UNESCO releases report on Forestry Management Practices

Forestry Tasmania has welcomed a report by UNESCO endorsing Forestry Tasmania's management of production forests on the boundaries of Tasmania's World Heritage Area. This follows the World Heritage Committee’s Mission to Tasmania in March of this year.

Forestry Tasmania's Acting Managing Director, Hans Drielsma said the report provides great comfort for FT's staff, who put much effort into making sure the values of the WHA are protected.

" We are always on comfortable ground when our practices are assessed on scientific grounds and this report is not only comforting for our staff, but it should also reassure Australians that our forests are being well managed,” Dr Drielsma said.

"Forest activists pushed for this review to be conducted. It was at their instigation that the World Heritage Committee sent a representative from the IUCN on the Mission to Tasmania to make this independent assessment and so I would now hope that they would accept the outcome.

" FT always finds the overblown rhetoric used by activists uncomfortable, but this report has clearly shown the rhetoric has no scientific foundation."

The report, prepared by expert scientists, states that the balance between conservation and timber production in Tasmania’s forests has been met, that the forests are being well managed and recommends that the boundaries to the World Heritage Area not be extended into Tasmania’s productive forests.

The overarching conclusion of the Mission’s report was 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 clearly states that: “The balance between forests assigned to reserves/conservation and for production was struck through the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) process in 1997, supplemented through the 2005 Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement (TCFA).”

“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 also endorsed the forest management practice of regeneration burns and current roading techniques.

"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."


“Regeneration of Eucalyptus forests through regeneration burns and seeding is an acceptable silvicultural treatment for regenerating Eucalyptus, a fire dependant species.”

The report also concludes, “Environmental standards for road building are high”.

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

“In particular the recommendations for enhanced protection measures for archaeological and Aboriginal sites within and adjacent to the property, and the suggestion that parks and forest managers work more closely together are supported by Forestry Tasmania."


ENDS


Tasmanian Wilderness Mission Report [1,557KB]




More information:
Claire Bennett
Corporate Relations and Tourism
Ph: (03) 6233 8249

Acting Managing Director Hans Drielsma will be available for comment at 1pm today.