UNESCO releases report on Forestry Management Practices

FORESTRY Tasmania’s management of production forests next to the World Heritage Area (WHA) has been given the thumbs up in a report released by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee.

The review of the WHA and management of surrounding areas was undertaken by expert scientists in response to calls by forest activists for increased buffer zones around the WHA. It concludes there is no need to change the boundaries in relation to forest production.

Forestry Tasmania's Acting Managing Director, Hans Drielsma said the report was reassuring for FT's staff, who work hard to ensure WHA values are protected.

"We are always happy to have our practices assessed on scientific grounds,” Dr Drielsma said.

“This report is not only comforting for our staff, but it should also reassure all Australians our forests are being well managed.

"Forest activists pushed for this review. It was carried out at their instigation so I would now hope they would accept the outcome.

"The report clearly shows the activists’ fears were unfounded and their rhetoric has no scientific basis.”

Dr Drielsma said the report found there was an appropriate balance between conservation and timber production in Tasmania ’s forests, and the WHA boundaries need not be changed.

The report concluded that: “The threats to these forests from production forestry activities are well managed and there is no need for the boundary of the property to be changed.”

The report noted the forest activists’ main concern was a clash of land management objectives following the relocation of the eastern and northern boundaries which were set after extensive consultation when the World Heritage Area was expanded in 1989.

It also says the balance between reserves/conservation and production forests was established as part of the 1997 Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) and the 2005 Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement (TCFA).

The report goes on to say: “Since the inscription and subsequent expansion of the property, the logging practices in the adjoining areas of the TWWHA have gone through extensive reviews, accreditations and are assessed as meeting international standards. The logging practices emulate, up to a point, these natural processes.”

The report endorsed forest management regeneration burns, saying: “Regeneration of Eucalyptus forests through regeneration burns and seeding is an acceptable silvicultural treatment for regenerating Eucalyptus, a fire dependant species.

“In the past ten years in Forestry Tasmania has conducted a total of 521 silvicultural regeneration burns within five kilometres of the TWWHA boundary. None of these fires burnt into the TWWHA.”

The report also says environmental standards for road building are high that Forestry Tasmania has taken steps to overcome inappropriate access to the WHA.

Dr Drielsma said Forestry Tasmania endorsed all of the recommendations in the report.

“We particularly support enhanced protection measures for archaeological and Aboriginal sites within and adjacent to the WHA, and the suggestion that parks and forest managers work more closely together,” he said.

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