Loggers may be allowed to harvest thousands of hectares of timber being bulldozed to make way for mining and CSG extraction. Forestry Minister John McVeigh said he wanted to make sure valuable timber was harvested before miners moved on to leases in state forests. Source: Herald Sun
“This is about providing loggers and sawmillers with better and more timely access to take logs before the corridors are cleared for pipe-laying,” Mr McVeigh said.
Timber Queensland chief executive Rod McInnes said the industry was annoyed that substantial timber was being lost in mining operations.
He did not have a value on the timber but reckoned it to be substantial given the huge areas of Queensland under mining applications.
“This is a resource that could be utilised rather than forests trampled over by miners,” he said.
Queensland Resources Council spokesman Michael Roche said the industry had no in-principle objection to maximising the extraction of both resources.
“As far as the Gladstone pipeline is concerned, a fair bit of clearing has already happened,” Mr Roche said.
Friends of the Earth spokesman Drew Hutton said tens of thousands of hectares of land were being cleared for coal seam gas wells, pipeline corridors and service roads, with the Gladstone pipeline alone 400km long.
He had not seen details of the proposal but was concerned that logging might encourage mining companies to clear unnecessarily.
It comes as the timber industry puts a case to the Government to lease out at least some of the land bought for the abandoned Traveston Dam for forestry plantations.
