VicForests - cutting forests, costs and corners

After three years as the new semi-corporate arm of the government logging agency, VicForests looks like it is going down the economic gurgler.

For the first two years after its creation, VicForests was given an easy run with DSE picking up the tab for many costs, but year three was to see it off welfare and making a profit. To balance their books we now see VicForests planning to cut corners and costs. Unfortunately, this also means cutting their obligations to look after public lands.

VicForests oversees the logging of public forests and is meant to make a profit. In the past, forest agencies (of various names) have relied on hand-outs to operate. VicForests' plans to reduce overheads to stay in business could cost the environment dearly.

Auctioning sawlogs brings in some revenue, especially now it asks for a half-decent price for them. But sawmills aren't needing as many logs these days as there is decreasing demand for hardwood timber. However, thousands of tonnes of smoke-damaged ash forests are being knocked down as 'salvage' at ten times the normal rate. Solid logs are split to sell as woodchip fodder at a reduced price. Despite this 'fire sale', the bills are still mounting.

One of those bills is for $2 million in roading charges. DSE build and maintain logging roads then send the bill to VicForests. VicForests denies this is an unpaid debt, saying they are just having a 'dispute over access fees'.

Besides debt avoidance, VicForests have announced another clever cost-cutting measure: they are shutting down offices across Victoria. At present 17 offices will be reduced to just five, with two in Gippsland being at Healesville and Orbost. The 143 regional employees have to apply for their jobs again if they want to move. This cuts jobs by stealth, without sacking anyone. VicForests admits that this will mean there will be less monitoring and management of logging operations‹it will be left up to loggers to 'self-monitor'! This is clearly in breach of their legal obligations. VicForests are to monitor and ensure environmental codes'Šoperate in accordance with the Sustainability Charter for Victoria's State forests'. If they leave this up to the loggers, the Police Department might as well stop patrolling the roads to save a bit of money as well.

The union covering VicForests' staff, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), reckons their workers are getting a raw deal, without time to consider such drastic workplace shifts. They have taken their case to the Industrial Relations Commission to complain about the hasty and poorly-executed movement of staff and offices.

What has helped keep VicForests afloat to date has been the generous hand-outs given for fire recovery and salvage logging ($22M). They have been major beneficiaries of the fires (echoes of the fires in Greece?), although they claim that it was the fires that are forcing them to downsize.

It's not just an Australian phenomenon. The only way native forest logging can ever be economic is by cheating, destroying the environment and/or having snouts planted securely in the public trough to pay for the costs. The Resource Assessment Commission of the 1980s came to this conclusion.

Just how much longer can VicForests and their business mates, the woodchip industry, pretend that annihilating native forests is an economically viable enterprise?

Jill / ABC radio 1&22.8.07

 

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The new Victorian reshuffle - what can we expect?

When John Thwaites tossed in the towel as Minister for Water, Environment, Climate Change and Plastic Bags (27th July), Gavin Jennings got his desk. But water will now be the responsibility of Tim Holding as Minister for Water.

Jennings is a key player in the left faction. This could be good or bad, depending. He might not be in the right 'club' for pushing things through à la Thwaites, but he is supposed to be a little more committed to the environment. Some say Brumby isn't as committed as Bracks was (!?) or Jennings is. The passing of the Bill allowing forests to be burnt for power was not a good start.

Jennings is supposed to understand the forest issue - always useful - and, being in the Upper House, he will be open to closer scrutiny from the Greens.

Having been Treasurer, John Brumby gets the economics of the logging industry better than Bracks did, and we hope he'll see through VicForests' economic contortions to try and keep itself in business. He should be less inclined to prop up the failing industry that only ever gives the government grief (and some party donations). Importantly, Brumby doesn't owe any favours (to put it mildly) to one of the biggest blocks to forest protection, forestry union boss Michael O'Connor.

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SKM checks EPA's checks of DSE's checks of dud logging laws

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) audits how well the DSE scrutinises logging contractors. Their audits have come under some criticism over the last four year so the EPA have appointed Sinclair Knight Mertz (SKM) to review how it does the audits.

So SKM will check the toothless EPA checks of the monitoring by government foresters of loggers compliance with the code. That Code, by the way, is designed for logging, not protecting forests.

Public consultation is used to placate the public, to tick off an obligation to satisfy a government regulation and to glean information from us that can be used to close loopholes and hide problems rather than address them. We lay our hand out on the table and they keep theirs close to their chests.

Every five years the Code of Forest Practice is refined using community consultation (including from loggers). The new version is then cleverly worded so that even more damage can be done with even less scrutiny or penalty.

So the real question should be: is it even worth the EPA auditing the DSE's monitoring of logging contractors adherence to the Code? The EPA reports show that environmental damage is as bad as it has ever been, but the EPA's dicky system for checking the DSE, allows them to claim things are improving.

