Region Archives: International

The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) has welcomed the formal start of proceedings of the Bushfire Royal Commission and has reiterated its call for Australia’s forestry assets such as timber plantations to be considered critical infrastructure which must be a firefighting and mitigation priority. This morning the Bushfire Royal Commission began its formal proceedings with a ceremonial hearing. Due to social distancing requirements because of the CoVid-19 pandemic the hearing wasn’t open to the public but was live streamed. A recording of the hearing can be viewed here. The acting Chief Executive Officer of AFPA Victor Violante has welcomed the start of the hearings. “The Royal Commission provides the opportunity for Australians to find out why the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires were so catastrophic, and what needs to be done to limit the impact of such events in the future,” he said.

KIEV / MOSCOW — A huge forest fire in Ukraine that has been raging for more than a week is now just one kilometre from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and poses a radiation risk, Greenpeace Russia warned on Monday, citing satellite images. Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service said it was still fighting the fires, but that the situation was under control. …Aerial images of the 30 km (19 mile) exclusion zone around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, showed scorched, blackened earth and the charred stumps of still smouldering trees. …Greenpeace Russia said the situation is much worse than Ukrainian authorities believe, and that the fires cover an area one thousand times bigger than they claim.

Dear Minister Jones,  Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Adrian. I am an employee in the forestry industry, a Future Forester, a graduate of Canterbury University and, albeit very small, a forest owner.  Since starting out in the forestry industry 4 years ago I have been lucky enough to experience your leadership first-hand and hear your passionate encouragement of the forest industry and forest owners within it. During this time, I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to speak at the beehive and describe the amazing opportunities for people involved with forestry. For me the forestry industry represents a world of incredible opportunities, amazing people and is an industry that I am extremely proud to be a part of. …Suffice to say I was shocked when I heard your interview with Heather Du Plessis-Allan earlier this week.

Scientists have shown to be true what JRR Tolkien only imagined in the Lord of the Rings: giant, slow-reproducing trees play an outsized role in the growth and health of old forests. In the 1930s, the writer gave his towering trees the name Ents. Today, a paper in the journal Science says these “long-lived pioneers” contribute more than previously believed to carbon sequestration and biomass increase. The authors said their study highlights the importance of forest protection and biodiversity as a strategy to ease global heating. They say it should also encourage global climate modellers to shift away from representing all the trees in a forest as essentially the same. “This analysis shows that that is not good enough for tropical forests and provides a way forward,” said Caroline Farrior, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Foresters are saying that log supply to domestic and export markets is inextricably linked and can’t be separated, as Forests Minister Shane Jones now seems to be advocating. Forest Owners Association President Phil Taylor says a harvest of just about any forest will produce higher grade logs for domestic construction, some logs for export and some lower value wood which is only suitable for domestic chipping. “We just can’t go in and cut down some parts of a tree to cater to one market without harvesting the whole tree for other markets too. That was clearly shown up when forest companies were unable to export earlier in the year…,” Phil Taylor says. “It’s not true either that we send all our logs overseas. In most years, the majority of the export value of our forest products comes from added value categories, such as sawn timber and pulp and paper.”

This World Health Day, the world is grappling with the worst public health emergency in recent memory. The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has brought the link between zoonotic diseases – those transmitted from animals to humans – and wildlife trade into sharp focus.  The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that the current COVID-19 pandemic, along with at least 61 per cent of all human pathogens, are zoonotic in origin – and wildlife trade is an aggravating risk in the spread of zoonoses. Other recent epidemics, including SARS, MERS and Ebola, have also all been traced back to viruses that spread from animals to people. Questions remain about the exact origins of COVID-19, but the World Health Organization has confirmed it is a zoonotic disease, meaning it jumped from wildlife to humans.

As Earth experiences its sixth mass extinction and species disappear before our eyes, the United Nations and the Center for Biological Diversity have both released plans that address the extinction crisis and the closely-related problem of climate change. The plans are a response to a recent United Nations biodiversity report that that concluded that as many as 1 million species are at risk of going extinct in the coming decades. The report found that humans are responsible for extinction rates up to 1,000 times greater than what would be expected without the influence of human behavior. The UN plan proposes a goal of no more net loss of habitat — marine or terrestrial — by the year 2030, followed by a secondary goal of setting aside 50% of the Earth as protected land by 2050, explains Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Environmental groups are calling for logging operations in parts of New South Wales to be suspended until the impact of the summer bushfires on wildlife can be assessed.  The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital estimates that 83 per cent of the state’s koala habitats — along with the habitats of other native creatures — were destroyed during the crisis.  Susie Russell, of the North East Forest Alliance, said her concerns for koalas in the Comboyne State Forest had increased since COVID-19 restrictions were imposed, rendering activists unable to protest.  “While we’re [staying home] I’m told that the log trucks are coming out of there loaded with logs,” she said….Forestry Corporation told ABC in a statement that it reviewed koala records in the area and carried out thorough searches for koalas ahead of operations.  

Radiation levels near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor have spiked to well above normal as two fires tear through the irradiated forests around the infamous facility. Ukrainian officials have one simple message for their citizens: This is fine. In other words, there is no immediate threat to human life, despite elevated radiation readings around the blaze. The forest fires broke out Saturday near Volodymyrivka in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a vast stretch of land that has been quarantined since 1986 due to heightened radiation levels caused by the nuclear meltdown that year. Ukraine has dispatched more than 100 firefighters to battle the fires, which have scorched approximately 25 hectares of forest around the nuclear plant. Radiation levels have soared to approximately 16 times higher than normal.