Woodchipping in Australia:
The Real Impact

Australia's native forests have been the scene of a hard-fought battle between the forestry industry and environmentalists for many years. One of the major reasons for this has been the forestry industry's rapacious appetite for cheap woodchips from native forests. A team of forest campaigners from around Australia show why the woodchipping of native forests is unsustainable.

In the last twenty years many of the world's great forest resources have been exploited to the point where they will no longer yield old-growth timber. The forests of north-west USA, the huge tracts of forest in British Columbia, and many of the large, tropical, hardwood forests in southern Central America and South-East Asia have all been plundered. Very few large areas of exploitable hardwood remain.

In recognition of a likely global timber shortfall, many countries and companies around the world began planting eucalypts for pulp ten to fifteen years ago. The impending availability of a highly valuable, uniform resource which requires far fewer chemical and mechanical inputs to turn into paper than other pulpwood sources, is fuelling a fire sale of the world's last old-growth hardwood forests. The aim is to cut the old-growth forests before timber from the hardwood plantations floods the market. This fire sale extends to Australia, where companies and State governments are scrambling to woodchip the old-growth forests, threatening the loss of some of this country's most significant natural areas. The areas most threatened include:

• World Heritage-quality forests of western Tasmania;
• rainforests and old-growth forests of the Tarkine region in northern Tasmania;
• Tantawangalo and Coolangubra forests in south-eastern NSW;
• karri and jarrah forests of south-west Western Australia;
• unreserved old-growth forests in East Gippsland, Victoria.
• unique Mountain Ash forests in Central Victoria

The forests of northern NSW and Queensland, which currently are only subjected to low-intensity woodchipping, represent a large and untapped woodchip resource in Australia. With comprehensive regional assessments being proposed for both areas, there is a high probability that major woodchipping proposals will be put forward for these forests as well.

We have reached a significant point in the forest debate. The long-term future of Australia's forests will depend on the quality of decisions which are made now. This article presents a range of issues associated with the woodchipping of native forests in Australia. The issues are common to all States to a greater or lesser degree and include:

• the inappropriate use of fire which has had a devastating impact upon the ecosystems through
• direct and collateral damage;
• The significant impact of woodchipping on biodiversity values around Australia;
• the creation of soil and water management problems;
• regeneration failure or very slow growth responses in many of the forest areas subjected to
• woodchipping and clearfelling.

Dispelling Forest Industry Myths

There is a widespread view in the community that current woodchipping is not good for the environment. The forest industry has recognised this and is involved in a large-scale public relations campaign to change people's minds. There are four myths about its practices that the forestry industry would have us believe.

The first myth
"Current forestry in Australia is environmentally sustainable and the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) has supported that view."

This proposition so misrepresents the findings of the RAC that in a recent document, The Development of Scientific Criteria for Commonwealth Government Purchases of Environmentally Preferred Paper Products..., the Commonwealth Environment Protection Agency (CEPA) felt it necessary to state that
"...the RAC inquiry report recognised a difference between obtaining sustainable fibre yield from native forests and maintaining viable ecosystems". In a definitive response to the arguments raised in respect of the sustainability of old-growth forest logging, CEPA said that such logging "...has been demonstrated to be environmentally unsustainable".

Notes: In addition, native forests in Victoria and Tasmania are woodchipped for domestic pulp production. AMCOR currently sources 370,000 tonnes of native forest woodchips from North Forest Products in Tasmania, while Kimberly Clark Australia ( a 50% Amcor subsidiary) sources from Victoria's Otways Ranges. Gunns Kilndried Limited in Tasmania has a 200,000 tonne export woodchip licence granted but has no market yet. There are also proposals for large increases in export woodchipping in Tasmania and Queensland. Source: Native Forest Network

The second myth
"The woodchipping of forests is merely an adjunct to the sawlogging industry, cleaning up the residues of sawlogging operations."

