VicForests’ hypocrisy highlighted by their own plantation report
A report commissioned by VicForests has shown that there is enough plantation wood in Victoria to end native forest woodchipping for paper production in Victoria.
For years, VicForests has been misleading the public by saying that there is not enough plantation wood to make paper here in Australia. This rhetoric has lead them to continue woodchipping in native forests to supply Australian Paper, their largest domestic customer.. Now they have been tripped up by their own industry report which confirms there is enough plantation wood already available in Victoria to replace native forests for paper production.
Luke Chamberlain from The Wilderness Society said VicForests was recently caught out selling whole native forest logs to China. VicForests is also the subject of a court action at Sylvia Creek in Toolangi for planning to destroy the protected habitat of the endangered Leadbeater’s Possum – Victoria’s faunal emblem.
But the report, commissioned by Australian Paper, has one major flaw: the claim that plantation timber would be restrictively costly to use over native forests. It over-estimates the cost of using plantation over native forests because our government lets VicForests sell native forests below market rates.
This claim that plantations are too expensive is to be expected because plantation growers are VicForests’ biggest competitors.