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).

Kids get the value of forests

The art exhibition theme was Wild Strathbogie

Local Primary School kids were asked to express their feelings and impressions about the forests of Wild Strathbogie – here are some of the fabulous results.

Does wood burning emit more pollution than coal?

Biofuel furnace to heat hydroponic tomatoes; it runs 365 days per year (the BOC tank hold CO2 for the glasshouse).

Is large-scale native forest biomass burning coming to Victoria? With NSW jumping in, it seems there’s a good chance that we’ll follow. And with the State Govt. happy to find more markets for ‘forest waste’ (our forests!), Blind Freddy could predict VicForests’ response. We’ve already seen the  impact of one, relatively small biofuel operation (image at left and here & here). Imagine the impact of a power plant producing electricity to run a town or a city – very scary!!

But is burning wood better than burning coal? Leaving the issue of living, breathing, biodiverse, planet-cooling, mixed-age, carbon-rich forests aside…

The furnace in operation.

“.. biomass plants emit nearly 50 percent more carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced than coal plants, the study concluded.

“One reason is that wood doesn’t burn as hot as coal, so the same level of emissions produces less power. Another is that wood contains a lot of moisture, so it is a less efficient feedstock than coal or gas.” Read the full US-based report here. If you know of similar local studies, please share.

You might think that a glasshouse only needs heating in winter, but Murphy Fresh run their boiler 365 days per year, even on heat-wave days. Now, with winter approaching “They are really putting through a lot of chips. Coming out from Mansfield in the morning you can see a haze that practically covers the whole Mansfield basin.” (comment from a local).

Burning wood as industrial fuel might sound reasonable, but the devil is in the detail. Once a process becomes industrial and integrated into a broader economy, it develops a life of it’s own – forests beware!

This is what’s devouring Tolmie native forest; 10,000 T/yr – note the log-pile and chips at bottom left.

 

 

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/04/02/3174184/report-wood-burning-power-plants.html#storylink=cpy

Native forests chipped to grow hydroponic tomatoes!

This is largely what’s left of a 35 yr old native forest at Tolmie, NE Victoria.

[Following on from the previous post about chipping native forest to grow tomatoes]

VicForests’ claim that only ‘forest residue’, or ‘forest waste’, is sent to the chipper for use as biofuel, is patently false. Chippers are fussy beasts, they consume only straight logs – no bendy, branchy bits for them! And if the log is a little too big for the chipper, it doesn’t head to the sawmill, NO, it’s split on-site so that it will fit in. Take a look at these pics, showing a VicForests Tolmie coupe before and after harvest. 90% of this ‘forest residue’  is supplied to Murphy Fresh for chipping and use in their biofuel boiler (to grow hydroponic tomatoes). And if Murphy Fresh doesn’t want it, then it becomes a mountain of firewood for the people of Mansfield.

Q. Why is VicForests logging this 35 yr old forest, rather than letting the trees mature and develop high quality timber?
A. Apparently these fire-damaged trees will not produce good, future sawlogs. But why clear-fell the whole coupe? We can only assume that VicForests’ priority is to produce woodchips and firewood today and an even-aged stand of trees for future harvesting (pulp? sawlogs?).

If you want to know how to turn a healthy, growing forest into hydroponic tomatoes  – click a pic and read on.

VicForests Tolmie coup (35 yr old) before logging; young, straight trees – hardly a sawlog in sight.

The same VicForests Tolmie coupe after harvest.

Look what’s left on the ground after logging has finished – all will be burnt!

The contractor has finished – all to be burnt.

Most of this ‘forest waste’ is headed to Murphy Fresh. Note the larger logs split to fit into the chipper.

Most of the timber from the Tolmie coupe ends up here at Murphy Fresh. This pile of chips was once the young, healthy, though burnt, forest shown earlier!

‘Forest waste’ in the firewood contractor’s yard.

Only about 10% of the coupe timber makes it to the firewood contractor’s yard. None of these will be sawlogs. Why not?

What doesn’t end up being chipped and burnt to grow hydroponic tomatoes, ends up in these huge piles of firewood.

[All images by Doug Vance]

You could be forgiven for thinking we live in a developing country – what’s happening at Tolmie, looks a little like forest practices in Indonesia. Do DEPI and Minister Peter Walsh, or even Minister Ryan Smith, know that VicForests is trashing valuable public assets simply to grow glasshouse tomatoes? Either way, yes or no, it’s a travesty and will turn once healthy, multi-age, biodiverse forests into tree farms.

Tolmie biofuel logging continues

Here’s a stack of nice, straight logs at the Murphy Fresh glasshouse, ready for the biofuel chipper. Obviously forest waste!!!

Here’s a short piece from our Mansfield correspondent, Doug Vance.

“More disturbing news from Tolmie. They are still logging and stacking logs at the Bridge Creek Greenhouse of Murphy Fresh. Thought they had finished for the year but obviously they have started on another coupe. This stupidity so needs to be stopped.”

Do Coles and  Flavorite Tomatoes know how Murphy’s grow their tomatoes?

Here are two photos of the previously burnt forest before it was logged, just to show how long and straight the trees were (in case it’s not obvious from the stacked logs). An absolute waste of  valuable timber and a recovering forest! And an aerial pic of the stack pictured above. Another stack is being made next to this one.

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How much timber does the Murphy Fresh boiler need? Well, the boiler runs 365 days per year, we understand, and Murphy Fresh has an allocation of about 10,000 tonnes of native forest wood per year – no wonder they need a very big stack of logs. And all this timber is presumably green, they’re burning green wood! It may not be particularly efficient, but it’s cheap! Cheap, because VicForests can supply the wood to Murphy’s at below-commercial cost. The invisible cost is borne by the forest and the catchment. The coupes where these trees were harvested will now slowly but surely be transformed into tree farms with 30 yr rotations – goodbye natural forest.