SKM has a reputation as a credible and professional body. Hopefully their final report will not twist reality to fit the DSE's agenda and spin.

Jill

 

Tree tourism on the rise

Backpackers and tourists seeking a nature experience have increased by 55% in Gippsland since 2005/2006.

Visitors primarily come from Western Europe and the UK to see what they don't have over there - wild spaces, unmanicured forests, and big, old trees. For some reason, the government have been historically reluctant to promote the green hinterland of Gippsland. Beaches are okay, but the rest seems to be the exclusive territory of the logging and woodchipping barons.

Due to lack of funds, the five walks the Bracks Government promised to build and upgrade as part of last year's election package could fall off the map. In fact, the grand old trees in the planned 'Old Growth Walk at Brown Mountain were not even included in a protection zone!

Only $750,000 was earmarked for all walks when about $3 million would be needed to do the upgrades and new walks.

 

 

Australia's 'climate corridor'

Australia will need to create a wildlife corridor spanning the continent to allow animals and plants to move to cope with the effects of global warming. The impacts of climate change should be less severe in systems that remain intact and healthy.

The 2,800-kilometre climate 'spine' has been approved in principle by state and national governments and would link the country's entire east coast, from the snow-capped Australian Alps in the south to the tropical north, a distance equal to that from London to Romania. How substantial the area will be and its level of protection has not been agreed upon.

Ideally, the corridor would link National Parks, State Forests and other government land to preserve scores of endangered species.

Last year Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said that climate change was occurring so fast that cooler southern towns were 'moving' to the warmer north at the rate of 100 kilometres each year. Native species adapted to a given region could find it difficult to shift altitude or latitude if there are obstacle courses of human landscapes throughout the country. Connectivity is just one solution, but it is an important one.

Jill / AAP 9.7.07

 

 

FOI victory in NSW

For years, NSW conservationists have been fighting to find out the price Forests NSW gets for the logs that are woodchipped and shipped to Japan. After a long battle to obtain these figures under Freedom of Information, Gerry Watt, a Tilba conservationist, scored a victory in early September. Stephen Montgomery of The NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal handed down a 33-page decision rejecting all the arguments of Forestry NSW, handing Gerry Watt a decisive victory. In a conclusion that stunned everyone who follows freedom of information issues, Montgomery said: "the public benefits from truth and transparency, in regard to the management of public assets Š an uninformed public cannot usefully participate in that debate. Š The price at which a publicly owned asset is being sold to private interests is a significant factor in that debate. It is my view that the correct and preferable decision is that the royalty rates should be disclosed". That means, even though jobs might be lost, mills might close and Forests NSW could lose money (?) by releasing its price for publicly owned trees, the need for transparency and public debate was more important than jobs!

Montgomery also said: "In my view, the factors favouring disclosure are sufficiently strong to justify disclosure." Forests NSW has 28 days to hand over the information. It will be interesting to see which state is the biggest economic fool.

Sydney Morning Herald 6.9.07

 

FORESTS - OUR CLIMATE CALMERS

Way back, long before 1750, the planet supported eight billion hectares of forest. These were vast, healthy carbon soaks and storehouses, rain makers, weather moderators and, of course, mega-rich biological systems. Since that time, humans have destroyed 6.3 billion hectares, leaving only 1.3 billion hectares of forest. Naturally (or unnaturally), this has vastly reduced the earth's water cycles, weather patterns and ecological systems. But most importantly, this destruction has dramatically reduced the earth's 'lung capacity'.

The degradation of forests and the soils they grow in could easily account for the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2 ) levels after 1750. In the past, increases in CO2 have been absorbed in the atmosphere fairly readily (for instance, emissions from volcanic activity), as shown by the Vostock ice-core samples. This natural absorption of carbon is called biosequestration.

Clearing and logging the world's forests has damaged its capacity to absorb CO2 . This forest-stripping habit of developing civilisations goes way back to pre-Christian times. Burning forest biomass for agriculture, building war ships and fuelling metal and glass furnaces not only put large whacks of carbon into the atmosphere but also took away the planet's ability to absorb even more carbon. When forests ran out, the 'civilised people' began burning other carbon, the fossilised living matter, now known as fossil fuels (coal and oil).

We still pilfer and burn these ancient carbon stores to increase our comfort, expand industries and consequently increase our numbers, creating a momentum that will be hard to slow down let alone stop . Over thousands of years, we have built up a serious debt to the planet's natural carbon stores.

To put it simply, we can't pay back this debt simply by slowing down our burning of oil and coal by using alternate technologies and biofuels. We need to immediately start soaking up the CO2 that we've put into the air above us over the centuries and transform it back into solid carbon-storage vessels called forests and trees.

