FORESTRY

Australia's native and plantation forests are an important natural resource providing a wide range of products and valuable services to the community.

Australia is one of the most biologically diverse countries and the forests of south-western Australia are one of the world's 34 recognised biodiversity ‘hotspots’. Forests protect soil and water resources, and are increasingly being recognised for their potential as carbon sinks through their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. They are also the foundation for a broad range of cultural and spiritual experiences for diverse groups of people and a major tourist attraction for Australian and overseas visitors, providing for a vast array of recreational and educational activities.

Australia's native and plantation forests provide the majority of the timber and a significant proportion of the paper products used by Australians. Employment and wealth flow directly from manufacturing the wood products, such as sawn timber, fibreboard, plywood and paper, derived from the forests. These forests and plantations also support a variety of other products and services, such as honey, wildflowers, natural oils, firewood and craft wood.

The National Forest Policy Statement, agreed by Australian state and territory governments in 1992, sets out a vision for management of Australia’s forests that integrates environmental, commercial and community values and uses. These values are embodied in regional forest agreements negotiated for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania.

As a member of the international forest initiative - the Montreal Process - Australia has contributed to the development of the criteria and indicators for the conservation and sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests. Australia has adopted the internationally agreed criteria, and revised the indicator set to reflect its own unique forests, providing a consistent framework for monitoring and reporting on the status of its forests. Information is collected covering the themes of biological diversity, productive capacity, forest health, soil and water values, carbon, socioeconomic, and legal and institutional frameworks. The information is compiled every five years by the National Forest Inventory (NFI), within the Bureau of Rural Sciences, to produce Australia’s State of the Forests Report.

Australia's forestry and forest products industries are important components of Australia's primary and secondary industry sectors. They are particularly important in providing economic development and employment in many regions of rural Australia. The industries include native forest and plantation management, log harvesting and transport, hardwood and softwood sawmilling, plywood and panels manufacturing, woodchip production and export and the pulp and paper industries. Estimates of employment in the forestry and forest products industries range from 77,000 people to 120,000 people, depending on the employment categories included.

The hardwood and softwood sawmilling industries comprise mills of diverse sizes and types that process wood into sawn timber and other products such as mouldings and flooring. The hardwood mills are generally small scale and scattered. The softwood mills are generally larger and more integrated with other wood-processing facilities.


Forest estate

Native forest

A forest is defined by the NFI as an area incorporating all living and non-living components, dominated by trees having usually a single stem and a mature or potentially mature stand height exceeding two metres, and with an existing or potential crown cover of over-storey strata about equal to or greater than 20%. This definition includes Australia’s diverse native forests, regardless of age. It is also sufficiently broad to encompass areas of trees that are sometimes described as woodlands.

Based on this definition, the total area of native forest reported in the latest Australia's State of the Forests Report is estimated at 147.4 million hectares (mill. ha), which is about 19% of Australia’s land area (table 17.1).

Some 107.8 mill. ha (73%) of native forest are on public land and 38.1 mill. ha (26%) are on private land, with the remaining 1% on land of unresolved tenure. The 107.8 mill. ha of forests growing on public land consists of 65.1 mill. ha (60%) on leasehold tenure, 22.4 mill. ha (21%) in nature conservation reserves, 10.9 mill. ha (10%) on other Crown land, and 9.4 mill. ha (9%) managed by state forest authorities for multiple uses including wood production, recreation and informal reserves. Including forested leasehold land and private freehold forest, some 103.2 mill. ha, or 70% of Australia’s native forests, are privately managed.

Most of Australia’s forests are dominated by eucalypts, which include trees in the genera Eucalyptus, Corymbia and Angophora (table 17.1). The second most extensive forest type is acacia. Despite the predominance of these forest types, Australia’s forests are very diverse. There are more than 700 species of eucalypts and almost 1000 Acacia species, as well as many other genera of trees in forests that vary widely in their species composition and structure and in the fauna they support.

