A brief powerpoint presentation which can be used by anyone to illustrate the negative impacts of woodchipping in Australia

1. Woodchipping,
and why we shouldn’t do it.
Forestmedia Network

2. Woodchipping
• Less than 8% of the original old growth forest
remains in Australia. Yet it is still being clearfell
logged.
www.wilderness.org.au

3. Eden Chipmill
80%-90% of the trees logged in Australia are
exported as woodchips to Japan
(despite government assurances that woodchipping uses only
the waste wood (heads and butts) from logging)
The Eden Chipmill uses
1 million tonnes of
sawlogs per year and
can only use whole logs.
south-east-fibre-exports.com

4. Eden Chipmill
Between 2,500 and 3,000 trees from
SE NSW and East Gippsland Victoria
are cut down every working day to
supply the Eden chipmill.
www.green.net.au

5. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
• ForestsNSW sells native forest timber logs at bargain
basement prices. Current prices for pulp logs range from
$6.42 to $16 a tonne.
• Commercial plantations would need around $35.00 to
$40.00 per tonne to make a profit.
apps.facebook.com

6. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
• Woodchipping in NSW makes huge profits for
Japanese export company SEFE but is heavily
subsidized by NSW taxpayers.
• The recently released NSW Auditor General’s
report on ForestsNSW shows that native forest
logging in this State made a loss for state tax
payers of $14.4 million in 2007-8.
(http://www.audit.nsw.gov.au)

7. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
• The Audit report also refers to secret wood supply
deals that pay logging companies massive
amounts of compensation.
• It cites one example where FNSW paid more than
half a million dollars to buy out 34,000 cubic
metres of timber – a small fraction of the
committed volumes.
• The taxpayer is effectively
locked in to paying
‘money for nothing’
to big logging companies.
www.scienceimage.csiro.au

8. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
Recommendation 8 in the auditor General’s Report
states that ForestsNSW should introduce a new pricing
system by December 2009 that “ensures log production
costs are recovered”
This can only mean
"increase the price."
(Samantha Davis)
www.abc.net.au

9. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
• Direct employment in native forestry in south
east NSW is estimated to be 516 workers –
79 at the Eden woodchip mill, 104 in Forests
NSW, 149 in regional sawmills and about
184 contracted employees.
• But if the switch was made to plantation
timber, the large majority of these jobs could
be maintained.
• In fact, the two major occupations
in woodchipping
– truck drivers and loggers –
are both nationally in short supply.
picasaweb.google.com/.../6QUAaItACelrC3Q4G2KLjw

10. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
• There are alternatives to
woodchipping native forests. Fibre
for paper can also be obtained from
sources such as bamboo, hemp,
wheat straw and plantation
hardwood.
• There is enough plantation timber in
Australia to supply all the woodchips
needed for export.

11. Woodchipping makes
no economic sense
Woodchipping
• Adversely affects tourism
• Adversely affects other industries such as:
fishing, oystering, wine growing.
• Depletes water supplies to whole
communities
www.vicrainforest.org

12. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
www.green.net.au

13. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
Logging depletes water supplies
• Logged areas suffer a 50 per cent reduced water
yield. Young regrowth trees need more water to
grow, thus releasing less water into river
catchments. It takes 150 years for water yields to
regain their pre-logged status.
• Further studies have shown
that logging adversely affects
water quality through increased
sediment entering rivers.
www.hancock.forests.org.au

14. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• logging actually increases the risk of
fire by opening up the forest,
increasing the amount of fuel on its
floor, and drying the forest out.
blog.mywonderfulworld.org/2009/02/australias-...

15. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
Forests play an important role in
storing carbon and in mitigating
climate change
Recent scientific research shows that
the native forests of south-eastern
Australia hold much bigger stores of
carbon than previously realised.

16. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• Mountain ash forests in SE
Australia are considered the best in
the world at locking up carbon.
Brendan Mackey of the
Australian National University and colleagues
report in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
.

17. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• Mackey and colleagues found the highest
amount of carbon was contained in a forest
located in Victoria's Central Highlands, which
held 1900 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
• By comparison, the average tropical forest
had somewhere between 200 and 500
tonnes of carbon per hectare.

18. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• The best way to sequester carbon forests is to
protect existing old forests.
• "If you take one of these mature [mountain ash]
forests with 1900 tonnes of carbon in it and
trash it … it's going to take hundreds of years to
grow back that amount of carbon.“ (Mackey)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralaustralia/2402348031/

19. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
Woodchipping accounts for the same amount of
greenhouse gas emissions in NSW alone as all
of the cars in the state.
Australia could reduce its CO2 emissions by
15% - 20% just by ending woodchipping.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25737152@N04/2904248928/

20. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• There are many endangered species
because of the impact of woodchipping.
In SE NSW the Koala is endangered.
• Millions of other animals are killed every
year as a result of loss of habitat, and
many are killed during logging
operations.
• Ecological bio-diversity of both plants
and animals is permanently damaged.
www.solarnavigator.net/animal_kingdom

21. Woodchipping makes no
environmental sense
• Possums, gliders and owls are among 400
species which depend on tree hollows in the
south east forests. Most eucalypts do not form
hollows until they are 150 to 180 years old.
Large dens needed by animals
such as possums and gliders
are seldom found in trees
less than 200 years old.
• The logging cycle is on average
20 years
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/32580564/

22. The role of the Federal Government
Penny Wong has entered into Forest Carbon
Partnerships with Indonesia and Papua New
Guinea to collaborate on reducing emissions
from deforestation.
She describes it as “a critical issue, given
emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation account for around 20% of
emissions globally.”

23. The role of the Federal Government
Why has the government supported
the preservation of native forests in
less advanced countries, but not in
our own?

24. The role of the Federal
Government
• "Currently everyone is focussed on how to
reduce emissions from deforestration and
degradation in developing countries,".
• "But what this points to is that we can't
forget about emissions from natural forests
in economically developed countries like
Australia.“ (Mackey)

25. The role of the Federal
Government
• The Kyoto Protocol currently measures only
greenhouse gases resulting from "land use
change" - emissions from clearing of native
forests and uptake (sequestration) by
plantations since 1990. It does not measure
emissions from land whose use remains
unchanged.

26. ...and now, a proposal for a
wood fired power (biomass) plant at Eden!
In July 08, Penny Wong declared forest
biomass as an eligible fuel (subject to this
biomass being a harvest residue or processing
waste.)

27. ...and now, a proposal for a
wood fired power (biomass) plant at Eden!
“Worse still, the Council of
Australian Governments is set to
define burning native forest wood
as ‘renewable energy’ ”.

28. The role of the Federal Government
• The woodchipping industry has called for
compensation to counter the impacts of the
Government's climate change policy, the Carbon
Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
• “Not only has this massive greenhouse polluter
(Eden Chipmill) been declared carbon neutral,
the Government’s White Paper has
recommended that burning native forest wood
should also be exempt, even though it is a bigger
greenhouse polluter than coal.”

29. • “If it paid the full carbon cost of the
emissions for which it is responsible,
the Eden chipmill would be up for over
a million dollars a day.”
Harriett Swift.

30. wood fired power (biomass) plant at Eden
• The Federal government’s White Paper has
given a green light to the NSW government to
use its extraordinary planning powers to push
through the wood-fired power plant at Eden.
• “Minister Keneally can now use her powers
under Part 3A to stifle public input on issues
such as the devastation of the forests, the
greenhouse impacts of the plant, local air
quality and the loss of sustainable jobs in
tourism and genuinely clean energy
generation.’
(John Kaye)

31. The role of state governments
The Western Australian and Queensland
governments do not allow the export of
native woodchips. Why does NSW and
Victoria and Tasmania?

32. “It is now abundantly clear that our forests
are not in the 'safe hands' we are told, nor
are they managed for the long-term benefit
of the people of Australia and NSW. They
should be managed as carbon sinks,
biodiversity stores and water reservoirs.
Mining them for timber is no longer
acceptable.”
Forest campaigner Susie Russell

33. Thank You