Region Archives: International

An expected increase in new forestry activity could inject more than €27m into the rural economy next year. With 560 new afforestation licences issued by the Department of Agriculture in 2024, Forest Industries Ireland (FII) has forecast an increase in forest planting in 2025. The group, which represents the forestry and timber industry group within Ibec, said that the licences represent 4,417 hectares of potential new forestry projects. In each of 2023 and 2024, about 1,650 hectares were actually planted, which FII estimated had generated around €10m in grants and premiums for those new forests in those years. …Under the current forestry programme, the grants paid to finance the planting of new forests are up to €6,744 per hectare. Farmers then receive forest premiums for 20 years of up to €1,103 per hectare.

New South Wales, Australia — NSW taxpayers footed a bill of $29 million to destroy irreplaceable native forests last year, raising the total public cost to more than $50 million in three years, as calls for a cessation in native forest logging and a transition to a full plantation-based industry grow louder. Released quietly on Friday afternoon, the 2024 Forestry Corporation Annual Report revealed the extent of the financial woes to its native forest logging operations, reporting a $29 million loss to its Hardwood Forests Division in 2023-24 as the balance sheet of its operations worsens. The commercial viability of native forest logging in NSW is falling at an alarming rate with this year’s shortfall almost double the loss of the previous year. Native forest logging was $15 million in the red in FY23, after posting a loss of $9 million in FY22. Compounding the financial performance of native forest logging, Forestry Corp’s annual report deemed its hardwood assets have no financial value.

Forestry Australia has welcomed a new study published in Australian Forestry peer-reviewed journal by the former chief research scientist at the CSIRO, Dr John Raison. The paper, titled A review of the impacts of sustainable harvesting, non-harvest management and wildfire on net carbon emissions from Australian native forests, investigates the science behind claims that timber harvesting increases greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Bill Jackson, Acting President of Forestry Australia said Australian and international studies highlight the potential to lower carbon emissions by producing and using wood products from sustainably managed forests, particularly as substitutes for high-emission building materials. …Dr Jackson said policy makers also need to consider the short, and long-term, impacts on carbon stocks of decisions to reduce or cease native forest harvesting. This includes the impacts of wildfire and reduced professional forest and fire management capacity in agencies responsible for timber production.

AUSTRALIA — James Cook University scientists will be part of a study to discover which trees will do best as carbon levels in the atmosphere increase and which won’t – so land managers know where to concentrate their efforts. JCU’s Professor Lucas Cernusak will lead the study, funded by a more than $700,000 grant from the federal government’s Australian Research Council. He said atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 50% globally, driven by human activity from around the year 1750 as the industrial revolution began. “While this has caused global warming and climate change, atmospheric carbon dioxide also provides the fuel for plant growth. Its rise has likely resulted in increased growth of tropical forest trees, but we don’t know which tree species benefit most,” said Professor Cernusak. He said preliminary observations suggest tropical conifer trees benefit more than angiosperms (flowering plants such as eucalyptus).

A new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led study has found that how rain falls in a given year is nearly as important to the world’s vegetation as how much. Reporting Dec. 11 in Nature, the researchers showed that even in years with similar rainfall totals, plants fared differently when that water came in fewer, bigger bursts.  In years with less frequent but more concentrated rainfall, plants in drier environments like the U.S. Southwest were more likely to thrive. In humid ecosystems like the Central American rainforest, vegetation tended to fare worse, possibly because it could not tolerate the longer dry spells… They found that plants across 42% of Earth’s vegetated land surface were sensitive to daily rainfall variability… Statistically, daily rainfall variability was nearly as important as annual rainfall totals in driving growth worldwide.

A new report, “Browsing Damage – What is Happening in the Forest and What Happens in the Statistics?”, published by the Swedish Forest Agency, provides new insights on the ongoing debate surrounding moose management and its impact on Sweden’s forests… The report challenges the prevailing conclusion that increasing pine tree densities is the most effective way to reduce browsing damage and suggests that moose density plays a more significant role. The study uses an extensive database and an updated calculation model and demonstrates that moose density has a greater impact on browsing damage than pine density… By comparing observations with spatially matched estimates of moose densities, the study reveals a noticeable browsing damage reduction as moose density dropped and pine density increased over the years.

WoodTECH is returning in March 2025! WoodTECH 2025 is the Australasia’s premier event for wood processing and manufacturers, and has been run by FIEA for over 25 years. The last in-person event, WoodTECH 2019, drew a record attendance. Since then, many new technologies have been installed and upgraded in mills across Australia and throughout New Zealand. Networking meeting in-person is now more important than ever, and we’ve got a great lineup of technology specialist speakers from around the world coming downunder – just for this event. Bring your team and find out where everyone is headed with improving competitiveness in sawmilling. It’s independent. It’s run by this region’s leading forestry technology events company, the Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA). The WoodTECH 2025 series will run in both New Zealand and Australia in March next year.

