Guy Barnett,Minister for Resources
Predictable calls by radical environmentalists, such as the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF), to shut down Tasmania’s sustainable native forestry overlook the fact that sustainable forestry management plays an important part in the solution to climate change.
Tasmania’s forestry sector has been globally recognised as being one of the best managed and most environmentally and sustainable forest estates in the world.
In any given year, less than 1 per cent of native forest on Permanent Timber Production Zone land is harvested.
And, each time wood is harvested from our native forests, it is regrown as native forest, ensuring a sustainable forest industry into the future whilst sequestering carbon.
Further, the commitment to maintain an extensive and permanent native forest estate has been a key commitment of Tasmania’s Regional Forest Agreement, with the most recent Australian State of the Forests report showing that Tasmania’s native forest cover has increased over the past two decades.
Our approach is backed in by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who stated:
“Sustainable forest management can prevent deforestation, maintain and enhance carbon sinks and can contribute towards GHG emissions-reduction goals. Sustainable forest management generates socio-economic benefits, and provides fibre, timber and biomass to meet society’s growing needs”*
The Tasmanian Government welcomes the commitment of the Australian Government by signing the leader’s declaration on forests and land use at Glasgow. It is in line with our approach to sustainable forest management in Tasmania and does not mean an end to native forest harvesting.
In fact, the declaration has also been welcomed by the Australian Forest Products Association, the peak national forestry body.
As the Greens and BBF well know, deforestation as they claim does not occur in Tasmania.
Either they know this and are choosing to deliberately misrepresent our sustainable forest industry or they are scarily uninformed.
*Chapter 4, IPCC special report on Climate Change and Land, August 2019
