An attempt to secure Tasmania’s specialty timber industry by adding a last resort harvesting clause into the forest peace deal legislation has been added to the list of deal-breaking amendments by environmental groups. Source: The Examiner
And specialty timber advocates say that while the proposal is better than the alternative, it’s not enough to make them support the legislation.
Elwick independent MLC Adriana Taylor will introduce amendments to the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill next week that would allow single-tree harvesting of specialty timber in yet to be identified areas, including possible reserve or World Heritage-nominated areas, if the specialty timber supply cannot be provided from existing logging areas.
Taylor said much of the specialty timber zone had been included in the nomination to extend the South-West Wilderness Heritage Area. She said the amendment would only allow very “low-impact” harvesting and ought to be considered an accepted activity, in the same way some low impact tourism was allowed.
“I’m not asking for logging to be used in these areas, I’m just asking for the specialty timber to be taken out,” she said.
Taylor said her proposal was more environmentally sensitive than an amendment adopted by the Legislative Council last month that would allow 10 nominated but not yet gazetted reserve areas to be logged if a specialty timber survey found that demand could not be met through existing production forests.
Signatories to the Tasmanian Forests Agreement helped draft that amendment, and Wilderness Society Tasmania campaign manager Vica Bayley said it was very different from what Taylor was proposing.
“We have absolutely no appetite or intention to entertain the idea of logging within reserves,” Bayley said.
He said establishing secure, legal reserves was essential to the durability of the peace deal from the perspective of environmental signatories.
Forest Industries Association of Tasmania chief executive Terry Edwards said he could not say whether the proposed amendment would be a deal breaker without knowing which areas were considered for selective logging, which would not be decided until after the amendment had passed. But Edwards said this type of specialty timber harvesting would have to be done via helicopter and the cost to Forestry Tasmania would far outweigh the value of the timber.
Tasmanian Woodcraft Guild spokesman George Harris said the proposed amendment was better than the existing specialty timber strategy, but “probably the easiest thing to do is just reject the bill”.