17.1 NATIVE FOREST AREAS - 2008
		NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Aust.
		'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha
DOMINANT CANOPY SPECIES
Eucalypt
	Tall	3 421	1 562	177	-	213	1 101	-	28	6 501
	Medium	17 228	4 110	33 825	356	9 508	1 264	18 213	81	84 586
	Low	289	105	2 404	1 179	3 888	65	8 176	7	16 115
	Mallee	210	1 504	60	6 256	1 217	-	-	-	9 247
	Total	21 148	7 281	36 466	7 791	14 826	2 430	26 389	116	116 447
Acacia		1 333	41	6 060	239	1 123	72	1 496	-	10 365
Melaleuca		48	24	5 698	14	62	19	1 690	-	7 556
Rainforest		495	18	1 867	-	5	593	302	-	3 280
Casuarina		1 168	131	61	671	82	1	114	-	2 229
Mangrove		5	2	436	14	164	-	359	-	980
Callitris		1 540	25	597	118	1	1	315	-	2 597
Other		473	314	1 397	7	1 400	-	344	7	3 942
Total		26 208	7 837	52 581	8 855	17 665	3 116	31 010	123	147 397
TENURE
Public
	Multiple use forest(a)	1 980	3 163	1 991	-	1 248	1 026	-	-	9 408
	Nature Conservation Reserve(b)	5 148	3 505	4 576	4 029	3 868	1 121	16	108	22 371
	Other Crown land(c)	943	109	1 598	277	7 169	85	674	7	10 862
	Leasehold(d)	9 891	35	34 304	3 083	3 891	-	13 920	8	65 132
	Total	17 962	6 812	42 469	7 389	16 176	2 232	14 610	123	107 773
Private(e)		8 076	1 025	8 908	1 399	1 489	885	16 317	-	38 099
Unresolved tenure		170	-	1 204	67	-	-	83	-	1 524
Total		26 208	7 837	52 581	8 855	17 665	3 116	31 010	123	147 397
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)
(a) Publicly-owned land managed for multiple use including wood production.
(b) Public land on which wood production is excluded (National Parks, etc).
(c) Reserved areas of educational, scientific and other public institutional land, including easements, Defence land, and other minor tenure classifications.
(d) Crown land leased for private use where the right to harvest or clear land must be approved by state/territory governments. Often known as pastoral leases.
(e) Land held under freehold title and private ownership including land held by designated indigenous communities under freehold title with special conditions attached.
Source: Australia's State of the Forests Report 2008, National Forest Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Plantations

Australia’s plantation estate continued to expand in 2008. The total recorded area of plantation established reached 2.0 mill. ha in 2008 (table 17.2). This was an increase of 70,000 ha (3.7%) over 2007 and of nearly 20% over the past five years. The proportion of hardwood species has increased to 48% of the total with softwood species making up just over half (51%) of the total area (graph 17.3). About 95% of the softwood plantations are Pinus radiata and other introduced pines. Nearly all of the hardwood plantations are native eucalypts, including Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus), shining gum (E. nitens) and flooded gum (E. grandis).

For the first hundred years of plantation development in Australia most of the investment was by governments. There are now diverse ownership arrangements, including a variety of joint venture schemes between public and private parties. For the past several years, most investment in new plantations has been by the private sector through managed investment schemes which funded about 81% of all new plantations established in the past five years and now own about 34% of the total plantation area (graph 17.4). The proportions of public and private plantations were equal at 46% in 1999. Privately-owned plantations now represent 62%, far exceeding public plantations at 33%. The other 5% are jointly owned.

17.2 PLANTATION AREAS - 2008
	NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Total
Species type	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha	'000 ha
Hardwood	82	201	59	58	305	217	27	-	950
Softwood	286	220	189	123	109	77	2	8	1 014
Other (mixed or unknown)	3	1	2	-	2	-	-	-	9
Total	370	422	251	182	416	294	30	8	1 973
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)
Source: Australia's Plantations 2009 Inventory update, National Forest Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Biodiversity in plantations

Until the 1980s, most plantations were pines planted on land where there was previously native forest. Since the 1980s, nearly all plantation expansion has been of eucalypts and the vast majority has been established on land cleared long before for agriculture. Biodiversity could be compared with the original native vegetation or with the former agricultural land use.

A growing number of studies indicates that biodiversity is highest in undisturbed native vegetation, next highest on plantation margins adjacent to native forest, and less in the interior of the plantation. Overall, plantations have a greater biodiversity than open agricultural and grazing land. The trend is the same for pine plantations but the level of biodiversity in the interior of the pines is normally less than in the interior of eucalypt plantations. Results of surveys comparing bird species found in native forest, eucalypt plantations and pasture in Victoria are shown in graph 17.5. Eucalypt plantations were examined at 105 sites in north-east and central-west Victoria, along with nearby sites in farmland and remnant forest. The study showed that plantations support higher densities of forest birds than cleared farmland, and slightly lower densities that native forest.

