In the world game — football (or soccer) — an own goal is when a player accidentally scores against their team. But own goals are not confined to the football pitch.
Evidence-free policy and management threaten to kick a slew of own goals, via demands to intensively thin native forests. Thinning is where more than half of a forest’s trees are removed in some cases, leaving fewer, more widely spaced stems in what then often becomes a radically altered forest.
Thinning is done by heavy machinery, with the timber typically used for firewood, woodchips or making paper. Because thinning demands such machinery, an extensive, expensive road network is needed. This means it costs money to thin forests, and the government bodies responsible for forest management make losses.
Recent popular books and commentaries have called for the widespread thinning of national parks and state forests. Forestry industry lobby groups also routinely call for forest thinning, especially after wildfires such as the Black Summer of 2019-20.
The logic of such calls is that thinning reduces the risk of wildfires. Yet empirical evidence shows it either has no effect on the severity of wildfires or worsens them in some cases. One study found that thinning operations significantly increased the fuel hazard by adding 24 tonnes per hectare of fuel to the forest floor. This can increase the severity of wildfires, not only endangering the integrity of the forest itself but also putting nearby communities at increased fire risk.
Thinned forests also allow more sunlight through sparser forest canopy, drying out fuel and permitting more wind to blow across it, thereby driving the more rapid spread of a potential fire. Even the government’s forestry guidelines warn of the increased fire dangers posed by thinning.
Further, removing large numbers of trees from forests generates significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions (up to hundreds of tonnes per hectare), not only during logging operations but also because the trees are used for firewood, woodchips (for export) or for making paper or box liners. These forest products have a short time in the carbon life cycle before they go to landfill and generate yet further emissions.
It is critical to understand that trees are mostly carbon, so thinning forests and turning timber into short-life products liberates much of that carbon to the atmosphere. Importantly, there is a long delay of hundreds if not thousands of years between when carbon emissions from logging first occur and when that carbon is fixed by trees. The more carbon that stays in the atmosphere for longer, the more potent global heating is and the higher the temperatures that result.
Beyond this, thinning forests also impacts biodiversity. A vast number of animal and plant species are strongly dependent on the understorey and other plants that can be lost or badly damaged during industrial thinning operations. It is a critical part of the habitat that is home to critically endangered species such as Victoria’s faunal emblem, the leadbeater’s possum. These animals cannot exist when their habitat is removed. In fact, the more layers of forest that exist, the more species of birds and other animals that can coexist.
The best climate solution for forests is to leave them intact and not log or thin them at all. Forests need to recover from decades of overlogging and gross mismanagement by industry and logging agencies. They need less disturbance, not more. Indeed, other key work indicates that if we were to stop logging native forests in Australia, we would reach our 43% GHG reduction targets by 2030 (and have some margin left over to offset some of our other emissions like those from the transport sector).
The overwhelming conclusion of the body of scientific work done on fire risk, carbon emissions and biodiversity conservation is that thinning forests is a bad idea. Making sure we do not have widespread thinning in forests is a critical way to reduce the risks of yet more evidence-free forest policy management own goals.
An intelligent and logical article, which will fall on deaf ears. Politics, again, is the art of being seen to do something while achieving absolutely nothing, or even the exact reverse of the proposed intentions. Look at shark nets, or first homebuyers’ grants. Both completely useless. But many in the voting population believe they work, so they remain, invulnerable to evidence. Tell a politician that tree canopies spread when other trees are removed, or that dried brush burns faster, and the pollie will freeze up like an old computer for several seconds, and then begin calling you a communist.
the problem is our decision makers, such as Tanya Plibersek, are hopelessly conflicted. THey have got their factions to worry about, they have to worry about being wedged by the opposition, they have to please the boss or lose their portfolio in the next reshuffle, they have to worry about what the parties actual policy is as well as their own feelings on the matter at hand. They have to worry about doing the right thing by the electorate that put them there in the first place to do the right thing. Importantly they also need to worry about what secret things going on between themselves and party donors or even direct bribes which are most likely in direct conflict with doing the right thing.
We would never let such people make any personal decisions for us but we put them in charge of the country and give them power to disburse billions of our money. Amazing.
Next election, cross out the major parties and, among the rest, look for someone who is unaligned with any self interested group, as far as you can tell from the information you get, and vote for them.
We need to get rid of both the LNP and Labor. Or at least make it harder for them to make corrupt choices.
I see no evidence at least in NSW or Victoria that forestry exists. I see departments of forest destruction. NSW Forestry Corp hardwoods loses about 20 million a year. It is not impossible to have a degree of sustainable harvesting, but that is not what is done. We clearfall and then have a shambles of a forest with all trees the same age and no habitat. It is time to stop harvesting old growth forest. I disagree with LIndenmayer in terms of having no management in our National Parks, (though not about much else) we need a long term plan because we have allowed them to become catastrophes in waiting, with large amounts of small highly flammable understory. However wherever you look the long term records in forest show very little in the way of destructive fores pre European invasion/colonisation. Both Lindenmayer and Taylor have shown the Victorian forestry mob to have logged unlawfully on dozens of occasions, but nothing has happened. Nor has it in NSW. You could put the workers on a life pension and probably save money and surely there would be many jobs in restoration.
The West Australian newspaper used to publish annual lists of average earnings in different occupations. Forestry workers earned more than GPs. And probably less than coal mine workers although there are too few of them to form an average?
In Australia, if logging old growth forests is a bad idea, you can be assured that more of it will happen.
To great political acclaim it was stopped in WA. Except, of course, where the forest grows where a mining company wants to strip mine and destroy the landscape and everything that lives in it. Especially an American company.
Disappointing lack of responses to this column. These guys are among the greatest experts in the world on this topic. They have worked tirelessly to save our forests from destruction.