Forest Fights

Yesterday Kevin Rudd was in Tassie (my home state, even though I live in QLD now). He was talking about forests, of course. Tasmanian politics has largely been about forest management for a long time now. Old growth logging, plantations, pulp mills, wood chipping - all have been on the agenda. It was another pulp mill proposal, back in the early 1990s (? I think ?) that gave the Greens their first entry into the Tasmanian parliament, and set up Bob Browns political career. And now Kevin Rudd has been in Tassie announcing his forest policy for the state.

I guess that makes sense. Mark Lathams' policy at the last election cost him quite a lot, and gave John Howard some wonderful photo opportunities with union members. Labors policy (see here) seems to be exactly the same as John Howards from that election. Although - I don't think that policy was ever implemented by the government? I'll have to check that out, but I think it was another non-core promise once the election was won. Anyway...

Personally, I don't like the way that Tassies forests are being managed. Turning our old growth forests into wood chips and shipping them to Japan seems almost criminal to me. I think the forests are worth much more than what we can get for them as wood chips.

Also - if the Japanese can turn these woodchips into pulp and paper and make a profit, then why can't we do it? But the whole pulp mill story is a saga in itself... some other time.

Is it a good policy? Well, it'll probably win him some votes back in northern tassie. The Greens dont like it, but that was pretty much guaranteed, no matter what he announced. So it's probably good politics.

Is it good for the forests and Tassie in general? Probably not, in the long term. I think we should have a plan to stop clear felling old growth or native forests completely. That should be the aim. Clearfelling plantations, of course, isn't a problem since they were specifically grown for that purpose. But native forests should be managed in such a way that they are not clear felled, but selectively logged for high value timbers. I don't know how practical or economic that would be, but it should be something to look into. As always - to be really informed I need to get a lot more information... oh well...

Other links to this subject.
Blogocracy, The Mercury, Tasmanian Times

More to be added later...