Farm forestry

Farm forestry refers to the incorporation of commercial tree growing into farming systems. This may take the form of small plantations, timber belts, wind breaks, alleys and wide-spaced trees, and may also include management of native forest for commercial returns and other benefits. Farm forestry has been adopted by relatively few Australian farmers, although a large proportion of them plant trees for land protection and amenity purposes.

Managing private native forests is a potentially important component of farm forestry because 26% of Australia’s total native forest area is on privately-owned land and a further 44% is on leasehold land. However, there is little information available about how those forests are managed.


Wood and paper products

On average, each Australian consumes about 1 cubic metre of timber products each year, including timber for home building, joinery, furniture and paper products. Those products are supplied from domestic production and from imports.

A total of 28.5 million cubic metres of logs were harvested from Australian native forests and plantations in 2007-08; that volume was 5% more than the previous year and a 35% increase over ten years. The volume harvested from native forests declined by a little over 10% over ten years while the volume harvested from plantations increased by about 75%.

The total value of exports of forest products in 2007-08 was $2.5 billion. Woodchips comprised 43% of that total and paper and paperboard products (primarily packaging and industrial paper) comprised 26%. The value of imports of forest products in 2007-08 was $4.4 billion, of which 51% were paper and paperboard products (primarily printing and writing paper) and 11% sawnwood. This indicates a trade deficit in forest products of $1.9 billion in 2007-08, similar to that in previous years.

Australia produced 5.4 million cubic metres of sawn timber in 2007-08 (table 17.6). That volume was comprised of 1.1 million cubic metres of hardwood timber, nearly all derived from logs harvested from native forests, and 4.3 million cubic metres of softwood timber, nearly all derived from logs harvested from plantations. Exports of sawnwood totalled 338 000 cubic metres and imports totalled 784,000 cubic metres. Allowing for domestic production, exports and imports, total Australian consumption of sawnwood in 2007-08 was about 5.8 million cubic metres.

Other timber products include plywood, wood-based panels and reconstituted wood panels. Australian-made wood-based panels include particleboard, medium-density fibreboard and hardboard. These are made from softwood or hardwood pulplogs, sawmill residues and thinnings.

Pulp and paper mills use roundwood thinnings, low-quality logs, harvesting residues and sawmill waste, recycled paper and paperboard to produce a broad range of pulp and paper products. Over the past five years there has been an almost three fold increase in the volume of wood for paper and paperboard harvested from eucalypt plantations as they have come into production while the volume harvested from native forests has declined by about 13%.

Woodchips are used to produce paper and paper products. The woodchip export industry uses sawmill residues and native forest logs that are unsuitable for sawmilling. Before the advent of the woodchip export industry, much of this material was left in the forest after logging. Sawmill waste material, which would otherwise be burnt, is also chipped for local pulpwood-using industries. Woodchips are also produced from thinnings from softwood plantations and from hardwood plantations grown especially for the purpose.

A total of about 10.8 million cubic metres of logs were used for woodchip production for export in 2007-08, an increase of over 30% in the previous five years. The proportion from hardwood plantations increased from 14% to 38% of the total in that period while the proportion from native forests decreased from 72% to 48%.

17.6 PRODUCTION OF WOOD AND SELECTED WOOD PRODUCTS
Commodity			2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
Sawn Australian-grown timber
	Coniferous	’000 m3	3 415	3 456	3 821	4 012	4 263
	Broadleaved	’000 m3	1 253	1 231	1 211	1 152	1 109
	Total	’000 m3	4 668	4 687	5 032	5 163	5 371
Plywood		’000 m3	146	156	145	130	134
Particle board		’000 m3	1 048	944	1 002	933	957
Medium-density fibreboard		’000 m3	795	794	798	680	710
Paper and paperboard
	Newsprint	’000 t	422	443	415	411	456
	Printing and writing	’000 t	585	659	663	693	706
	Household and sanitary	’000 t	200	197	203	190	186
	Packaging and industrial	’000 t	1 956	1 945	1 926	1 907	1 933
Source: Australian Forest and Wood Products Statistics September and December quarters 2008, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

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