This was probably never the case. The residues referred to by the industry are often eucalypt trees up to six hundred years old with the hollows, broken crowns and rotten centres on which so many native animals, including gliding possums, koalas, parrots and owls, are dependent.

Many of the forests now being clearfelled for woodchips could not produce sawlogs economically. Without a woodchipping industry they would be left alone. The forests in some logging coupes in Tasmania yield as little as four percent sawlogs, with the so-called residue comprising ninety-six per cent of the wood produced from the coupe. Woodchipping does not clear the residue from sawlog operations, the sawlogs are the residue.

The third myth
"Woodchipping is merely a prelude to the establishment of downstream processing for pulp and paper."

Perhaps in recognition of the industry's failure to establish downstream processing, Bob Hawke, in the 1990 Environment Statement, made a commitment to the phase-out of woodchipping by the year 2000. In the increasingly discredited National Forests Policy Statement of 1992 this was amended to a phase-out of export woodchips in favour of downstream processing. However, two years on, it appears that while increases in export woodchips are being sought, nothing is being done to establish downstream processing of native forest. This is in stark contrast to the expansion and investment occurring in the processing of softwood plantations.

The fourth myth
"Woodchipping is good for the national and regional economies."

Statistics of forestry industry employment (see below) indicate that the large expansion of woodchip volumes has occurred at the same time as a decrease in employment in the native forest logging and processing sector. This has also occurred during a period of growth in Australia's total workforce.

The Alternatives to Woodchipping

Australian Conservation Foundation and other environment groups have proposed a transition strategy which would see:

• an immediate cessation of all logging in old-growth forest and wilderness areas around Australia;
• the immediate protection of all the identified high conservation value forest areas;
• the rapid transition from regrowth logging to a plantation-based industry.

There is compelling evidence from around Australia that such a strategy is feasible. There will need to be regional restructuring within the forest industry and the creation of alternative sustainable employment.

Parts of Australia could support a sunrise industry based on timber production integrated with agriculture on already cleared land. For example, a blue gum project in Western Australia will produce a privately grown pulpwood resource capable of supporting an export industry by the end of the decade. Great potential also exists to plant long-term, long-rotation, specialty timbers, the kind that the current industrial forestry system, dependent on short rotations, cannot produce.

Australia has a softwood plantation resource which is the envy of many countries. Investment in processing facilities is currently under way around Australia but will require the maintenance of the softwood resource. It is of concern that corporations are moving to liquidate their softwood resources in favour of using eucalypt plantations as a short-rotation pulpwood resource. This will limit the employment benefits from the downstream processing of softwood plantations. Current eucalypt plantation resources will be able to meet the needs of the domestic pulp sector by the time the phase-out of native old-growth forest logging has occurred. The ACF has no difficulty with the export of plantation-grown woodchips. However, few job opportunities will arise unless a value-adding industry is established as part of that export industry.

The Valwood process developed by CALM in Western Australia offers an opportunity for such value-adding. This process can take a ten-year-old, plantation-grown blue gum, saw it using laser-guided band saws, dry it in solar drying kilns and laminate the boards to produce a high quality product for use in fine furniture. Products such as Valwood clearly demonstrate that there is an opportunity to maintain a high quality, solid wood products industry in Australia based on a hardwood plantation resource. The only impediment to the establishment of this industry is the institutional conservatism of the hardwood sawmilling sector in Australia.

We are at the forestry policy crossroads in Australia. The policy settings of the National Forest Policy Statement are largely in conflict with conservation of the environment. The criteria for establishing a comprehensive reserve system remain hopelessly inadequate. The 1995 deadline for the Common-wealth and states to create a reserve system has been and gone and the Howard Liberal Government has increased woodchipping.

The conservation movement around Australia has made the protection of forests a campaign priority. It believes that the only way to resolve the conflict between wood production and conservation, a conflict that has become deeply entrenched over the last twenty years, is to stop the logging of native forests. Otherwise, history will show that this generation stood aside as the last of the world's forests were plundered for the short-term benefits of so very few.