Covering its huge buttressed trunk are delicate green-grey lichens, vivid mosses, tiny ferns and liverworts so fine their leaves are just one cell thin. Imagine the tree towering though a dense understorey of tree-ferns, sweet-scented Sassafras and Mountain Plum Pines, its topmost branches disappearing into the mist. For centuries it has stood as a mature tree, providing food, shelter, nesting hollows, seed for the next generation and leaf litter for the soil micro-organisms, which will eventually return its bulk to the earth.

They are vital, self-renewing ecosystems at the height of their existence. Having reached an equilibrium they could be described as the ultimate in self-sufficiency. These forests are also a thriving store-house of diverse and ever-evolving genetic material. Their antiquity makes our short time on earth seem no more than the blink of an eye.

There have been many attempts to describe old-growth forests using technical definitions:

• "(containing) natural levels of biotic and structural diversity in which low to zero bio-mass production is occurring in trees" (Draft National Forest Inventory 1990)
• "...primeval...trees predate European settlement" (Clark and Blakers, 1989)
• "...unmodified forest (with a) mixture of ages of trees" (Kirk Patrick 1990)
• "...continuing availability of old-growth attributes (including) large trees, overmature trees, stags, logs, dependent fauna, biogeochemical cycling, hydrological features etc." (Gilmore, in Dyne, 1991)
• "...negligibly disturbed and ecologically mature...high conservation and intangible values" (RAC 1992)
• "...senescing (top die back) growth stage trees present in dominant, co-dominant or subdominant proportions...which may have been subject to any disturbance whose effect is currently negligible" (DCNR 1994).

However, the magic of old-growth forests go far beyond dry definitions, scientific calculations and quanitified components.

For many people, to stand alone in such an ancient and pristine sanctuary can be a moving experience. Our arrogance as a species is humbled by a sense of awe, beauty and spiritual uplifting. The grandeur is unpretentious; the atmosphere is that of millenniums of uninterrupted co-existence; a genius seems to link every part of the ordered chaos. An old growth forest is one of the few eco-systems where the human hand has not destroyed or manipulated its essential character in order to benefit our species. We are reminded how superfluous we are in the larger scheme of things.

Before Euopean settlement, 10% of Australia was forested. We have since cleared half of this and exploited and modified most of what remains. The area of original undisturbed forest is minuscule, and there is even less which is protected from logging. These stands are all we have left as pristine reservoirs of biodiversity and unaltered natural processes, yet they are still subject to prescribed burning, grazing, mining and of course clearfell logging.

Some of the more ancient trees are believed to be well over 300 years old, with the odd old forest monument reaching 400 years. Recent discoveries have shown some trees to be over 1000 years old. But these are just the overstory part of the forest. Up until recently, the less dominant understorey species were overlooked as a measure of a forest’s age. Plum Pines and even tree ferns can be well over 500 years old and possibly up to 1000. Radio carbon dating has shown that a humble Mountain Geebung can be between 500 and 1000 years old.

The image of ivory-white pillars towering high over an understory of lush tree-ferns is only one type of old-growth forest. Equally valuable areas comprise of shrubby dry eucalypt forest, such as box/Ironbark and rain-shadow woodland. Alpine and coastal woodlands can also fit both the technical and intangible definition of old-growth. In all of these forests a multitude of species and ecological processes thrive without any human interference or management.

One obvious value of these age-old ecosystems is as habitat for the species which depend on tree hollows and a healthy natural understorey. Many of Australia’s threatened fauna rely on unaltered forest habitats. The large hollows in trees are necessary for possums, gliders, cockatoos and forest owls such as the Masked, Sooty and Powerful Owls.

Large hollows only begin to form in trees of about 120 years old. Once a forest is clearfelled and becomes part of a ‘managed’ forest estate, with 50-80 year clearfell rotations, the hollow dependent fauna will not return.

Animals like the Spot-tailed Quoll and the Long-footed Potoroo like to forage amongst the natural understory. As an example of how important large areas of old growth are, one pair of owls can require up to 3000 ha. Powerful Owls only hunt possums and gliders. These prey species also need hollows for shelter and breeding. To prevent a small area of old growth being ‘hunted out’, owls need to move over very large territories. Therefore saving a hollow tree for an owl to nest in does not mean it will survive, if it is left only a small reserve of old forest.

A single grand old eucalypt felled for timber and woodchips can fill a log jinker, so massive is the girth. It would have provided a home and breeding hollows for hundreds of generations of wildlife such as greater gliders and powerful owls, yet provides one hours work for three men. As old trees often have imperfections such as hollow centres, sap pockets and twists, it is not unusual to have about 95% of the tree wasted or chipped.

Not only in Australia, but worldwide ancient forested areas are being reduced in size. These fragments are then becoming isolated from each other which further erodes their ability to survive in the long-term. In Australia, the pressure on our remaining forests is as great as in any Third World country. The viability and complexity of these forests is being eroded daily. Right now, areas with recognised conservation values and threatened species are being systematically destroyed, leaving smaller and smaller cameo patches.

Ancient forests are the original soul of our planet. Just as we could never re-construct a living Tasmanian Tiger from its bones, after ancient forests have been cleared back to bare earth they can never regrow as the same perfectly tuned system they once were.

With plantations able to provide all our timber and paper needs in Australia, we no longer need to log native forests. Our surviving forests are simply too valuable and irreplaceable to be used for short-lived products. They should be protected - not just in small reserves as natural curioisties or even as human ‘leisure centres’, but for their own intrinsic value and as global antiques of the natural world.

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