This week privately-owned native forestry in NSW received a brand new set of work-practice codes intended to galvanise the legality of this long-term carbon-capture venture, and to ensure harvesting rights many decades from now.
As part of these new guidelines there are clear expectations around canopy regeneration and sustainable logging practice but sprinkled throughout the document is the word 'silvaculture' to highlight working forest science that grows trees for production.
On the federal level there was $86 million allocated ahead of the budget to establish new timber plantations.
With sawlog demand never so high it is ironic that there has been a reduction in availability of state forests for logging, and an over-subscription of resource to the biggest corporate players, lately resulting in a penalty to Forestry Corporation. Private farm-forestry, meanwhile, continues to be managed for sustainability.
Fifth-generation timber-feller Ben Hanna, Whiporie, has been selectively logging the same stands of eucalypt for four decades, with careful harvest taking place every 15-20 years. "My father's earliest memory was of riding atop a load of logs hauled by bullock team," he said.
Trees at harvest are selected for their ability to yield clean, structural timber, measuring 32-35cm at the mid-section of the useable trunk. Tops are left in the forest as habitat; extra fuel load cleaned out by a cool season fire. Dry Hereford cows grazing the understory help keep plants down. Logs are milled on-farm. Planks are kiln dried using solar to assist gas and with this record wet barring bush work the decision to value-add timber through drying and dressing is keeping the family enterprise open for business, employing long-term and loyal local crew.
Mr Hanna resides in the Page electorate and one of its promising candidates is federal independent climate-first proponent Dr Hannabeth Luke who, in agreement with the other 22 climate-first independent candidates this election, wants to see rural and regional areas prosper sustainably and with resilience.
"Reforestation is one element of a larger Northern Rivers net-zero emission plan," she says. "We've been talking about this for a long time."
While welcoming the one-billion new trees initiative, and the ability for forestry to sequester carbon, she also sees problems with the majority of that effort going into plantation pine, typically radiata - an imported species from the southern US that require pesticides to thrive and burn badly in fire.
"Reforestation needs to be one element of a larger Northern Rivers net-zero emission plan," she says. "We've been talking about this for a long time, but it's time for action.
"It's important to note that people will continue to buy hardwood, but if it is not available locally they will likely come from unsustainably harvested forests in SE Asia.
While welcoming the one-billion new trees initiative, and the ability for forestry to sequester carbon, she also sees problems with the majority of that effort going into plantation pine.
"Pine plantations are not good for koalas," she says. "Hardwood forests managed in line with best science can also provide can be healthy and productive forests, including koala habitat.
"We have a clash of land use and legislation with red and green tape working against each other. We need to rethink the management of land, because currently we're not getting a good outcome for industry or koalas. Sustainable, well-managed hardwood forestry on farms could provide a long-term income stream for farmers while sequestering carbon, building soils and stabilising steep slopes and vulnerable landscapes."
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