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Logging and bushfires

By Mark Poynter - posted Wednesday, 25 January 2012


That paper – entitled "Effects of logging on fire regimes in moist forests" – was published in the online journal, Conservation Letters, in October 2009. It was a brief literature review withan overwhelming focus on research from the wet temperate forests of North America and tropical rainforests of the Asia-Pacific and South America. Only one reference cited an Australian study. Yet, despite its lack of local context, the paper raised highly questionable concerns about so-called 'industrial logging' and its influence on Victorian forest fire regimes.

Normally, ecologists are careful not to draw strong conclusions for the Australian context from overseas research findings based on very different ecosystems subject to different cultural and management influences. But in this case, any deference to caution disappeared when the paper became a platform for leveraging the powerful message that "Decades of industrial logging in Australia's wet forests have made them more fire prone, raising urgent fire management issues …"

Again, this message was promoted through a series of rather sensational media reports and an ANU media release as follows:

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  • December 8, 2009: ABC News report "Scientist links forest logging to bushfires";
  • February 11, 2010: ABC Science report "Logging makes forests more flammable: study";
  • March 1, 2010: ANU media release "Forest logging creates fire traps: academic", plus an article in Australasian Science;
  • March 2, 2010: Report in Tasmania's The Mercury daily newspaper: "Logging legacy labelled greater fire risk"; and
  • March 5, 2010: ABC Radio interview of Professor Lindenmayer: "Industrial logging linked to frequency and severity of fire".

Again, the timing of this publicity sequence was quite revealing. In particular, the delaying of the promotional ANU media release until March 2010 – some four months after the paper had been published – conveniently coincided with media reportage of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission's examination of the effect of land management policies and practices on bushfire risk.

There is no dispute that huge areas of younger regrowth have been created at the expense of older mountain ash forest in Victoria's Central Highlands over the past 85 years. But the determination of ANU scientists to link this to logging raises questions about wider motives and scientific objectivity.

The most recent Lindenmayer et al (2011) paper ignores long-standing knowledge of these forests in asserting that ".... logging has converted 90% of formerly old forest to young regenerating stands". This is just wrong as it is overwhelmingly wildfire which has created the preponderance of regrowth that currently dominates the Central Highlands' mountain ash forests.

In both 1926 and 1939, extensive bushfires burned across the region. In combination, they killed some 85% of the region's mountain ash, thereby converting huge areas of old forest to regrowth. Later, the 1983 'Ash Wednesday' bushfires killed an additional 14,000 hectares of mountain ash and converted it to regrowth.

Today's logging is concentrated in these regrowth forests with all remnant old forests reserved. The comparative impacts of bushfire and logging on creating regrowth was exemplified by the 2009 'Black Saturday' bushfires which, in just a few days, killed (and naturally regenerated) approximately 33,000 hectares of Central Highlands' mountain ash forest. This is an area equivalent to 50 to 60-years of logging at the current rate.

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Most Victorian forests are simply not available for logging.In the Central Highlands, sustainable timber harvesting is limited to within only about a third of the region's mountain ash forest. This portion is overwhelmingly comprised of 1939-origin regrowth forest. Any larger pre-1900-origin trees found amongst the regrowth are excluded from harvesting.

It almost beggars belief that ANU scientists could be unaware of the broad extent of logged and unlogged forest and the respective impacts of bushfire and logging in the Central Highlands, given their extensive research into Leadbeater's Possum over several decades. This has at times involved working with Victoria's forest management agencies to develop and refine management strategies and prescriptions to minimise environmental impacts during timber harvesting.

Given this level of knowledge and expertise, it is alarming that several other assertions contained in the recent Lindenmayer et al (2011) paper are so at odds with the reality.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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