Mary Creagh

The UK forestry and wood industry is experiencing a pivotal moment, described as a “Goldilocks moment” where conditions are “just right” to align industry aspirations with government policies, as highlighted during Confor’s annual Westminster conference. Stuart Goodall, CEO of Confor, expressed optimism about the industry’s potential to deliver on economic, environmental, and social priorities for the UK Government. … He voiced hope that the Labour Government would continue the positive trajectory established by Conservative ministers, particularly through initiatives such as the Timber in Construction Roadmap and the National Wood Strategy for England. … Mary Creagh MP, whose ministerial brief includes forestry, reiterated her commitment to expanding productive conifer planting and increasing the use of home-grown wood in construction. During her address, she praised the previous government’s efforts, noting that tree planting in England had scaled up to 4,500 hectares in 2023-24 as part of a broader UK total of just over 20,000 hectares—a generational high.

SWEDEN — Södra and Nordic Forestry Automation (NFA) have signed a letter of intent to roll out operator support for thinning carried out under Södra’s supervision. The system will also be able to collect data for each individual tree for future planning and analysis. Roll out and installations are scheduled to start in the second half of 2025. …“More innovation is needed in forestry and NFA shows clearly that new technologies can make a difference and be valuable for forest estates. A major advantage is the breadth of the innovation. It gives us thinning support, while the data collected can form the basis for future planning and decisions. This is a good example of Södra joining forces to add value for forest estates,” said Magnus Petersson at Södra.

Environmentalists have released what they say are the first maps of nearly 40,000 hectares of protected Tasmanian native forests that the state government plans to open to logging in what critics have described as “political point scoring”. They suggest significant parts of the state’s north-east around the Ben Lomond national park and near the town of Scottsdale could be made available to the forestry industry if the Liberal government wins support for the changes in parliament. A smaller area of forest could be opened up in the north-west between Smithton and Wynyard. The premier, Jeremy Rockliff, announced in February that a re-elected Liberal government would allow logging in 27 areas that have been protected since a “peace deal” was struck between the timber industry, conservation groups and unions in 2012 in an effort to end the decades-long conflict known as the “Tasmanian forest wars”.

New research has revealed less than a quarter of the remaining tropical rainforests around the globe can safeguard thousands of threatened species from extinction. The research evaluated the global availability of structurally intact, minimally disturbed tropical rainforests for more than 16,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians… University of Northern British Columbia’s Dr Rajeev Pillay, who led the research, said the results point to the urgent need for conservation strategies that go beyond preserving forest cover to maintaining forest quality. “Simply having forest cover isn’t enough if the structural complexity and low human disturbance necessary for biodiversity are gone,” Dr Pillay said. “As international conservation targets emphasise ecosystem integrity, this study provides a critical baseline.”

Fungi — or a lack thereof — could partly explain why trees are failing to adapt to climate change. A majority of tree species depend on underground symbiotic fungi, called ectomycorrhizal fungi, for the nutrients and water they need to survive. Like other organisms, ectomycorrhizal fungi may be struggling to adapt to climate change, especially heat and drought. But there’s still a lot that scientists don’t know about how these critical fungi are responding to climate change, or how that affects trees’ ability to survive in different regions… Maps revealed that 35 percent of all tree-fungi pairings face shrinking areas where both trees and fungi will be able to survive. Without the right fungi in tow, trees won’t be able to move north along with their climate.

The European Union reached a tentative deal to postpone its landmark law to tackle deforestation until the end of next year, giving global supply chains of commodities from coffee to beef more time to adapt. An agreement reached with lawmakers on Tuesday brings a turbulent few months for one of the EU’s most far-reaching environmental plans close to an end. The law was met with widespread pushback from agricultural giants like Brazil and Indonesia, as well as EU countries such as Austria and Finland. “We successfully postponed the implementation of the deforestation law by one year, giving European businesses, foresters and farmers the planning security they need, while protecting them from excessive bureaucracy,” said Christine Schneider, lead negotiator representing the European Parliament in the talks.

Related coverage in:

• Euronews: EU anti-deforestation law delay: centre-right cries victory, NGOs cry foul
• Deutsche Welle: EU agrees to delay deforestation law but won’t water it down
• The Associated Press: EU pushes back deforestation law by a year after outcry

Right to Information documents have shown the biodiversity values, extent of old growth, and potential logging methods for 39,000 hectares of native Tasmanian forest that could soon be made available for logging. The Tasmanian Liberals promised to transfer the forests from what it calls a “wood bank” — or Future Potential Production Forest — into a classification that would allow them to be logged at short notice. The exact location of the forests has remained secret despite questioning by the media and in parliament. But details have now been publicly released following a Right to Information request by BirdLife Australia, against the wishes of the government. They show the government asked the state’s public forestry company, which trades as Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT), in late 2021 if it wanted to access extra native forests.