Private Native Forestry: Silviculture, Sustainability and Incentives for Vegetation Management

Private Native Forestry – Silviculture, Sustainability
and Incentives for Vegetation Management
By David Thompson1, Alex Jay2, Mike Connell3, Phil Norman4 and Jerry Vanclay5

Abstract

Timber supplies from public native forests have declined significantly in recent decades.
Consequently, wood processors are increasingly dependent on private land to maintain
their throughput of native species logs.

In some regions of Australia, more than 50 per cent of native forest industry log supply
comes from private property. There is concern that this increased demand brings with it
the increased risk of high grading in private forests – repeated removal of only
merchantable stock, leaving an increasing proportion of poor quality trees which may be
detrimental to both future timber yields and habitat quality.

Nevertheless, this market situation also represents a commercial opportunity for private
landholders and some additional incentive for them to better manage their forests for
long-term sustainability. However, this needs to be supported by a policy and regulatory
framework that provides incentives for private forest owners to manage their forests
sustainably. Environmental policy settings and broader economic drivers can over-ride
this opportunity.

A range of biodiversity/habitat sustainability indicators have been developed to gauge the
impacts of clearing for agriculture and in some states, for forestry operations in native
forests. In Australia, these have principally been developed with a focus on public land,
but, as additional scrutiny is brought to bear on private landholders, they are increasingly
focused on private native forestry (PNF).

Implementation of indicators may increase both the direct costs and the constraints on
private native forest managers. It seems likely that returns from timber production alone
may be insufficient to ensure best practice silviculture in private native forests.
Incentives, available to the landowner, which recognize the public environmental goods
being provided by well managed forests, may be one solution to the problem. This will
require some quantification of how alternative forest management systems impact on
those ‘public good” values. Others suggest that government price setting arrangements
for public forest timber maintain artificially low prices which reduce private forest
management incentives.


1 Centre for Agricultural & Regional Economics, Armidale NSW, david@care.net.au
2 Southern Cross University School of Forestry, Lismore NSW, kiri@nor.com.au
3 Eumoyni Options Pty Ltd, Butmaroo NSW, mikec@eumoynioptions.com
4 Department of Natural Resources, Alstonville NSW, Phillip.Norman@dnr.nsw.gov.au
5 Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW, jvanclay@scu.edu.au

This paper is a progress report on several linked projects funded through RIRDC JVAP,
which field test sustainability indicators, investigate the tradeoffs between commercial
timber production and habitat/biodiversity conservation and examine options for
improved private native forest management through commercial incentives.

The Project

This project is run through the Joint Venture Agroforestry Program (JVAP) and funded
through the National Heritage Trust via the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF).

It involves the field testing of sustainability measures at PNF sites in Victoria, Northern
NSW and Tasmania. Field work at these sites is carried out by staff from DPI Victoria,
Southern Cross University and the NSW Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Key project objectives include:

• The field testing of sustainability indicators in native forests being managed for timber
production, including their ability to evaluate the sustainability of alternative
silvicultural systems and their transferability across forest types and regions;
• Examining the trade-offs between commercial wood production and biodiversity
objectives in private native forests;
• Investigating how to integrate the management of environmental and economic issues
at the landscape scale with private landholder planning and management at the site
level;
• Providing PNF management information to landholders and policy makers;
• Identifying critical knowledge gaps.

Integration of project results will be achieved through an Over-Arching project,
comprising a diverse team of researchers and consultants with skills in native forest
silviculture, economics, natural resource and wildlife management and forest policy.

The project is due to report to JVAP at the end of May 2006.

The Situation

Public opinion relating to the perceived value of biodiversity in Australian native forests
has resulted in significant changes to the way in which the public forest estate is
managed.

The Regional Forests Agreement (RFA) and Regional Assessment processes in many
states have seen a large contraction in the volumes of timber harvested from the public
estate. This has significantly increased the importance of private native forests as a source
of log supply to industry in many forestry regions.

Figures 1 represents the current best estimates from a range of sources of the timber
harvest quantities from private land for various States and regions and the proportion of
total timber sourced from private forests.

Figure 2. Contribution of PNF to Industry Log Supply (Source: BRS 2006)




















In some States and regions, PNF is a critical component of industry supply. For example
on the north coast of NSW, 66% of sawmills are entirely reliant on private property logs
(NNSW Forestry Services & NRPFDC 2005). In the Northern Tablelands/Liverpool
Plains area, seven of the eight key hardwood mills source timber only from private land.
In the Brigalow region of NSW, recent decisions to reduce cypress harvesting in public
forests has seen industry urgently turning their attention to private supplies.

