Following my recent post titled 'More Tall Tales from Jared Diamond' there was comment that it would be useful to know the area of old growth forest remaining in Australia. I put the challenge to Ian Mott and here is his guest post:
"Professor Jared Diamond has an elliptical orbit of the truth that includes regular intersection with comet Aunty (ABC), usually when both are at their apogee. And Diamond's appearance on Robyn Williams program, In Conversation, 23/02/06, is no exception.
He said, "Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest." And he went on to state that Japan has a much larger percentage of its land mass as old growth forest.
Apparently this sort of pronunciamento is regarded as information to the ever decreasing proportion of ABC listeners, eager for any skerrick that will reinforce their national self loathing or entrench the party line of, humanity as original sin.
So how far from planet Veracity is this guy? I will first examine the statistics for Japan and then Australia.
Japan
A quick Google search revealed that popular Japanese magazine KATEIGAHO, in a feature on forests, reported that only 1 percent of the Japanese forest estate is virgin, what we would call old-growth.
But the best site for comparing both Japanese and Australian forests is the World Forestry Centre which tells us that:
"Japan is very heavily forested at 70 percent [67.5 pc actually] of its total land area, or 25 million hectares of its 37 m ha total. This 25 m ha can be broken down into 23 m ha of closed forest area, with 10 m ha of planted forests and 14 m ha of natural forests. Japan has one of the highest percentages of forest cover of the developed countries. However, because of the very high population density in this small country, the forest area per capita is only about 0.2 hectares, which is one quarter of the world figure.
About 40 pc of Japan's forest area, more than 10 million hectares, consists of plantations. These man-made forests consist mostly of softwood species like Sugi (Japanese cedar) or Hinoki (Japanese cypress), and were planted during the 1950's and 1960s."
In summary, only 1 pc of this 25 million hectares is what we would call 'old growth', that is, only 250,000ha or 0.67 of 1 pc of total land area.
So even after the blatantly cheap shot of comparing a wide desert country with a thin mountainous maritime one, the real 'old growth' figure has come hurtling back through the asteroid belt.
The 14 million hectares of "natural forests" are what we would call "native regrowth forests" that have been continually harvested for timber production for centuries, in a cycle of harvest and regeneration. And that 1 pc of old growth works out at 20 square metres of old growth for each Japanese citizen.
Of the original 37 million hectares of Japan that was once covered in forest, a total of 23 million hectares (62pc) was cleared for agriculture etcetera while 98 pc of the remaining 14 million hectares was regularly harvested for timber over many centuries. But since the 1950's another 10 million hectares (27pc) has been replanted, most probably to recover from excessive harvesting during and after the war years when all of Tokyo and other cities were rebuilt after allied firebombing.
Australia
It is a nonsense to compare Australian desert with Japanese forest. The only effective means of comparison is to compare what each country has done with those natural resource elements that they have in common. So we need to assess what we have done with our stock of similar forest.
The World Forestry Centre site, mentioned above, tells us that Australia's total land area is 768 million hectares and that forests cover 20 percent of the landmass including woodlands*:
"There are about 43.7 million hectares of native forest in Australia, and four main land tenures relating to these forests. This is 5.7pc of the total area and 57pc of the original forested area. There is another 119 million hectares of woodland."
The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI), gives more accurate figures showing that 5.7pc of the country is forest, of a type comparable to those of Japan, while 15.5pc are woodlands.
So for all the hand wringing about Australia's supposed land clearing Armageddon, it is a fact that only 10pc (77 million hectares) of the country actually had forest on it to begin with and only 43pc of this (4.3pc of total area) has been cleared.
But to determine how much of this forest is "old growth" we need to go back to the Resource Assessment Commission's 1990 data sets**.
These used slightly different categories but still posted a total forest area of 43.185 million hectares of native forest of which 17.4 million hectares (40.3pc) had never been logged.
This needs to be adjusted slightly as the Japanese 'old growth' figure is expressed as a percentage of total forest, including plantations. So the 17.4 million hectares of old growth amounts to 38.3pc of the combined total Australian forest area of 45.4 million hectares.
In Summary
Japan started with 37 million hectares of forest but cleared this back to 38pc before returning another 27pc for native species plantations to produce a current forest area of 67pc of the original. Only 1pc of total forest area is considered "old growth" and all of the remainder is available for on-going timber production in perpetuity.
Australia started with 77 million hectares of forest but has cleared this back to a point below 57pc before returning an undetermined but significant portion of regrowth, and 2pc as plantations to produce a current forested area of 59pc of the original. More than 38pc of total forest area could be described as 'old growth' which is not available for timber production, being in either National Park or reserved portions of State Forests. And even when our vast area of desert and grassland is considered, the 17.4 million hectares of 'old growth' forest still amounts to 2.2pc of our total area compared to 1pc for Japan.
When considering native forest alone, Japan has retained 38pc of its original area while Australia has retained 57pc of its original forested are. The addition of the 119 million hectares of Australian woodland to this analysis would produce an even higher retention figure for Australia.
Professor Jared Diamond's statement that, "Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest", and his comparisons between Japanese and Australian forests amount to a very serious misrepresentation of the facts by a person who has held himself out to the Australian public as an expert in these matters. And media entities that have reported Mr Diamond's misrepresentations have duty to publish equally weighted corrections.
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* Woodlands are defined as forests where crown cover as viewed from above is between 20 and 50pc. Typically such forests are 10 to 20 metres in height though they may reach 30 metres. Some are managed commercially for timber production, but the primary land use for most is grazing.
