Does logging affect the fire proneness of forests? This question often arises after major wildfires, but data suggest that answers differ substantially among different types of forest. Logging can alter key attributes of forests by changing microclimates, stand structure and species composition, fuel characteristics, the prevalence of ignition points, and patterns of landscape cover. These …
Victoria’s forest management policies need to be urgently reviewed in response to the discovery that logging can contribute to the severity of bushfires in wet forests, like the devastating fires on Black Saturday in February 2009. Our recent study, based on data from areas that burned on Black Saturday, clearly shows how extensive logging can …
Will Napthine hand VicForests $18M from our pockets next year to log East Gippy forests? This is despite their being no market for the bulk of the trees they cut down. The East Gippsland community could do so much more with that money. It could kick start more useful and more healthy, growing sectors – …
In its heyday, the town of Cann River in the far east of Victoria was home to seven sawmills. But now just one remains . Bob Humphreys, 70, has run it for 43 years. As a boy he spent school holidays working at the mill. In all that time no changes have been as dramatic …
This story appeared in Saturday’s Age and exposes the most ‘entitled’ industry our taxes have ever propped up. Victoria has become the largest producer of wood from logging native forests in the country, following a dramatic contraction in Australia’s native timber industry over the past decade. The industry’s decline, and Victoria’s rise to the top, …
A two-year landmark study of the deadly Black Saturday fires that killed 159 people shows conclusively that the intensity was significantly increased by clear-fell logging of forests. The study is dynamite and is published in Conservation Letters. Scientists from Melbourne University and the ANU (Professor David Lindenmayer, Dr Chris Taylor and Dr Michael McCarthy) say …
Our new paper shows that the probability of crown fire in mountain forests under extreme weather conditions is greatest when trees are about 15 years old. This has implications for debates about how timber harvesting influences the risk of fire. Crown fire is a major driver of the dynamics of mountain ash forest, so changes …
Logging practices can “greatly increase the severity of fires” in extreme weather conditions such as Black Saturday, Australian researchers have said. Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and Melbourne University examined hundreds of thousands of trees burnt in the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, which claimed the lives of 173 people on a day of …
VicForests turns 10 today. In that time it has received $25million in grants and subsidies to help it haul $300million worth of free logs from public forest which it still owes Victorians $74million in unpaid dividends for. This debt to the public could build 10 new schools, pay for 96 additional teachers or deploy five …
VicForests has a snowball’s hope in hell of gaining the green tick of approval from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international wood certification body. It had a preliminary audit carried out on its logging management and it failed dismally. This didn’t stop it from claiming in a media release that the auditors recognised the …
