Forestry’s Climate Change Contribution Visible For All To See And Breathe

A weekend of statewide smoke haze from annual forestry burn-offs has left a sour taste in the mouths of many Tasmanians and continued the logging industry’s massive contribution to annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Claims by the logging industry that the burns ‘mimic nature’ and are a necessary part of the regeneration of forests ignores scientific evidence and snubs the overwhelming community desire to see and end to the logging of oldgrowth and high conservation-value forests.

“Many of the areas the industry is currently burning are so precious that they should not have been logged at all,” said Vica Bayley, spokesperson for The Wilderness Society. “They were once habitat for endangered animals, an important protector of domestic water catchments, and massive stores of carbon, collected from the atmosphere over centuries and safely stored by the intact forest.”

Industry claims that clearfelling and burning of native forest mimics nature directly contradict scientific evidence. A 2003 study looked at the carbon stored in forest soils and analysed the carbon loss after a natural bushfire event and the loss after logging and burning.

Dean, C., Mackey, B.G., and Roxburgh, S.H. (2003), Growth Modelling of Eucalyptus regnans for carbon accounting at the landscape scale, In: Amaro, A., Reed, D., Soares, P. (eds.), Modelling Forest systems, CABI Publishing, Walliford, U.K The results are below.

“Nature doesn’t clearfell an area, leave it to dry out for a summer and then artificially ignite it to create a high intensity burn,” continued Mr Bayley.

“Forestry Tasmania’s own figures show that over 13 years to 2020, logging will release at least 26% of the carbon stored in the commercial forests they manage—that’s 13 million tonnes from state forests. Only when they reduce logging will the carbon balance begin to recover.”  

“Protecting forests is the quickest, cheapest and easiest way to begin the fight against climate change,” concluded Mr Bayley.