Region Archives: International

Global forest loss has slowed over the past five years, UN researchers said, but progress has been uneven, with population growth driving a rise in deforestation in Africa. Over the past decade, forest loss halved in South America, long a hotspot, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, while parts of Europe and Asia saw a rise in forest cover as more trees were planted. The United Nations study found 10 million hectares of forest were destroyed annually in the past five years, down from 12 million hectares a year in the previous half-decade.

Thirty thousand hectares of Forestry Corporation land burnt. Thirty-nine crews currently harvesting timber. Twelve to 18 months before the fire damage makes the logs unusable. The numbers surrounding Forestry Corp after the 2020 bushfire season are slightly grim, but Regional Manager Dean Anderson insisted he’s optimistic; “fairly,” he clarified. The fires last summer claimed about 4 million cubic metres of standing timber in Forestry Corp’s softwood plantations. …“We would normally harvest between 1.3 to 1.8 million tonnes per annum,” he said. “Next month we’ll be operating close to 4 million tonnes per annum, pro rata.” Four months after the fires, they’re now just 13% of the way through the burned timber.

An additional $150 million has been committed by the Morrison government to assist koalas and other wildlife recover from last summer’s bushfires, as experts warn the catastrophic blazes threaten lasting damage to hundreds of plant and animal species. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said it was a “significant amount of money” that would do the “heavy lifting” for wildlife recovery and enable long-term collaboration between scientists and government. “This is a significant amount of money for wildlife and habitat restoration and for the long-term co-ordination of our work on threatened species. It allows us to work across a significant landscape scale,” Ms Ley said. The funding will be rolled out over two years and comes in addition to a $50 million emergencyfund announced in January.

A Malaysian company that won a permit to clear tropical rainforest on Manus Island has been accused of failing to deliver on its promises to the local community, while reaping millions of dollars in profits from the logging of valuable hardwood timber.  According to licensing documents, the company, Maxland Ltd, secured a permit to clear land in the south of Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island in order to plant between three and five million rubber trees as part of the Pohowa Project. The project’s stated aim in documents was to “benefit smallholder rubber farmers [and] the surrounding communities”.  However, according to a new report produced by Global Witness, two years into the five-year contract, not a single rubber tree had been planted, but there was evidence that valuable hardwood timber had been felled by the company and was being exported.

Forestry academics have issued a warning over the Victorian Government’s decision to scale back the harvesting of native timber forests in the lead up to a 2030 ban.  University of Melbourne Professor of Forest Ecology Patrick Baker said Victoria’s silviculture research community was not consulted on the decision.  “What we should be thinking about is how we can shift our management towards what is best for the forest and how we can set up forests to be as resilient as possible to the future, because in 10 years we’re going to have to walk away from them,” Professor Baker said.  VicForests, the agency responsible for stewardship of forests on public land, did not meet the criteria for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification late last year. …University of Melbourne Associate Professor Craig Nitschke said the 2030 forestry ban undermined the push for more sustainable harvesting practices. 

Temperate and tropical dry forests – not just rainforests – are home to thousands of unique tree species, a new study reveals. Scientists studied data from more than 10,000 forest and savanna sites across the Americas, discovering unique and special tree biodiversity. Conservation efforts have traditionally focussed on rainforests, partly because they contain so many tree species. But the new study – by an international team including the University of Edinburgh and the University of Exeter – overturns this conventional wisdom.  The study shows that nearly 30 percent of tree evolutionary diversity is only to be found in temperate and tropical dry forests, while the comparable figure for tropical rainforests is 26 percent. The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, is entitled: “Freezing and water availability structure the evolutionary diversity of trees across the Americas.”

Humanity’s “promiscuous treatment of nature” needs to change or there will be more deadly pandemics such as Covid-19, warn scientists who have analysed the link between viruses, wildlife and habitat destruction. Deforestation and other forms of land conversion are driving exotic species out of their evolutionary niches and into manmade environments, where they interact and breed new strains of disease, the experts say. Three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originate in animals, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but it is human activity that multiplies the risks of contagion. A growing body of research confirms that bats – the origin of Covid 19 – naturally host many viruses which they are more likely transfer to humans or animals if they live in or near human-disturbed ecosystems, such as recently cleared forests.

Finnish, Swedish and Russian researchers highlight the ecological effects of forestry in Fennoscandia in five review articles published in the journal Ecological Processes. The summarized research suggests that the amount of dead trees in commercial forests is not sufficient for the species requiring decaying wood. To improve the situation, the researchers propose retaining considerably more dead trees and old trees in felling, increasing the number of retention trees and prescribed burning, and improving the forest certification system. According to Research Professor Matti Koivula and Research Scientist Ilkka Vanha-Majamaa from the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Finland could take inspiration from the many measures implemented in Swedish commercial forests and leave more wood in forests in connection with felling to ensure sufficient decaying wood in the future as well.

The world’s total forest area is decreasing more slowly than in past years, according to new data from the United Nations. …The planet has lost 178 million hectares of forest since 1990, an area roughly the size of Libya. The rate of loss, however, has decreased “substantially” over the last decade due to a combination of slower deforestation, human-driven forest planting and natural forest expansion. Earth lost 7.8 million hectares per year from 1990 to 2000. That rate dropped to 5.2 million per year from 2000 to 2010, and 4.7 million per year from 2010 to 2020. …Although the progress is encouraging, it nevertheless falls far short of environmental goals. Deforestation was supposed to have been halted completely by 2020 under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 15. And while deforestation has been declining, the pace of that decline is slowing.

Marlborough has lost 670 hectares of native bush to forestry over the past six years, Forest and Bird says.   It’s on par with a national trend, which shows thousands of hectares of native habitat has been cleared across the country in recent years.  The data, which came from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, showed nationwide, New Zealand lost 2584 hectares of matagouri, and 5075 hectares of manuka.  Included in this was the 670 hectares of scrub bush and shrub-land in Marlborough, made up mostly of matagouri, which was converted into “exotic forests”.   Forest and Bird defined “exotic forests” as planted or naturalised forest predominantly made up of radiata pine but including other pine species. Production forestry was the main land use in this class.  

Government logging has resumed in fire-damaged forests in NSW despite warnings that devastated bushland and endangered wildlife are too fragile to withstand further disruption. Newly released documents from the NSW government’s logging agency – the Forestry Corporation – reveal that at least 85 per cent of harvestable native hardwood forests in the south coast region was burnt in the fires. Despite this, in a letter to wood supply contract holders – released during budget estimates – the corporation said it remains “optimistic” it can meet its supply entitlements. Independent NSW MP Justin Field said the government was acting as if the devastating fires had never happened. He said communities were “devastated to see logging return to burnt and unburnt forests across NSW.” NSW Environment Protection Agency mapping shows about 92 per cent of the area set for logging was burnt in the fires.