By Pip Hinman
In the last 20 years, many of the world's forest resources have been exploited to the point where they no longer yield old growth timber. The forests of north-west USA, British Columbia and many of the huge tracts of tropical hardwood forests in southern Central America and South-East Asia have been plundered. Very few large areas of exploitable hardwood remain.
In Australia forest covers only 5.3% of the continent; 43% of the forest area existing at the time of European settlement has been cleared or severely modified.
Fearing timber shortage, 10-15 years ago companies and governments began to plant eucalypts for pulp. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, the availability of a uniform resource which requires fewer chemicals and mechanical input to turn into paper than other pulpwood sources, is fuelling a fire sale of the world's last old growth hardwood forests. "The aim is to cut the old growth forests before the timber from the hardwood plantations floods the market."
This is the context of the current dispute between conservationists and the timber industry, the latter now dominated by multinational companies (or subsidiaries), some of which, like Boral and North Ltd, have a range of other resource interests as well.
The biggest market for Australia's woodchips (most of which go to the paper industry) is Japan, which imports 90% of the hardwood chips traded in the Pacific rim. Demand for paper in Japan is skyrocketing; it imports $16 billion of timber each year. North Ltd, the largest Australian woodchip exporter, which is based in Tasmania, is confident it will secure a big share of the increasing demand for woodchips.
Following a dip in the early 1990s, forestry companies are now beginning to report record profits. According to a June 1994 Financial Review report, the worldwide timber shortage and a growth in new housing have boosted the industry's profits. With the prospect of a second housing boom later this decade, a bigger market share in the Pacific rim countries and a government which has okayed an increase in the export licences, loggers look set to flourish.
The woodchip export trade boasts annual earnings of $450 million (a figure which ignores the hidden subsidies). Yet Australia remains a net importer of wood and paper products, which each year add $2.5 billion to the trade deficit. The 1992 National Forest Policy Statement (signed by the federal government and all states except Tasmania) was supposed to phase out woodchip exports in favour of more domestic pulp and paper production by the year 2000. The prime minister had promised that woodchip exports would be cut by 20% per year, but if the 1995 licences are upheld, 1996 exports look set to increase.
Myths
Among the myths peddled by the forestry industry groups, one of the most common is that woodchipping is merely an adjunct to sawlogging: in theory the top grade logs go to the kiln driers, the bottom to domestic chippers and only the worst to mills that export woodchips. The facts, however, are different.
A Victorian government audit released in March revealed that 50% of logs are regularly downgraded by the timber industry in order to increase profits. The Sawlogs Monitoring Report documented repeated acts of deception by logging contractors keen to evade paying state government royalties.
The Wilderness Society reports that forest workers and contractors are regularly threatened with loss of their jobs if they do not downgrade logs. The Wombat Forest Society in central Victoria has a video of high-grade timber shooting down the chipper conveyor at a Geelong forestry company. And NSW Democrat MLC Richard Jones has received information from small sawmillers that high quality logs — "their bread and butter" — are made into woodchips.
Another favourite myth is that environmentalists are a rabid group with little or no concern for the future of the forestry industry, jobs or anything other than flora and fauna. But a Newspoll survey in early December found that 80.3% of Australians are opposed to native forests being felled and exported as woodchips to Japan. This would seem to support the view that a majority believe that protecting the environment does not have to mean a loss of jobs — the refrain that some industry and union officials delight in repeating.
In his December 20 announcement on export licences, resources minister David Beddall said, "The export of woodchips as a by-product enables small sawmillers in country towns to remain viable and maintains the economic base of regional Australia". This flies in the face of reality. Between 1970 and 1985, forestry industry employment declined by 23.5% while annual log removals from native forests and plantations increased by 46%. Small family-owned mills, particularly along the NSW-Victorian border, were swallowed up by a few more capital-intensive corporations.
Data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that between 1971 and 1991 employment in forestry and logging declined significantly, compared to the relatively stable employment levels in the wood and paper products sectors.
Conservation groups have long argued that they are not opposed to the forestry industry or woodchipping per se, just the destruction of 200-300 year-old trees. The solution, they say, must take into account both jobs and the environment. They have suggested alternatives including a transition strategy which includes: cessation of all logging in old growth forests and wilderness areas, protection of all identified high conservation value areas and the rapid transition from regrowth logging to a plantation-based industry.
Rather than vast new export-oriented products, the federal government should coordinate a program of import replacements. Instead of giant, polluting pulp mills eating up the remaining unprotected wilderness, we should have new small and medium sized pulp mills based on plantation timber, recycled feed-stock, annual fibre crops and agricultural waste.
Sawlogs should come mainly from softwood plantations. In addition, there could be a limited extraction of high quality sawlogs from non-heritage-listed native forests where the end use justifies the expense. These measures would put the forestry industry on the road to environmental and economic sustainability.