#4 David Lindenmayer and The Forest Wars

Professor David Lindenmeier, an expert in forest ecology and management, discusses his new book, "The Forest Wars," which aims to debunk myths about forestry. He advocates for an end to native forest logging in Australia and suggests using plantations and agroforestry for timber jobs instead. He highlights the extensive loss of forests and woodlands in Australia due to land clearing and the negative impacts of logging and other human disturbances on ecosystems and biodiversity. The professor criticizes the continued support for the failing native forest logging industry in Tasmania, which has cost the state billions of dollars and threatens endangered species. Environmental accounting shows that the value of water, tourism, and carbon outweigh the value of the native forest sector. This is the Voices of Franklin podcast and I'm your host, Steve Williams. Today I'm talking to Professor David Lindenmeier, who is an expert in forest ecology and management amongst other things. He's based at the Australian National University. His 49th book is titled The Forest Wars, in which he attempts to debunk the many myths that are propagated about forestry. Lindenmeier wants an end to native forest logging in Australia, with plantations and agroforestry providing jobs in timber. Today we're joined by Professor David Lindenmeier from the Australian National University to talk about his new book, The Forest Wars, about to be published in a couple of weeks. David Lindenmeier, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Stephen. It's a pleasure. Could you start off by telling the listener your main areas of research interest and therefore your areas of expertise? Yeah. So I first started working in forests, the Tall Wet Forests of Victoria in 1983, July 1983. And during that time I've continued that work in those Tall Wet Forests, but I've also worked in woodlands, coastal heathlands, coastal woodlands, coastal forests. And my expertise is really across forest ecology and woodland ecology and dynamics, but also biodiversity associated with those ecosystems and how that biodiversity changes with disturbances, be it fire, logging, replanting and agriculture across these different kinds of systems. So really understanding how ecosystems work, how the species within those ecosystems function and interact, and the impacts of human disturbances, particularly logging, agriculture, those kinds of things, and how species respond to those kinds of disturbances. And you must be something of a workaholic. How many books is it now, David? This one is my 49th. Approaching workaholic status, I think. I mainly know you from the ABC Radio National, be it interviews on Late Night Live or be it news segments, which you're increasingly used as an expert. And that's where I heard about you just the other day with the Tasmanian Liberal Government's latest policy initiative, and also from the conversation where you're a regular contributor to that website. So can you start us off by just giving us a rough picture of the situation in Australia before European settlement, sort of the percentage of land that was maybe under forests, things like that? Gosh, that's a tough question. And it's partly a tough question because it depends a little bit on how you define forests. And about 20 years ago, the Australian government decided to define forests as what we would think of as woodlands or even open savanna. So I think a significant part of Australia, probably 30 or 40 percent, might be forests under those kinds of classifications. I'm hesitant to give a precise number because of those differences in definitions. The tall, wet forests of, for example, parts of south-eastern, central Victoria are only a couple of percent of the total forest cover. So tall, wet, eucalypt forests don't make up much of the Australian continent. The total land area of this nation of ours is really dominated by deserts and particularly rangelands. And they cover extensive parts of the continent, obviously. But the areas of forests were quite pronounced across the country at the time of British invasion. And there's no doubt since that time, a lot of it's been removed, 50 percent by some estimates. And some environments have been absolutely butchered. For example, the big scrub, as it's called, in northern New South Wales, less than one percent of that remains. The rest of it was cleared. Is that the clear-girth scrub? No, no. It's subtropical rainforests in northern New South Wales up towards the New South Wales-Queensland border. That was converted to farms and agricultural areas very early in the piece, in fact, so rapidly that we actually don't really even know how much was there. Now it's scattered across a small few patches, only a handful of hectares of what was close to 100,000 hectares, same in parts of southern Victoria. The mountain ash forest there in the Strzelecki Ranges was previously close to 200,000 hectares. That's now almost completely all dairy farms. So it gives you some idea of the extent of land clearing. Across the Murray-Darling Basin, we've lost an estimated between nine and 15 billion trees from the Murray-Darling Basin on the mainland alone. So these are pretty horrifying statistics in terms of how much forest and woodland has been lost. Especially when people understand the role of trees in stabilizing soils, lowering water tables, providing biodiversity, habitats, even dead trees, of course, super important for some species to provide those hollow nesting sites. That's correct. That's correct. And it's almost as if the early British invaders actually had a passionate dislike and almost hatred for trees when you see how many trees were