WA

Outline of Logging Industry’s Mechanical Fuel Load Reduction Trials in Western Australia

A professor of Forest Operations, paid to conduct the WA trials into MFLR, says “It won’t replace prescribed burns to mitigate bushfires, but it could be a complementary tool. In addition, the material removed to reduce fuel loads could be sold to produce sustainable bioproducts or bioenergy.”

 

Why is the WA state government acceding to Forest Products Commission Plan to double native forest logging by up to 50% for such uses as firewood, woodchips and biomass burning?

AFCA finds it interesting that the FPC want to increase jarrah logging by possibly 100,000 cu metres, an increase of 50%, as well as increasing logging of marri and karri. It says it wants these increases ‘dependent’ on contracts. In 2016 it admitted that jarrah could be great for emerging new markets in Japan as Japan substitutes ‘biomass’ for nuclear …

WA Foresters seek to develop markets to use timber, especially Jarrah, as biomass energy feedstock

Forest Industry Advisory Council Chair (FIAC), Liberal Senator Anne Ruston talks about burning and or exporting timber as fuel for energy production would make forestry sustainable into the future and how ‘foresters would seek to develop markets for timber and biomass products to be used as renewable energy resources’ at the 2016 annual FIAC meeting which also discussed Japan as …

WA Auditor General Report

Often an Auditor General is constrained in forthrightly expressing findings that might be critical of a government agency. In this report the AG states ‘monitoring of harvest contractor compliance with contractual obligations is limited and current monitoring is unlikely to ensure compliance and high standards of performance. Ongoing breaches of environmental standards and failure to optimise forest resources place the …

Ticked Off – How Karri Forest logging threatens wildlife and the credibility of the FSC standard, September 2015

Karri logging by WA’s Forest Products Commission (FPC) is contributing to the decline of five listed threatened species, yet the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has provided FPC with an FSC tick of approval for the sustainability of its Controlled Wood supply. This report is critical for anyone wanting to know whether the FSC brand can be trusted to certify the …

April 2018 Western Australian Forests Alliance and others protest exclusion from preparation of a Forestry Industry Development Plan despite election promise

A plan that was supposed to set out the future of the foresty industry via an independent process involving all stakeholders is being lead by the Forest Products Commission (FPC), i.e. the logging industry. The 5 member review panel involves the chair of FPC and a CEO of a company that buys karri logs for woodchipping. Environment groups …

Protesters rally as WA agency plans native forest logging increase

In March 2018 FPC, the WA logging agency moved to increase logging of jarrh, marri and karri forest by up to 50% even as black cockatoos relying on these trees were classified as ‘endangered’. The state government is not upholding commitments to protect high conservation value forests which it promised to protect in the lead up to the 2017 …

Logging Area Doubles Under New Plan

This article from 2013 describes how a new Forest Management Plan for WA would permit more than 2000 square kilometres of old jarrah and karri forest to be logged. At the time conservationists were outraged and considered this a death sentence to threatened wildlife including WA’s state faunal emblem, the numbat. The original populations of numbats are confined to …

WA’s native forest degradation since signing of RFA (1999)

This succinct article by Beth Schultz is a factual commentary on the impact of the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement.  The author has extensive knowledge of the Western Australian native forest logging sector and after examining evidence to date concludes WA’s native forest logging is: unsustainable, degrading forests, a threat to biodiversity, heavily subsidised and a threat to other profitable …

Credible Science? Evaluating the Regional Forest Agreement Process in Western Australia

What constitutes a ‘scientifically credible process?’ This important article asks some fundamental questions about the process underpinning the Western Australian RFA. The authors ask: e.g. has the process involved scientists, has it a framework for scientific debate, has it used scientific norms of peer review, publication and conferences, has it involved explicit methodology from which conclusions can be justifiably drawn? …