"A tall wet Eucalypt forest is one of the greatest carbon storage units on the planet. It can store 1,500 tonnes per hectare without cost or effort. Nothing else can do this."

Climate chaos
Climate chaos is unavoidable even if we stop all industry and transport globally. Due to the lag effect from last century's high CO2 releases, during the coming decades we will be hit fully. If you do the sums, we should reach the critical 450 ppm of atmospheric CO2 very soon. (But don't get depressed yet - read on a bit further.) This is a tipping point expected to start a rollercoaster ride of unstoppable carbon release. Melting tundra and ice-caps, changed ocean currents, forest fires and the other disasters in waiting would all release more megatonnes into the atmosphere. If you take into account methane and other greenhouse gases, we are already at 430 ppm. So no amount of wind turbines, nuclear plants, fancy light bulbs or bicycles will stop this latent load of carbon dioxide whacking the planet for a sixer.

But wait! We're coming to the good news...

Forests - the lungs of our land
The earth and its reckless human passengers cannot avoid the CO2 levels of 450 ppm that will land us in the poo within a couple of decades. But if we start restoring forests like our lives depend on it, there is hope.

Since we started burning fossil fuels for everything from smelting iron to making jet fuel, it is estimated that we've sent some 300 billion tonnes of land-based carbon up in smoke. Compare this to the more than 2,000 billion tonnes that scientists calculate we have put into the sky by knocking down forests and degrading soils. Calculations suggest that the world's original forests biosequestered carbon at about 300 billion tonnes a year.

If we replaced just 5% of the original biosequestration ability of the world's forests (ie 15 billion tonnes of carbon a year) it should soak up the seven billion tonnes of carbon we currently burn up each year, with some to spare for absorbing our past emissions. This would go a long way towards calming the global climate chaos we are seeing. Practical and profitable options for doing this already exist.

Forests as heat moderators
The earth's original heat balance also depended largely on forests and their cloud-making talents. To a large degree, clouds and rain are a result of the transpiration of water from forests. If clouds don't form, less of the sun's heat is reflected back, causing the ground to heat and less rain to fall. This forest - cloud - rain process can govern more than 50% of the earth's heat balance. Temperature differences of 10^o C can show up between adjacent areas - one forested, one cleared - because of the cooling effect of clouds and rain. Past forest clearing could have played a large part in global water-dynamics, upsetting the earth's heat balance and triggering regional and global warming. (The Mediterranean, Middle East and Central America used to have a healthy cover of forests.) Add to this the greenhouse effect of increased CO2 and we have some serious human-induced climate chaos.

Forests - the climate cure
Letting large areas of cleared land regrow into natural forests should give us a fast-acting remedy for restoring natural water and heat processes, while locking away loads of the carbon that's causing problems overhead. But just slowing down our burning of carbon fuels might take decades, or even a century, to have an effect. That's assuming the population doesn't keep growing. If cloud densities were increased by 3% globally as a result of growing areas of forest, and solar radiation reflected back to space increased by about 1%, this should theoretically cool the planet and reduce CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels.

The solution is so obvious. However, governments and even the Kyoto Protocol are not yet considering forests as the major tool for reducing climate chaos. There are still too many easy profits to be made through their destruction.

Jill - summerised from an article published in the April - May issue of Nature and Society and from a transcript of the ABC's 'Science Show' 4.8.07.

 

BIOFUEL PUSH a mistake

The European Union's target of ensuring 10% of petrol and diesel comes from renewable sources by 2020 is not an effective way to curb carbon emissions. Australia must also avoid this path as a 'solution' to our increasing CO2 .

A team of UK-based scientists suggested that reforestation and habitat protection was a better option. Writing in the magazine Science, they said that, given the same area of land, forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could save. The increasing demand for land to grow biofuels was also leading to more deforestation, they added.

"On the same area of land, forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could save."

Dr Righelato, co-author of the study and chairman of the World Land Trust, said that the biofuel policy could actually lead to more forest destruction. Developing countries may be encouraged to cut down their forests to plant biofuel crops in order to meet the growing demand for renewable fuels. The study compared the amount of carbon absorbed by a forested area over a 30-year period with the total emissions avoided by using biofuels instead of fossil fuels during this time. They calculated that forests store 100­300 tonnes per hectare.

However, Australian research estimates forests can store up to 1,500 tonnes per hectare. The so-called second-generation biofuels, those using feed stocks such as straw, grasses and wood (wood?!) rather than grains or palm oil, offered a much better opportunity to reduce CO2. But until the price of grain rises fivefold, these other feed stocks won't be able to compete with grains and palm oil on price.

There is also global concern that using food crops for biofuels could not only jeopardise food availability but also water.

