The burning of Tasmania

Vica Bayley

FORESTRY’S CLIMATE CHANGE CONTRIBUTION VISIBLE FOR ALL TO SEE AND BREATHE

“Action to preserve the remaining areas of natural forest is urgent.”

Sir Nicholas Stern - STERN REVIEW: The Economics of Climate Change

A full two weeks 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.

At the heart of the community outrage over the widespread burning is
the fact that many of the areas the industry is currently burning were
so precious that they should not have been logged at all. They were
once habitat for endangered wildlife, 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.1 The results are below.

Forest status: Soil carbon stored

Unlogged: 670 tonnes per ha

Natural wild fire: 654 tonnes per ha (16 tonnes or 2.4% lost)

Harvested:

97 tonnes per ha (573 tonnes or 85% lost)

The scientific evidence is clear. In terms of carbon loss from
forest soils, where a large component of total forest carbon is stored,
there is nothing ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ about logging in Tasmania. 85%
of carbon is lost because of logging and burning, compared to a loss of
only 2.4% due to a natural fire. 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.

Even using Forestry Tasmania’s own conservative figures, a recent
report they commissioned showed that over 23 years to 2030, logging
will release at least 28% of the carbon stored in the commercial
forests they manage.2 That’s a total decrease of 13 million tonnes of
carbon storage from the forests they log. These are the net greenhouse
gas emissions that none of the glossy brochures or websites that the
industry produces tells you about. Nor were these massive emissions
discussed in the report Forestry Tasmania commissioned. Only when they
reduce logging in about 2027 (data found in other FT publications),
will the carbon balance begin to recover.

...

http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/tassie-burns/