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Woodchips are Not Evil - Tell the PeopleApril 1999The current anti-RFA, anti-woodchip campaign by sectors of the conservation movement threatens dire and unintended consequences for the future - the future expansion and utilisation of plantations and farm forests, future sustainable management of public and private native forest, future growth and employment in the forest and wood products industries in Australia. This little story is a rallying call, not only to forest growers but also - perhaps especially - to the forestry profession, through the Institute of Foresters, and to the forestry schools and research academies. Your help is needed. It is time to speak up. It is time to get on the public's communication lines and let them in on some secret foresters' business. And, if we're really careful, together we can do this without getting sucked into the woodchip export maelstrom (any more than we already are). The reason for this action is this... A sad and ironic consequence ahead, if the conservationists' current anti-RFA campaign succeeds, is the prospect of a misled citizenry with a long-lasting, ill-informed opposition to many domestic forest product industries. Conservation spokesfolk have become expert at the 10-20 second media sound grab to get their argument across. So now, in the media, we regularly see and hear the spectacle of any harvesting (including thinning) for any purpose in any part of any native forest (public of private, regrowth or unreserved old growth) being misrepresented as (get this)..."woodchipping the last of our old growth/wild/magnificent etc forests for the Japanese pulpmills to send back as toilet tissue". Years of hearing this simplistic nonsense, which a great many committed conservationists have never believed, are causing even intelligent and well-read citizens to see 'woodchips', per se, as intrinsically bad, no matter what their source or destination. (Witness the recent utterings of the Newcastle City Council about the treatment they would hand out to any business associated with woodchipping.) This is far more fundamental threat to forest management than any argument about woodchip exports from native forests. And it can even be approached separately. (Of course, 'they' won't let us keep it separate, but let's play the game anyway!) To set the scene, remember that we're talking here about the sustainable management of 'production' forests - not about the untouchable representative areas of forest with old growth, biodiversity, wilderness and heritage values set aside in the CAR reserves as part of the RFAs. With that in mind, forest growers and the forestry schools and profession must become much more involved and adept in conveying to the public the silvicultural realities of forest management. At conveying the ecological as well as economic benefits of having a commercial use for the vast quantities of non-sawlog material and residues that unavoidably generated in producing sawlogs. We must effectively convey the reality that chipwood ('woodchips') is no more that an intermediate process towards a final use of this non-sawlog material - as in paper and cardboard, pinboard, weatherproof house cladding and other reconstituted wood products, and even as fuel for electricity cogeneration and feedstock for ethanol and lignin production. (A surprising number of people don't know this. I recently heard of a former forester who thought Weathertex was made from cement! The idea that woodchips themselves are intrinsically evil must not be allowed to become conventional wisdom. If this were to happen, then ignorant adverse decisions made by councils and governments around the country will mean that the forest and wood products industries in Australia will have no future, the much-needed restoration of Australia's regrowth forests will be put back many decades, and the planned expansion and utilisation of plantations and farm forests will slow dramatically. I know this is not what the conservation movement at large wants for this country. But it will be the outcome if the conservation leaders don't curb the excessive simplicity in the public utterances of their spokesfolk. And it will be the outcome if well-intentioned citizens are not given all the information. Information to help them understand the values of natural and planted production forests. to understand the ecological and economic consequences of not using, in a silviculturally balanced way, all the output of the forests. This information must come from sources the public trusts. Universities, CSIRO, the forestry profession. Yes, we will attract attempts to discredit us simply because we speak up for forestry. Yes, we will get demonised for saying things the forest utilisation industry says. And yes, some will say that we're all being paid off by the multinational export woodchippers. And that we eat babies. Such techniques can be very effective in silencing critics. We've seen it all happen. But the forestry scientists, the forestry professionals and the universities who teach them must not be innocent bystanders here. There is no such thing. Our sin of omission will be in failing to tell our fellow citizens what we know to be true. And the solution is not to write letters and technical papers to ourselves in learned journals. The solution is have well-prepared, scientific, concise, graphic arguments about the silvicultural realities of forest management, about the essential values of various chipwood-based industries, and to make sure the public hears these arguments. And to have the courage and endurance to keep telling the people in the face of personal attack. Letters to newspapers and popular magazines, briefing and interviews for radio, TV and the print media, websites, talkback radio. Every time we hear the mindless mantra about "woodchipping the least of our old growth/old/magnificent etc forests for Japanese pulpmills to send back as toilet tissue", when they are actually talking about unreserved production forest, we must get on the phone or into print with the truth. Every time. And don't leave it to the forest industry and the State forest services. According to surveys, their public credibility is very low. Woodchips are not evil. Tell the people. And be sure they hear and understand the message. Reprinted in the April 1999 edition of the IFA Newsletter from 'Australian Forest Grower', Autumn 1999 |
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