Maximising biodiversity

Dr Hans Drielsma, Executive General Manager

THE value of Forestry Tasmania’s research into improving growing and harvesting methods has been emphasised in the Cooperative Research Centre for Forestry (CRC) 2008/09 Highlights and Achievements report.

CRC for Forestry is recognised as a world-leading collaborative forestry research organisation and links leading Australian forest research organisations, companies, government agencies and universities.

The CRC report highlighted the high standard of research undertaken by Forestry Tasmania, particularly in relation to aggregrated variable retention which involves retaining patches of trees within a harvested area to maximise biodiversity in mature production forests.

The report emphasised the value of the biodiversity studies at Forestry Tasmania’s Warra Long-Term Ecological Research site.

Extensive research on different harvesting techniques has been conducted at Warra since 1997. The research involves monitoring mammals, litter beetles, vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, fungi and habitat trees and the results indicate aggregated retention is the most effective way to retain mature forest biodiversity.

These findings are in line with variable retention being recognised globally as best practice for mature forest harvesting. Aggregated retention is also safer for forest workers and more compatible with regeneration burns of surrounding harvested forest.

The CRC report reinforced the practical value of the research undertaken at Warra in guiding operational methods for variable retention in mature forests elsewhere in Tasmania.

It emphasised FT’s development of a set of measures to improve our understanding of factors influencing biodiversity in forests managed using variable retention. These measures can be used to assess the success rate of ecological goals at specific sites.

The ongoing benefits of the research was also recognised by the report which said monitoring will also allow comparison between results at the Warra site and the effects of variable retention in other areas.

The report can be downloaded from: http://www.crcforestry.com.au/publications/downloads/HampA-2009_Lo_web.pdf