It makes better financial sense for the native forests of southern NSW to remain un-logged and left to generate carbon credits, a new report suggests. NSW taxpayers would be able to generate carbon abatement, conservatively valued at about $222 million over the next 2¬Ω decades, and use some of the money to fully compensate timber …
The future of the woodchipping industry in NSW is in doubt, following a decision by timber company Boral to sell its export arm and wood processing plant.Decades of native forest woodchip exports from Newcastle to Japan now seem set to come to an end. “Boral will exit the residue and woodchip export business and sell …
It’s cold now, but the debate over how to deal with higher bushfire risk is heating up. Firefighters and farmers around Australia are calling for more hazard reduction burns to reduce the risk of future fires, but the evidence isn’t in that this is the best approach. Tasmania had a hot, chaotic fire season, and …
You are walking through the bush when you see an enormous tree trunk, tens of metres long, lying across the forest floor. Imagine you and several dozen friends lifting it by hand. Now you’ve literally grasped the significance of trees and forests when it comes to carbon sequestration – trees are heavy, and carbon accounts …
For several decades, the alternative commercial and economic uses and management of Australia’s native forests have generated considerable debate. In the past five years, this debate has sharpened as the native forest sector has contracted in response to increased competition in international and domestic wood product markets. New carbon markets are also emerging that could …
The owner of the Eden woodchip mill has announced it will not be renewing its contract to purchase timber from state forests in East Gippsland, when the current agreement expires at the end of 2014. South East Fibre Exports general manager Peter Mitchell says international market pressures are the major reason behind the decision, and …
So Julia Gillard has declared that she wants the parties who started the so-called Tasmanian forest peace process “to do everything they can to use their abilities to silence those who haven’t gone with the mainstream consensus”. To silence. I lived with the silence of Tasmania for too many years. And now the leaders of …
“Dad, the world is missing amazing animals. I wish extinction wasn’t forever”. Despite my wife and I working as biologists, our five-year-old son came to make this statement independently. He is highlighting what I and many others consider to be society’s biggest challenge, and arguably failure: the continuing loss of species from Earth. The massive …
THERE are no plans to save most Victorian animals and plants that are at risk of becoming extinct. This is despite new data revealing more animals are becoming threatened. The latest list of threatened animals, released by the Department of Sustainability and Environment, found one animal had become extinct in the wild in the past …
The Climate Commission released a report this week called The Critical Decade, which makes the threats facing Australia abundantly clear. It spells out the drastic increase in extreme weather and its severity, and points to the increase in extreme heat and extreme bushfire weather. In my time as deputy commissioner of Fire and Rescue …
