Chipmill still runs on old trees
A December 2005 truck-check vigil at the Eden woodchip mill showed that over 2/3rds of logs that entered the Nippon woodchip mill at Eden were large, meaning they are from mature and old growth forests.
Of the 158 trucks that arrived between 4am and 7pm on just one day, 75% came from the south (the direction of East Gippsland). Many of the old trees were split in the coupe so no one could then argue they would have made a sawlog. The chipmill boasts it no longer has trunk splitters on site – but it seems the splitters are all out in the logging coupes now.
Their favoured chip logs are young trees from thinning 20-30 year regrowth (from clearfelled forest) and they made up 25% of loads.
There were about 25 B-Doubles, which are almost exclusively used in the salvage of Tambo’s fire affected forests.
Harriet / Jill