Social acceptability survey

John Hickey, Planning Manager

THE environmental effects of harvesting continue to be a major factor that influences the acceptability of native forestry for many people, however less than 25 per cent of people are opposed to any form of logging in native forests, cutting edge research has shown.

The findings of the Australian Research Council project undertaken by Melbourne University with Forestry Tasmania, the Forest Practices Authority and Tourism Tasmania were presented at seminars in Huonville and Hobart last month.

The Social Acceptability of Forest Management Options: Landscape Visualisation and Evaluation project compared the level of acceptance of a range of forest management scenarios.

The report, released by the University of Melbourne, provides an insight into Tasmanian community views on forest management methods, applied to the landscape over the long term. It also indicates a number of ways of improving social acceptance of forest management, while still maintaining sawlog supply and at the same time benefiting the environment.

The survey involved 490 Tasmanians from the Huon Valley, other Tasmanian regions and recent visitors to the state who were asked to comment on innovative forest management options developed by industry, environment and forest management experts.

Participants were sent a questionnaire which included simulated colour images of nine hypothetical management options over a period of 95 years. Also included was information about the outputs for the environment and wood supply of each. The participants were asked to note how acceptable they found the options on a scale from 1 to 7.

The survey also looked at values, with almost 60 per cent strongly agreeing native forests should not be converted to plantations or clearfelled. However only just over 20 per of people believed there should be no logging of native forests.

The findings show that most people judged the options primarily on effects on the environment. Options that were believed to have lighter impacts on the environment were more socially acceptable. Beliefs about effects on wood supply were also significant, but had much less overall effect on social acceptance.

Aggregated retention which leaves about 20 per cent of forest in coupes unlogged, the creation of mosaic forests of different ages using a mix of systems, and the establishment of eucalypt plantations on private land or in state forests had the highest approval levels. These are all management options Forestry Tasmania has either used, is using, or is about to use. Interestingly many participants indicated a preference for further conversion of native forests to plantation in order to reserve more native forests while allowing timber supplies to be maintained. This is a similar strategy to that adopted for the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement and the Tasmanian Community Forestry Agreement, although Forestry Tasmania voluntarily chose to cease conversion of native forests in state forests in 2007.

The scenarios were developed using simulations of areas from Port Huon to the east through to Mt Picton in the World Heritage Area and especially developed computer programs were used to depict what the areas would look like over 95 years using different forest management options.

The University of Melbourne research team of Dr Rebecca Ford, Dr Kath Williams, Professor Ian Bishop and Mr Eric Legge-Smith approached the project with an impressive level of professionalism in social research and computer visualisation. They developed the ground breaking software which I believe could also have great potential for programs such as those run by the Forest Education Foundation.

It might require substantial further development but ideally students could use the software to become hands on virtual forest managers and see for themselves the long term results of different forest management scenarios.