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Harvesting Tasmania’s forests for future sawlogs

Forestry Tasmania has contracted AKS Forest Solutions to selectively harvest a large area of native forest between Avoca and Bridport. Source: ABC Rural

But far from clear-felling, the contractors will leave the very best trees to become top quality eucalypt sawlogs.

About 1000 hectares will be logged selectively this year, so that dominant trees are left to grow on.

AKS Forest Solutions director Tony Stonjek and forester Greg Williams will run the five-year project.

Mr Stonjek said after clear felling in the 1980s, two coupes of 30 year-old eucalypts have now been successfully logged.

“Sawlogs for the future, which is forestry in its purest form,” Mr Stonjek said. “It’s showing how forest operations can be sustainable as well as producing a product right now.

“Some of this product is going to Ta Ann [for veneer] and some of it is obviously pulp wood. “The project that we’ve undertaken has a timeframe of five years.

“We’re only about six months into it, so we’re very much in the embryo stage.”

So far, two crews have harvested dense bush of mainly eucalypt regrowth, that resulted from clear-felling and aerial sowing in the 80s.

Mr Stonjek said they used machinery worth at least $2.5 million to produce the required result.

“We’ve done a lot of experimental work to get the right mix of machinery to be silviculturally friendly,” Mr Stonjek said.

“In other words, we’re getting the right results for the future and leaving a good stocking of trees for sawlog.

“As well as making it a productive operation so that at the end of the day everybody is actually making something out of it.

“It’s taking on something that could be seen as being in the ‘too hard basket’ because it is a difficult operation.

“But it’s actually taking something of a low value, if you like and turning it into a high value.”

Contractor Troy Arnold has relished the challenge of retaining potential sawlogs and trying to thin and harvest pulpwood at a production level He said it was easy to take the biggest trees and all the rest, but the reverse required a lot of time, patience and good operators. “It’s making a really good job of it,” Mr Arnold said.

“We’re lucky enough to work with forestry that’s been really good to work with, and AKS. “We’ve all spent a lot of time in trying to get it nice, neat and tidy.

“In the fact that there’s no damage to the trees left behind, they’re a good spacing.

“[They’re] kept as neat as we possibly can behind us with drainage, bark pulled up, fire breaks.

“A nice, good spacing for sun and rain, so they’re not fighting all the smaller stuff underneath them to keep growing.

“I’m in it for the rest of my life and I’d be more than proud to be able to come back in another 20 years time and be able to log it myself again.”

With only two coupes harvested in state forest under the contract, the foresters said they were still experimenting and refining the system. But CEO of Forestry Tasmania Steve Whiteley said he hoped to use the technique over a large area.

“Through the north-east we’ve got hundreds of hectares of young forest that’s suitable for this thinning treatment,” Mr Whiteley said.

“So the contractors are systematically working their way through and they’re still learning a lot of things.

“But there’s a lot of potential to expand all the way through the north-east. “We need to maintain soil and water, we need to manage the trees and protect them from fire.

“And if we can recover some value while we’re doing all those sort of things, it actually helps pay for the management cost.

“The community also enjoys coming into these areas and there are environmental values that need to be protected.”