Kamala Emanuel & Alex Bainbridge
In 1995, massive opposition to export woodchipping poured onto the streets of major cities in Australia. At the time, at least 80% of Australians were opposed to woodchipping in old-growth forests.
Ten years later, despite campaign successes in some areas, woodchipping continues to be rampant. Tasmania has the dubious honour of being the woodchip capital of Australia. More than five million tonnes of woodchips are extracted from Tasmania every year more than the rest of the country combined although the exact figures are kept secret, ostensibly to protect the commercial interests of woodchip giant Gunns Ltd.
Woodchipping is still deeply unpopular. A January 28 Newspoll found that 85% of Australians supported an end to woodchipping in Tasmania's old-growth forests. The national and international media have reported critically on Tasmania's forestry industry, including a full-page article by best-selling author Bryce Courtenay in the February 29 Sunday Telegraph and a feature on the February 16 Four Corners program.
In 2001, the government-initiated "Tasmania Together" community consultation process found that a majority of Tasmanians favoured an end to clear-felling in old-growth forests. A target was then set to end clear-felling in particular high conservation value old-growth forests by January 2003, and to end all clear-felling in old-growth by 2010. The government has faced a growing barrage of opposition after ignoring the 2003 target.
Until 1995, the federal government issued export woodchip licences every year. This kept the issue in the public spotlight and gave environmental campaigners an annual focus for lobbying and protest.
Since then, there have been a series of Regional Forest Agreements (RFA). These have typically increased forest reserves while allowing unsustainable forest practices such as woodchipping and clear-felling to continue without limit in unprotected areas.
In Tasmania this has resulted in record timber extraction from state forests, including icon areas such as the Styx Valley and the Tarkine. The Styx Valley close to Hobart is home to the tallest hardwood trees in the world and is on the edge of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Every year 300-600 hectares are logged in the Styx.
The Tarkine is a temperate rainforest in the north-west of Tasmania, with natural and cultural world heritage values. It is the largest area of rainforest in Australia and includes a rich variety of animal species over 50 of which are endangered. Last year, the state Labor government lifted a 20-year moratorium on logging in the Tarkine.
There are campaigns to save other areas in Tasmania, including the Blue Tier in the state's north and the Weld Valley in the south-west.
Woodchipping of old-growth forest is an ecological nightmare, usually associated with clear-felling. It destroys timber industry jobs and the viability of small sawmills while at the same time extracting record volumes of timber.
"Over 70% of forests logged are clear-felled in Tasmania, destroying habitats and most of the wildlife they support", Helen Gee wrote on the Wilderness Society website. "Over 90% of the timber extracted from natural forests is woodchipped and only 5% ends up as sawn timber (an estimated 5 million cubic metre of woodchips are sold, mainly to Japan)."
Graham Green from the Timber Workers for Forests argued in a report released in May, Clearfelling and woodchipping in Australia — an economic appraisal, that "the economics of clear-felling and woodchipping is little more than the economics of short-term greed where workers, human communities and the forest ecosystem are all degraded so that a privileged few can benefit".
The amount of land cleared annually in Tasmania increased from 8000 hectares in 1997, when the RFA was signed, to over 14,000 hectares in 2002. Virtually all of the increased volume extracted came from woodchipping (and not sawlogs or veneer).
During the same period, the publicly owned Forestry Tasmania's earnings fell from 33% to around 15%. The return to the public purse decreased even as the volume of woodchips extracted increased. During the same period, Gunns' profits soared.
According to Green, Gunns prefers woodchipping due to its high profit margin: "In 2000 Gunns achieved a 22% [profit] margin on its woodchip operations, compared to a 12% margin on its sawn timber operations."
According to Four Corners, Gunns makes 60% of its profits from woodchipping, and its share price has surged 900% in five years.
Low woodchip royalties amount to a subsidy to the industry, and undercut the cost of plantation timber. Hidden subsidies are also found in state funding for roads, plantation and forest maintenance, and fire-fighting.
Further public handouts include the $272 million of forestry debt absorbed by the state in 1990 and the recently-revealed transfer of crown land to freehold title in the name of Forestry Tasmania.
To top it off, the state government has made Forestry Tasmania exempt from the state's freedom of information laws. The climate of unaccountability was confirmed by former Forest Practices Board officer Bill Manning, who told last year's Senate inquiry into the forestry industry that numerous breaches of the forest practices code were never prosecuted.
Woodchipping is not carried out on the same scale in other states, but is similarly destructive. The Victorian government has promised to protect the Otways by 2008, and other forests. However, the "vast majority of logging occurs in the east of the state", where "widespread forest destruction" continues "at an increasing rate", Gavan McFadzean of the Wilderness Society told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
In NSW, around a million hectares have been protected since Bob Carr's election. However, a significant amount of logging still occurs, especially in rainforests in the state's south.
All this points to the need to challenge the profits-first orientation of the big timber corporations.
This must include clear support for workers in the industry, who shouldn't have to pay the price of industry restructuring. The considerable profits of corporations like Gunns, which have been made possible by state subsidies and low wages, should be spent on retraining and re-employment in environmentally benign jobs.
The big players in the industry must be brought under public ownership, along with the restoration of all crown land that was made freehold. Only in this way, with transparent structures to involve the work force and the community, can the forestry industry be run on an ecologically sustainable basis, geared to meet social needs for timber products without sacrificing the environment in pursuit of profit.
Clear-felling of old-growth forest must end immediately, with single-specimen selective harvesting introduced instead, except in high conservation value forests, where all logging must be ended. The majority of logs should be sourced from existing plantations.
Plantations should be made sustainable (with a diversity of spcies, rather than exotic monocultures for instance) and natural habitats should be restored. Alternative fibres such as hemp and sugar-cane waste should be reintroduced, expanded or developed to replace wood pulp where possible.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 10, 2004.
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