removed and the extent to which subsidies were handed out to people to scrub the land, as it were, to scrub the land clean of trees. It's pretty appalling reading when we look at the extent of habitat degradation and loss. And it's something that continues to this day. Even today, statistics produce that in Queensland alone, just in the last year, 2 million hectares was cleared. I saw that article in The Guardian today where, yeah, a new report on shocking clearing of regrowth forest. I think it mainly was 15-year-old regrowth forest, which is still significant habitat. Absolutely, it is. Absolutely, it is. We know that regrowth woodlands are actually fundamentally different kinds of environments for woodland birds relative to old growth woodlands. And if you want the full suite of birds that should occur in these kinds of environments, woodland environments, then you need not only old growth, but you need regrowth woodland. And of course, the next old growth woodland is currently regrowth. That's the only way you get old growth is that regrowth trees grow older. So that's inexcusable that at a time when we are dealing with major environmental problems in the country, we have 2 million hectares of regrowth woodland cleared. That's a disgrace. And this forest disturbance actually makes fire risk greater. Is that correct? Yes. So some work that's been building over quite a period of time now indicates that when we disturb forests, what happens is that there's a pulse of regeneration and that regeneration is then flammable or an extended period of time, depending on what ecosystem you're dealing with. That period of elevated flammability can last for between 5 years and up to 70 years. And the disturbances basically lead to the same thing, irrespective of whether it's logging, whether it's thinning, or even prescribed burning, there's a pulse of flammability that's associated with those kinds of disturbances. And we've called this disturbance-stimulated flammability, and it's really quite a serious issue because what we see now across extensive parts of Southeastern Australia is that the history and legacy of logging and thinning, and now also prescribed burning, has left vast areas of our forest estate in a highly flammable situation. And ongoing logging, like has been proposed for Tasmania under Liberal Party policy, is only going to reinforce and increase the kinds of problems associated with disturbance-stimulated flammability. And the Labor Party here in Tasmania have just come out with their forest policy. Have you had a chance to look at what the Labor Party down here have said? No, I haven't had a look at that, but I suspect that they're going to continue to log forests just like the Liberal Party are planning to do, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. I only had a chance to read their media release, and yeah, the ecological aspects didn't figure at all in the media release. It was more about shoring up the industry. Well, this is always the case. The industry is always, always in decline and has always been in decline for many decades. And what happens is that more and more and more money gets thrown at an industry that is increasingly failing. The logging industry, native forest logging industry in Tasmania, has been a basket case for many, many years. And the estimates from forensic accountant, John Lawrence, indicates that the native forest logging industry in Tasmania has cost the state more than $1.5 billion. And it actually employs very, very few people, 99.6% of people in the workforce in Tasmania do not work in the native forest logging industry. So that dollar figure you just gave, that they're losing, that of course doesn't include all the other non-monetary losses, which is also another form of wealth. Probably the most important form of wealth is the non-monetary wealth. So yes, you might be losing dollars, but you're losing the ecosystems as well. That's correct. And you're losing critically endangered species. So the more logging that takes place in Tasmania, the greater risk to highly threatened species such as the swift parrot. Now, but there are ways, and we've done this, of using environmental accounting to look at the relative value of different natural assets in a currency that many economists would understand. For example, a regional domestic product. And when we've done environmental accounting in a Victorian context, we've seen that the value of water is 25.5 times the value of wood chips, the value of tourism is 20 times. Even when you take a very rock bottom shadow price for carbon at $12.23, the carbon value is still four times the value of the native forest sector. So even when you talk about a common currency that everybody can understand, the native forest logging industry is worth very little to many of these economies. And in the case of Victoria, when we did the environmental accounts, we could say that Victoria would actually be significantly better off without the native forest logging industry to the tune of more than $200 million. And that's why the state in the last few months has closed its native forest logging industry because it simply cannot financially maintain an industry that is such a basket case. And I think Tasmania needs to have a good, long, hard look at itself because the ongoing industry in that state is going to cost taxpayers a significant amount of money and essentially steal money from doctors, from hospitals, from nurses, from schools, all those kinds of things. And frankly, I think it's time to stop that kind of subsidy and invest properly in the natural assets of the state and other assets via schools, hospitals, roads, childcare facilities, aged care facilities. You