Victoria’s native forest industry – the numbers just don’t stack-up

Victoria’s ‘forest industry’ is a multi-billion dollar industry that is currently thriving and looking to expand. Yet, some politicians and commentators seem to delight in declaring that thousands of jobs will be lost, that entire towns will shut down, that this is an attack on rural life, it will gut the rural community and Orbost and Hayfield will be ‘wiped out’. All because of the Victorian Government’s recent announcement of new areas of protected forest and a native forest logging phase-out by 2030.

To help understand the Victorian forest industry and the role of native forest logging, SOSF member Brendan Nugent (brendannugent@hotmail.com) has collated the below information. References are listed at the end.

Employment

The native forest logging sector is a small part of the Victorian forestry industry.

There are only 500 FTE jobs directly employed in the native forest logging industry (Deloitte, 2017) and will be assisted with a $120 Million transition package, compared with 20,000 in the Victorian forestry industry (VAFI, 2017). This is just 1 in 40 Victorian forestry jobs.

Around 1,500 people are employed in processing manufacturing that use some proportion of wood from native forests (Deloitte, 2017). Over 850 of these 1,500 jobs are at the Australian Paper mill in Maryvale which already sources a majority of its wood from Victorian plantations and supports over 5,500 jobs across Victoria (Australian Paper Sustainability Report, 2018).

In North East Victoria the forestry industry is already based in plantations and is large employer in the region with many hundreds of people employed in the planting, management, harvesting and haulage of plantation wood. Major local businesses who rely on plantations include Alpine MDF, Alpine truss, Visy and D&R Henderson who alone directly employ 400 hundred people with the sawn timber, MDF products and laminated particleboard produced at their Benalla plant from plantations (D&R Henderson, 2019).

Strathbogie Forest Protected – At Last!

Victorian Environment Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, announcing protection of the Strathbogie Forest.

Save Our Strathbogie Forest  – Media release, 11 Nov. 2019

Victorian Government Announces Permanent Protection for the Strathbogie Forest

The Save Our Strathbogie Forest (SOSF) community campaign, with it’s hundreds of members and thousands of supporters, applauds the Andrews Government’s announcement last week to remove all logging and immediately protect the Strathbogie Forest.

Bertram Lobert, spokesperson for SOSF, said “By taking this step the Andrews Government is showing far-sighted leadership with regards to Victoria’s natural environment and climate-change action – recognizing the over-arching value of these forests for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water yields, recreation and ecotourism, over and above their short-term value for low-grade timber products.  This is a great day for our forest, and for many other significant areas of native forest to be protected forever as a part of this package announced by the Government last week.  What we now need to ensure is that these commitments are followed through, and that the Government keeps working to protect other, irreplaceable native forests in Victoria.”

 “SOSF has campaigned tirelessly for increased protections for the Strathbogie Forest since 2013, and we are delighted that this Government has listened to regional Victorians and responded with such far-reaching, positive outcomes for the natural environment and for all Victorians.”

Protection of the Strathbogie Forest will:

• Expand nature-based tourism and build the tourism economy in surrounding local government areas.
• Protect one of the healthiest populations of the nationally threatened Greater Glider possum in all Victoria, along with 36 other threatened and iconic native species.
• Create opportunity for an expanded hardwood plantations sector and remove loss-making native forest logging.
• Provide opportunity for Traditional Owners to manage country.
• Protect the highest conservation value forests in the entire Strathbogie Ranges, along with the host of native species that have already disappeared from elsewhere in the ranges.
• Improve water yields from these forests into Murray-Darling Basin, and
• Achieve the annual sequestration of significant amounts of carbon-dioxide-equivalents.