Letter from Australian Paper
Below is a letter sent to a Melbourne resident opposed to catchment logging:
Dear Sabrina
Thank you for your recent letter regarding forest practices in Victoria.
VicForests is of course responsible for the sustainable harvest of timber from allocated forest areas in Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), is responsible for forest policy and regulation and is charged with ensuring that all uses of our forests are sustainable and that environmental standards are upheld.
Australian Paper does not harvest any of its own wood supply, but rather sources fibre from a number of owners of sustainably managed sources including hardwood and softwood plantations (39%), imported pulp (26%), waste paper (9%) and sustainably managed state hardwood forests (27%). Here in Victoria, amongst others, we purchase pulp wood from VicForests and rely on theirs and DSE’s expertise to supply from the most appropriate sources.
DSE are firmly of the view that the harvesting of timber from forest areas including some in limited areas within Melbourne’s water supply catchments is entirely sustainable. Only a very small percentage is firstly available, and secondly harvested, in any given year. In fact of the 50,000 ha of the Thomson catchment only 24% is available for harvesting and only 150 ha (0.3%) is available for harvest each year.
In the Yarra Tributaries, which provide 6% of Melbourne’s water supply, and of which, Armstrong Creek is a part, only 60ha (0.4%) is planned to be harvested on average each year.
They recognise, it is true that mature forests use less water than young regrowth areas, but the differences are small and assume that any gains in water yield are not lost from fire in the catchments which, as we saw last year can be devastating and mask any impact from logging. Forestry operations of course also provide the infrastructure including roads and equipment to prevent or mitigate fires.
They also believe that more effective water savings can be made by further encouraging conservation measures such as rainwater tanks, efficient shower roses and repairing old and broken water mains. Finally, it is also the case that the capacity of the pipeline that diverts water from these tributaries is limited and any additional water that might be available from stopping timber harvesting cannot be presently utilised anyway.
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Australian Paper has maintained a dialogue with a number of environmental groups on these issues over the past few years and will continue to do so. With the decisions as to where pulp is sourced from in Victoria we rely on and have confidence in, the expertise of DSE and Vicforests.
Yours faithfully
Stephen Hawkins
Corporate and Government Relationship Manager
admin @ February 4, 2008
I find this website to be an interesting contribution to the debate about the logging of Melbourne’s water catchments, not so much for its accuracy, in most respects, but for its significant instances of inaccuracy. In particular, a search on the keyword ‘bunyip’ shows that there is no recognition by those behind this website that the ‘Bunyip River Special Water Supply Catchment’, like the other catchments listed at the home page of this website, is also a declared domestic water supply catchment under the Victorian Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994.
And the small Bunyip water catchment (of only 3900ha), which hosts an important part of one of only four Rainforest Sites of NATIONAL Significance in the whole of the Central Highlands Region, is regarded by DSE as having 30 hectares available for clear felling each year.
Compare this with the Upper Yarra tributary catchments, where, under the terms of the Central Highlands Forest Management Plan, only one is available each year for clear felling, in a rotation cycle across the four catchments.
And then only 60ha can be felled each year. So in effect, each of these catchments sees only 15ha felled per annum. In the Bunyip it is 30 hectares per annum! And the effects of this can be seen clearly in the amount of sedimentation which enters the downstream Bunyip Weir.
The Bunyip catchment is in every respect as important, on environmental grounds, as each of the other ‘four’ permitted domestic water supply catchments cited at the homepage of this website.
Clear recognition of this fact was provided in the Australian Greens Victoria 2006 Election Policy Statement titled ‘Victorian Forests: The Green Way Forward’ where, under the heading ‘New Reserves’, we read that -
“New reserves on public land would include the following:
Central Highlands forests - the Upper Bunyip and the transect between the Yarra Ranges and Eildon National Parks, including Federation Range, Torbreck Range, Royston Range and the Blue Range.”
Indeed, Appendix R of the Central Highlands FMP reinforces the environmental sensitivity of the Bunyip catchment by imposing a “60m buffer upstream of weir”, whereas the Yarra trib. catchments carry 40m buffers on “major streams only”. And, in keeping with these Yarra catchments, the slope limitation in the Bunyip has been set at 25 degrees. The Thomson, in comparison, may be logged up to a maximum slope of 30 degrees.
Readers may draw their own conclusions. For more information about the catchment that appears to have been forgotten by TCHA and those behind the current petition against the logging of Melbourne’s water supply catchments - which does not mention the Bunyip - I urge interested persons to visit the UBAG website at http://users.nex.net.au/~ubag/
(A contact email address is provided there.)
Bob Thompson
I was one of many who made submissions to the enquiries into the Regional Forests Agreement a good many years ago.
My submission dealt specifically with water losses resulting from logging in the Thomson catchment.
The letter from Australian Paper uses the standard statistical trickery loved by loggers.
It quotes the percentage of the whole catchment which may be logged each year, implying that this is small. In fact the impact of the logging on water yields is disproportionately large.
The water collecting ability of the Thomson catchment varies greatly. The easterly and northerly areas are much drier than the southwest. Because trees need water for growth they happen also to grow biggest and fastest where rainfall is highest. Accordingly, the logging is heavily concentrated in the southwest where it does greatest damage to water run off.
The letter also makes light of the reduction in flows due to regrowth. Mountain Ash regrowth around 15 years old typically reduces water yield from the logged area by about half. This is significant, and recovery in yield will take over 60 years, by which time most of us will be dead, or dehydrated.
When it comes to the prevention of forest fires it is worth looking at the history of escape of fires lit by loggers to clear the dead branches and leaves they leave behind. The roads also unhappily provide enhanced access to firebugs, plant diseases, feral animals and weeds.
For good measure the clearfell logging coupes leave an environment lacking the wide variety and ages of trees and plants required for year round food and ‘housing’ by the local birds and animals.
If I were writing my RFA submission now it would include discussion of the carbon dioxide released to atmosphere as a result of the logging and subsequent burning.