know, this is the largest that needs to stop. And is it Western Australia as well? The West Australian government came out to say they're stopping native forest logging? That's correct. Native forest logging stopped in Western Australia at the end of December 2023 and stopped in Victoria in early January 2024. And in both cases, in both states, the industry cost the state a fortune and state governments put an end to it. Both labor governments in Western Australia and labor governments in Victoria put an end to it because it was costing the economy so much. They could no longer afford to prop up an industry that had not only such a big environmental impact but a major negative economic impact and very limited social value and almost no social license to operate. Yeah. So to sum up, there's a net cost rather than a net benefit to society from continuing. Absolutely. And that net cost is actually a significant one to the state, especially a state such as Tasmania that is a small economy that is in a lot of economic trouble. So why would you continue to prop up an industry that costs so much and employs so few? And there might be greater opportunities, say, in tourism. For example, down here in the Huon Valley, we have something called the Grove of Giants. Really, not much more than an hour from Hobart, people can go and see some of the tallest trees on the planet, like our mountain ash, Tassie blue gums, Tassie white gum eucalyptus and Viminalis, so close to Hobart. Is this a good thing or could there be, I suppose, if it's not managed properly, if you had too many tourists coming to see these magnificent trees, you'd have problems there as well. Yeah, but these things could be managed in the right way. One of our long-term studies is at Borderee National Park. Borderee National Park is 6,600 hectares and has a whole range of threatened ecosystems and a range of threatened and endangered species. That national park gets 450,000 visitors every year, yet the park is in very good condition and it's well managed. The tourism is well managed, particular areas, and it shows that it is possible to manage environments in a good way that mean that they're not completely overwhelmed. Now, Tasmania is able to do the same. Do we need to build high-rise skyscrapers in the middle of national parks? Absolutely not. Do we need some forms of tourism infrastructure to bring people to these environments? Absolutely. But it needs to be well managed, well zoned and properly regulated so that we don't destroy the integrity of the natural assets that are critical for these areas that make people want to visit them. And Australia, like every country, still needs timber supplies. How can we best ensure Australia's self-sufficiency in timber supply? One way could be agroforestry, which I know a little bit about. Trees on farms, but presumably agroforestry and together with plantations, could they supply our timber needs or is there something else missing? Absolutely. Plantations are already in the mainland states of New South Wales and Victoria up until the end of last year, plantations provided more than 88% of all the sawn timber in both states. One of the big issues is that most plantation eucalypt pulp logs are being exported, up to 90% and sometimes more. So Australian grown plantation timber, eucalypt timber, is being shipped off overseas. I think it's time that we had a policy that retains some of that wood volume in Australia so that it can be processed by Australians for Australian grown wood products. It's insane to grow it here and then ship it overseas. And in many cases, what happens is that we're shipping that material overseas and then buying it back as paper products. It's really silly and it's time that those kinds of reforms are implemented in the forest industry. We don't need to continue to log native forests. Those forests are actually more valuable as long-term carbon stores and sources of water and places for ecotourism. The environmental accounting work that we've done shows that and shows that quite clearly. All Australian states need to embrace that. But the federal government needs to show leadership here and create a methodology for proper carbon accounting so that the true value of these forests as long-term carbon stores can unlock sources of additional income for places like Tasmania so that it doesn't need to continue doing stupid things like logging its native forests. David, do governments around Australia seek out your expertise to advise them about our forests or not? Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't want to hear what we've got to say. But that doesn't matter. We'll just keep saying it because it's the right thing to do and because what we're finding has not been contested by government agencies and others. The only people that don't like this are the CFMEU and some members of native forest logging agencies that are hell-bent on keeping the dwindling number of jobs in the industry going. David, is there any country in the world that's worked out how to manage their forests properly? Well, I think one of the best examples of this is in New Zealand. New Zealand exited native forest logging because of all the conflicts associated with it. It invested heavily in its plantation sector and it invested heavily in its forest-based ecotourism sector and that has been an outstanding success. New Zealand is the place to go for outdoor adventure and being in nature and New Zealand produces a large amount of plantation timber, so much so that Australia imports quite a bit of it. So, you know, at the moment there's been a lot of discussion about if we don't log our native forests we'll have to suck in imports from Asia. Frankly, that's