With similar declines in the available commercial hardwood resources on public land, the
private native forest resource has gained importance in Victoria, as in other states. The
Victorian government implemented legislation to guide the strategic direction for the
management of native vegetation in both public and private estates.

This policy framework for the management of private native forests provides legislation
regarding regional level planning, adherence to the Code of Forest Practice, the Native
Vegetation Management Framework (NVMF) and the Flora and Fauna Guarantee. Each
of these is required for operational private native forest management to occur.

The NVMF uses conservation assessments which are based on Ecological Vegetation
Classifications (EVC’s) to determine conservation significance. EVC’s are
classifications of plant communities based on combinations of life forms, floristics and
ecological characteristics of recognizable groups of native vegetation. Generally only
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
Western
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Queensland New South
Wales
Victoria Tasmania Australia
Pr
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Sawlogs and veneer logs
Pulpwood and other logs

private native forests with low or medium conservation significance will be available for
timber harvesting. Harvesting may be allowed on other lands of higher conservation
significance if harvesting is currently allowed on public land in the same bioregion.

The approach aims to assess the likely effects of forestry operations within the EVC’s on
habitat quality. ESFM principles underpin the various regulatory processes and the new
Habitat Hectares (HH) assessment strategies are required to be applied to all managed
private native forest. The implementation of the NVMF requires the development of a
reliable and consistent vegetation assessment procedure and this has led to the
development and testing of the Habitat Hectares approach, although it is already a
requirement in the Act.

Expectations of biodiversity outcomes are now spilling over onto private land with
increasing recognition that actions on private property are required to secure the
conservation of biodiversity and habitat (eg Prest 2004). Moreover, strategically located
corridors and pockets of native vegetation on private land can enhance the effectiveness
of public conservation areas. For example in NE NSW private forests are half of all
forests total i.e. equal in area to SF and NP combined (Flint et al 2004). PNF is an
integral part of the matrix of reserved and non-reserved lands that provides fauna habitat.
It would be difficult to sustain either viable fauna populations or viable industry without
the contribution from private forests.


Defining sustainability in the forestry context

Our project has narrowly avoided becoming involved in a lengthy debate about precisely
how ‘sustainability’ is defined. Early discussions within the research team identified the
fact that many have tried and failed on this issue and that the term means different things
to different people and that with the resources available this project was unlikely to add a
lot.

Nevertheless, Australian forestry policy has been developed against the backdrop of
‘Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management’ (ESFM). The sustainability goals
encompassed in the ESFM framework were first adopted in the National Forest Policy
Statement (Commonwealth of Australia 1992) and later re-iterated in the RFA process.

Statutory definitions of ecologically sustainable development include (i) Sect 6(2)
of NSW Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991 (POEAA) and
(ii) Sec 3A of the Commonwealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act 1999 (EPBCA). They encompass

(a) the precautionary principle - if there are threats of serious or irreversible
environmental damage, lack of scientific certainty should not be used as
a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation
(b) ‘inter-generational equity’ - a full range of options should be available to future
generations

(c) conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity- improved
valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms- environmental factors should be
transparently valued in pricing of assets and services

The sticking point in the debate has been the extent to which ESFM principles, which
were largely developed or adapted for Australian conditions with the public forest estate
in mind, are now being applied to private forests, and the legal, policy, and economic
instruments for application.

The outcome of this debate is critical to at least four of the five ‘big questions’ at the
heart of the Vegetation Futures 2006 forum, namely, and in approximate order of
importance:

1. How do we integrate conservation and production?
2. Who pays for native vegetation management?
3. What are we doing about threats to native vegetation?
4. What is the role and value of native vegetation in the regional landscape?

The challenges

1. Switching to plantation timbers

Of significance to both the Australian timber industry and private landholders is the
desire on behalf of some sections of the community to replace native forest harvesting
with plantation grown timbers.

This new direction opens up opportunities for farmers and other landholders to expand
their income streams to include commercial forestry enterprises while generating some of
the environmental gains related to putting more trees back into the landscape if trees are
strategically located and configured.

However, a recent study by Nolan et al (2005) reveals that the present rate of hardwood
plantation expansion is insufficient to replace the withdrawal of log supplies from the
public native forest estate. Key statistics from this study include:

• 62 per cent of these plantations were planted after 1995 with an expected rotation
length of 20-35 years;
• By 2035, hardwood plantation logs will represent less than 15 per cent of the
2001 native forest harvest levels;
• By 2035, hardwood plantation logs will represent just 18 per cent of total log
availability;
• The plantation log supply will replace only half the supply loss from public
forests between 2000 and 2035;
• It is unlikely that plantations currently being managed for wood fiber production
can be effectively converted over to sawlog production. (unless consumers accept
more expensive and energy-intensive reconstituted engineered products).