Beth Schultz

The Forest Management Plan 2004-2013 was released in December 2003 and came into force on 1 January 2004. It has chapters on biological diversity; productive capacity; ecosystem health and vitality; soil and water; global carbon cycles; natural and cultural heritage; socio-economic benefits and plan implementation. Unlike previous FMPs, under each heading objectives, actions and, where relevant, key performance indicators are set out.

There are 14 appendices that cover many issues including reserve proposals; informal reserves; fauna habitat zones; protection of soil in native forest logging; departmental policies relevant to forest management; area and percentage for reservation levels of forest ecosystems; reservation of old-growth forest; management of significant flora values; and indicative time-frames for actions. The final sections contain a list of acronyms (and abbreviations), a glossary of terms and a list of references.

The overall impression is of the extreme complexity of the proposed operations, which will make implementation, monitoring and enforcement very difficult, and the uncritical acceptance of continued intensive logging and follow-up burning, so that industry can be provided with an unsustainable volume of logs for yet another 10 years.

On paper the annual volume of 1 st and 2 nd grade jarrah sawlogs has been greatly reduced, from 490,000 m 3 taken from 1,000,000 hectares of State forest under the previous FMP to 131,000 m 3 taken from 700,000 hectares of State forest under the new plan. However, by allowing a very large volume of ‘other’ logs to be cut (534,000 m 3 of jarrah), the FMP introduces a dangerous fudge factor. With log grading largely left to buyers, industry can log an unlimited area of forest in the hunt for the allowable cut of quality sawlogs, which may be called ‘other’ when they are really 1 st or 2 nd grade, especially when logs are sold under the new ‘whole bole’ system.

The appendix on silvicultural guidelines sets out amendments to current jarrah, karri and wandoo silvicultural guidelines, to be incorporated into the current guidelines before the end of 2004. It is of great concern that logging under the shelterwood prescription, or establishment of regeneration (clearfelling with seed trees), which is the most frequently used method of logging jarrah, is to be intensified by a third or more, with the basal area of retained trees reduced from 15 m 2 per hectare to eight to 10 m 2 per hectare.

Regarding Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback, the objective is to protect from infestation those areas currently free from the disease, and the performance measure is the number of sampled areas uninfested with Pc dieback that remain uninfested. This looks like a significant improvement. However, the performance target focuses only on protecting uninfested protectable areas, which reinforces the suspicion that in State forest CALM has basically given up on dieback.

Additional measures for biodiversity protection (provision of 50,000 hectares of fauna habitat zones; retention of some balga in jarrah coupes; increased protection for soil and understorey species) are welcome as is the attention now to be paid to aquatic ecosystems.

We welcome and commend the significant improvements to the conservation estate set out in the FMP. Compared to the previous FMP, an additional 300,000 ha of old growth and high conservation value forest will now be protected. The FMP also confirms that Dalgarup, near Bridgetown, for which local groups fought hard and long, is to be protected, and there are some small improvements in the indicative boundaries of some conservation reserves over what was proposed in the draft. We now expect the Government to fulfil its commitment to create 30 new national parks by gazetting them all before the next State election. However, it is unreasonable for the community to have to wait up to another 10 years before many other conservation reserves, approved in previous FMPs – some as long ago as 1987 – are finally gazetted.

While applauding the Government for greatly increasing the conservation estate in line with its election promises, we must continue to remind it that it has not fulfilled its commitments to introduce ecologically sustainable forest management and to ensure that log prices reflect the true value of our native timber.

With some 180 actions to be performed within specified times; an array of complex operations to be carried out; the fauna habitat zones yet to be established; the fate of declassified old growth forest still to be determined; and auditing by the Conservation Commission likely to be inadequate, the need for community watchdogs is as great as, if not greater than, ever.

In brief, the FMP is a great improvement on previous FMPs, and the conservation estate is much bigger and better than ever before. However, despite some concessions to biodiversity protection, as things stand the State forest available for logging – more than a third of publicly owned native forest - will be exploited relentlessly and unsustainably for another 10 years.