Jill / BBC News, 17.8.07

 

 

Carbon calculations

The scientific principle behind biomass is the carbon cycle. When they grow, plants absorb carbon dioxide - one carbon and two oxygen atoms (CO2 ). The carbon (C) builds tissues and feeds the plant while the oxygen (O2 ) is released. When plant material is logged and burned, or rots, the carbon recombines with oxygen. The resulting CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. This is roughly three times heavier than carbon, leading to some confusion between tonnes of carbon versus tonnes of CO2 .

 

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Brumby turbo charges global warming

The Victorian Renewables Bill allows the clearfelling of native forests to burn for 'renewable' energy. A Greens amendment to prevent this was defeated on the 9th of August when Labor, Liberal and National MPs voted to allow native forests to be thrown into furnaces.

Greens MLC, Greg Barber, said that in the run-up to the 2002 election, the state government promised that native forest wood must never be burnt for electricity in Victoria. Barber said the business case for logging Victorian native forests is collapsing as plantation timber is taking over the sawn-wood market. Now VicForests is trying to find a new reason to log native forests.

Jill/Greg Barber 9.8.07

 

 

HowaRudd on forests

Kevin Rudd is parroting John Howard on every important issue, including forest destruction. Howard slams the unions whenever he can and Rudd kicks unionists out of the Labor party for swearing. And when it comes to the forestry arm of the CFMEU, these unionists are left alone by both sides of politics.

The pro-mill, anti-forests policies of both leaders unite Rudd and Howard just as much as the pay rise for politicians. Both leaders are subservient to the bully-boy tactics of the logging industry.

HowarRudd don't have any credibility on climate change. Voters alarmed by the loss of Australia's forests and the greenhouse gases emitted by burning them will have a limited choice at the election.

 

'Fire-breaks' environmental Berlin walls

It's been a huge bonanza for logging and earth-moving companies. Since last summer's fires, reckless clearing of extremely large swathes of high-quality forest has continued under the guise of fire safety. Last April/May, the Bracks Government agreed to stop these monstrous 'fire-breaks' until a public consultation process was put in place. But more and more areas of forest have been lineally logged along tourist roads and tracks, and the practice continues. Funny thing about this is that the CFA, Victorian Association of Forest Industries, the Institute of Foresters Australia, Forest Fire Victoria and most scientists oppose the firebreaks (comments submitted to the 'Impact of Public Land Management Practices on Bushfires in Victoria' investigation). No fire-fighter would ever use these areas to tackle a fire. And backburn lines only need to be a road's width (six - ten metres), not 100 metres. In the Otways and the Mallee, these fire-breaks are more than 100 meters in width and are literally ripping the guts out of decades of land restoration.

Jill

 

The Great Snowy Dehydration project

With the drought hitting irrigators on the Murray side of the range, and Snowy Hydro finding it doesn't have enough water to generate the power it wants, Politicians are reneging on their legal promise to restore some water to the gasping Snowy River.

We've always known politicians' promises don't count for much, but now they even seem to be thumbing their noses at their legal obligations. It's been five years since a cross-border agreement was reached to return 28% of natural flows to the Snowy River. There was to be 15% returned by 2009, but since 2002 sweet f.a. has happened.

Now the Feds are talking about fixing up the Murray/Darlings' problems! Yeah, sure.

Five years ago, our governments legislated to establish the Snowy Scientific Committee to research and advise governments on the river's environmental flows. This legal promise has never been honoured. The planned release of water for 2007/2008 will be just 3.5% from the Jindabyne dam. It's a long way from the guarantee to put back 28% by 2012.

Water from the Mowamba Aqueduct was given back to the Snowy in August 2002 amidst great pomp and ceremony. Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and yes, Peter Garrett, were there to offer media photo opportunities. But in January this year, Snowy Hydro Ltd took the water back again by turning the aqueduct back on. The Snowy is still craving for that drink it was promised five years ago.

Jill

 

Thomson dam condemned to drought

Melbourne has a doomed dam that may never be full again. The Thomson Dam was built in the late 1970s/early 1980s to supply Melbourne's increasing thirst. It took around six to seven years to fill, from 1983-89. It was at its lowest level of around 17 - 18% early this year. The last time the dam was at this level was while being filled in 1984.

It is a huge dam - it would take at least six years of average rainfall to fill it! When it was originally filled during the 1980s, forest logging was nowhere near today's scale. Logging began to take off in the Thomson catchment around Baw Baw from the mid -1980s. It sky-rocketed following the signing of the RFA in 1998, and has recently been brought slightly back.

After the few big downpours we had in winter, the dam was at 38.4%, almost 10% below where it was at the end of last winter.

Sunday Age 26.8.07/Chris / Jill