just rubbish. If you actually look at the structure of the industry, native forest logging industry is producing almost entirely wood chips, paper pulp and box liners. We're not going to be importing that kind of material from Asia in the main, although there is some coming in from Vietnam. So these issues of drawing in imports from Asia are silly. The imports that we do bring in are coming from mostly Commonwealth countries like New Zealand and also from Europe. So our plantations in Australia, they're not just radiata pine, they're also eucalypts of various kinds? That's correct. So in places like Queensland there's slash pine and also native fruit pine. And so there's a range of kinds of plantations in the country. Tasmania has shining gum plantations, a tree from the mainland, eucalyptus nitens, there's blue gum plantations, New South Wales has flooded gum, eucalyptus brandis. So there's a range of kinds of plantations across the country. But the sad thing is that much of that plantation wood is being exported. And frankly, that's silly. We need to keep some of that material in the country and process it here for Australian jobs and the creation of Australian manufactured products. Simply shipping off that material overseas just reinforces this notion that Australia's the quarry for the rest of the planet, which is not good for jobs, it's not good for the manufacturing sector, and it's not good for the structure of the plantation industry that needs to do more to value add to those wood products than we're presently doing. We're often told that one criticism of plantations is they tend to be monocultures. But I suppose if you're protecting your native forests at the same time, you're getting all those ecosystem services from your native forests. That's correct. And I think one of the key issues here is the problem with fire. What we're seeing now is a major problem with wildfire in our forests and plantations across Australia. So much so that in some of our native forests, the frequency of fire is so high that the ability to grow soil logs is almost zero. So that means that the industry is anything but sustainable, especially when we log forests, we make them more flammable. So where can we get our timber under fire regimes where the frequency of fire is so high? And the answer is plantations, because you can get a crop from plantations from anywhere from 12 years to 25 years. So the faster the rotation, the more likely you are to be able to extract a crop from those kinds of areas. In fact, that's very, very important to do so that you've got a greater chance of being able to harvest the timber before it's destroyed by fire. Yeah. I know some people in agroforestry getting very good trees, let's say 25 to 30 years old and the wood's very high quality, they're sort of growing quickly because they reduce competition and it's very high quality wood despite the fact that it's grown quickly. So some people might think trees need to grow slowly to produce quality timber, they don't. That's correct. And there's been some quite outstanding outcomes from farm forestry in some parts of Tasmania, but also mainland Australia, particularly in Victoria. I know there are in Reed, sorry to interrupt you there. Master Tree Grower Program has been brilliant. Yeah, I did his course about 15 years ago. Oh, right. Yes. Yeah. No, he's done some amazing things in that space. And I think it is important to understand that there are places where trees will grow very slowly and that may not be particularly an advantage for farmers as part of agroforestry, but there are a lot of other parts of Australia where over a 20 or 30 year period, you can actually get a reasonable crop of timber off a farm forest plot. We'll have to wind it up soon, David, because I know you have to go, but can you give us the overall thesis and conclusion of your new book? Yeah. The Forest Wars book is very much about skewering myths, dispelling myths that are peddled by the industry. You know, there's no effective logging on biodiversity. We need to log forests so that they're safer to be in, because that'll suppress fire. The native forest industry employs thousands of people. The native forest industry is very important for the economy. We need to log forests as part of tackling climate change. And these are all significant myths and they're peddled all the time. And I hear them, for example, in the Tasmanian election right now. And so the book takes more than 35 myths and it tells the reality. Logging forests makes them more fire-prone. Logging forests has big effects on biodiversity. Logging forests is a big money loser. Logging forests actually contributes to climate change through generating large amounts of emissions. So what I do is I work through a whole series of these myths. And then the final part of the book is about making a transition to something that is much more sustainable, and that is exiting native forest logging altogether and focusing our wood production in Australia, focusing our forestry in the plantation sector, including farm forestry. And so there are a lot of problems with the industry, but we need to make that transition out of native forest logging quite quickly and move to better outcomes, better for tackling issues with fire, better for climate, better for biodiversity, better for tourism, better for water production, and essentially better for all Australians. That book's published by Alan Anunwun and coming out, I think, 19th of March or thereabouts. And we'll say goodbye to David Lindemeyer. And David, you're very welcome in the Hewan Valley next time you're in Tasmania. Please come and see us. Absolutely. Thanks, Stephen. Great to be with you. Bye.