AUSTRALIA — One of the country’s most senior forest scientists has warned Tasmanians that locking up native forests would not end the demand for timber, only shift that demand onto someone else, met by imports that carry higher environmental and emissions costs. That is according to Dr John Raison, a former CSIRO chief research scientist, in an opinion piece published in News Limited newspapers today. “Serious answers require evidence, not slogans,” Raison wrote, restating the findings of a peer-reviewed paper he co-authored in the journal Australian Forestry. The review tested the standard criticisms of native forestry using the available science, decades of management records and field outcomes. …Raison’s intervention comes as the timber industry fights a run of native forestry closures, from Victoria’s harvesting ban to the Great Koala National Park in New South Wales. …The paper did not argue that forestry should be beyond criticism.