from 30,000 jobs back in 1995 to 45,000 jobs in the year 2000. These jobs are safer, and more secure, than jobs in native forest logging.
- J Clark, 'Australia's Plantations: Environment Victoria, North Melbourne, 1995.

Meanwhile, between 1365 (just before export woodchipping began in Australia) and 1985, the amount of timber taken from Australia's native forests increased by 576 per cent, and yet jobs in the industry fell by 40 per cent. Industry practices, such as mechanisation, are costing jobs while taking more wood out of native forests.
-- Draft report of the Federal Government's Resource Assessment Commission (RAG) Inquiry Into the Timber Industry July 1991, p. 113.

Only 600 people are directly employed in woodchipping operations throughout Australia.
-- Forest Statistics Bulletin, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Canberra, March quarter, 1995.

MYTH 8: "20 years after they've logged a forest, it's all grown back again."

FACT: Scientists have found that once an oldgrowth eucalypt forest is cut down, it may take 1500 - 2500 years to recover the full range of structural diversity (physical features like hollows which provide animal habitat) originally found there.
-- T. W. Norton, 'Conserving biological diversity in Australia's temperate eucalypt forests: Forest Ecology and Management, Vol. 85, 1996, p. 23.

You can regrow trees to look like a forest but it takes a long time to regrow an entire functioning ecosystem, with territorial mammals and birds, insects, plants, frogs and trees. Australia has more threatened animals than 38 per cent of the world's countries. There are 1316 species of plants and animals that are endangered or vulnerable.

Ninety two million hectares of Australian forest disappeared from 1788 to 1980. That's an average of 480,000 hectares every year since Europeans arrived. So, an area of forest 87 times the size of Sydney Harbour has been cleared -- every year. The report also says that the permanent clearing of forest releases about 75 million tonnes of CO2, and CO2 equivalents, every year.
-- Australia's State Of The Forests Report, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Commonwealth Government, 1998.

MYTH 9: "You have to log those old forests, because they'll fall over anyway."

FACT: A large proportion of native forest logging is dependent on clearfelling oldgrowth forests - the ancient and undisturbed forests which contain trees hundreds of years old, and which are crucial for preserving many forest animals. Old trees contain hollows which provide homes for many forest animals: around 400 species of animals use tree hollows. If they fall over naturally, they can provide nutrients and hollows to maintain the forest's ecological balance.
-- Forest and Timber Inquiry Final Report Resource Assessment Commission, Vol I, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra,

1992, pp 15-16, p. 27; D. Scotts, 'Oldgrowth forests: their ecological characteristics and value to forest-dependent vertebrate fauna of south-east Australia: Conservation of Australias Forest Fauna, The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Mosman, 1991, pp. 147-153.

It takes 150 years or more for a tree to form a hollow suitable for arboreal mammals or birds to live in. For instance, the powerful owls in the regrowth Wombat Forest require large hollows to breed and nest in, and their prey -- large possums -- also require such hollows. One breeding pair of powerful owls can consume an entire possum in one night.
-- Dr Barry Traill, wildlife biologist.

MYTH 10: "Australia's native forests are managed on a sustainable basis."

FACT: Logging and woodchipping of native forests is in fact determined by market forces, not environmental sustainability.
Consider the following statement by the woodchipping industry in 1990:

"It is imperative that as much of the remaining private oldgrowth pulpwood (woodchips) resource as is available for sale is marketed over the next 15 years whilst market acceptance of this comparatively low commercial quality wood is relatively high. Quota restrictions on the harvesting of this resource must be lifted immediately." -- Private Forestry Council of Tasmania, 1330.

The hardwood timber industry claims that it logs our native forests on a 'sustainable yield basis' but the Federal Government's Resource Assessment Commission (RAG) and the Commonwealth EPA (CEPA) have said that: "... the RAC Inquiry report recognised a difference between obtaining sustainable fibre yield from native forests and maintaining a viable ecosystem" On oldgrowth forest logging CEPA said that such logging "has been demonstrated to be environmentally unsustainable"

-- 'Habitat Australia: ACF, referring to the Commonwealth EPA document 'The Development Of Scientific Criteria For Commonwealth Government Purchases Of Environmentally-Preferred Paper Products: November, 1994.

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