** A Survey of Australia's Forest Resource, March 1992, Resource Assessment Commission, AGPS, ISBN 0 644 24486 0 (hard copy only)"
Thanks Ian.
this bonus 😉
On wildlife responses to logging, which is not my field, I had an interesting conversation with a young researcher several years ago. He was observing bird populations in a small clear-fell area in the jarrah forest and there seemed to be several responses. Some species stayed back in the uncut bush and didn't change, some increased in number in the clearfell (which had young regrowth a couple of metres high in it)and some increased around the boundary between the two. I was left with the impression that it really is a pretty complex field.
I sometimes wonder why species like the chuditch (western quoll?) and the numbat, once found across much of the western half of southern Australia, have found final refuge in the SW forests. Regenerated forests.
So Thinksy, say an Aus company knocks over a tree hereabouts and that log is valued at $x. Some proportion of x, say 2% (let's not get hung up on the number, just off the top of my head), is then levied for use in an off-shore development project. Canberra matches it dollar for dollar from Ausaid because there's going to be some touchy-feely stuff involved and private companies shouldn't be compelled to do that other than via the tax system.
The off-shore development fund is then applied to develop commercial native forestry in a specific area in a LDC. Improve the skills of the local forest owners, help them receive payment for the logs they're losing now, help regenerate the next rotation of the forest, determine what proprotion of their existing forest should be retained as uncut and so on. Biodiversity is non-negotiable.
This is a compromise for people who want logging banned outright everywhere and forever, and also is not appealling to people who think every one of god's creatures has a value equal to themselves, but if something isn't done, with 2% of the world's rainforest in LDCs is disappearing every year, in 50 years a lot of today's indigenous forest owners won't own much forest any more.
Now if the company who knocked over said tree in Aus elects to do so, they can provide the forest management expertise and training directly to the forest owners in the LDC. So the 2% levy could be provided in kind, because there's nothing better than meeting people personally and discovering that they have real needs like us. The company may elect to secure some rights (but never full and exclusive rights) to the regnerated forest resource in the future and this could be (but not exclusively) in the form of annuities paid from now until harvest of said regenerated forest. There are lots of plantations run on a similar system. By developing this association with the indigenous forest owners, the company may also gain rights to harvest that proportion of the existing forest resource that is designated commercial native forest. Careful auditing required here.
Something along these lines means that after the imposition of the levy on the Aus log, the system starts to run itself by giving the skills to the indigenous people to manage their forest and linking them with a commercial partner who will give the forest owners access to a market. The commercial partner is also doing the forestry thing of establishing access to a future resource.
Not only is it a jungle out there, but that's the way we want to keep it.
Thinksy and Ender, the issue of wildlife preference for regrowth needs a good cover but I was holding off because it looked like it might drift into an adversarial exchange again, mostly from my response to Boxer's egging of Ender. There is some research that skirts around the topic but it would be a very brave young researcher who tried to carve out a career niche in disemboweling such a sacred cow.
But there is a humungus smoking gun of basic ecological links and relationships that make this pretty clear. But it is probably best to set it out as a lead post with all the issues rather than do it on the run at the end of a trail.
But as a little teaser, we know that regrowth forest uses much more water than old growth and we know that the use of water by a forest is directly linked to the leaf area of that forest. The greater the leaf area, the higher the water requirement and we must then conclude that a regrowth forest will have more leaf area than an old growth forest at every stage of a climatic cycle. And this means that the entire leaf based food chains are greater in regrowth than in old growth forest.
But there is a stack more to it than this so best to wait and do it properly.
And the early history of all things Mott and the navel of the universe is in train but the hard part is cutting back the "long and winding road" to the size of a blog post.
Phil, those numbers are in the ball park, the only problem is that the maps of original cover are still being updated with similar degree of change to the remnant maps. And I am not certain about the extent of ground truthing the original cover maps have had. Some of the current remnant maps were still getting 50% revisions as recently as 2003.
The other problem with these categories is the fact that canopy cover or "foliage projective cover" can vary by about a third from wet season to dry season so the numbers change significantly. I think it was the year before last that Qld gained 7 million hectares of open woodland that had previously been excluded. Part of this would have been because of thickening while some of it would have been an increase in foliage due to a better season. From memory, NSW lost 7 million in the revision while NT & WA had larger revisions that almost cancelled each other out.
Its a jungle out there.
OK Motty - are you prepared to accept ftp://ftp.brs.gov.au/outgoing/longterm/lw/lcc_report.pdf as a basis for discussion.
"Landcover change in Australia " Michele Barson, Randall, and Bordas. BRS.
"Prior to European settlement about nine percent of Australia's land cover was forest i.e. woody vegetation dominated by single-stemmed trees where foliage cover of the tallest stratum was greater than 30 percent.
By the 1980s only five percent of the nation remained forested, and the area of woodland had decreased from 21 to 14%. Thinning of forests and woodlandsm plus some invasion of grasslands by woody species, have resulted in a 4% increase in the area of open woodlands."
See Figure 1 for changes in woody vegetation !!
Thinksy,
If the conservation of the natural area was so valuable that it sustained an unprecedented economy, which simultaneously invigorated traditional associations with natural values, contradictory exploitation would surely be interpreted as sabotage by landholders and flannihilated with the unambiguousness of natural justice.
Boxer said "..if we were to increase our forest industry in an attempt to displace imports from LDCs, we should simultaneously sponsor improvements in forest practices in LDC". I agree. It would have to be an essential condition for expanding logging though, and could be prone to the usual bureaucratic/multilateral failures. It would also have to consider the full range of social and institutional issues in the recipient forest area. Perhaps a carefully chosen, specific partnership (ie with a certain LDC programme) would make it more effective.
Related note: you might be aware there have been some debt for nature swaps, where NGOs etc bought LDC (bad) debts from MDC Lenders at a discounted rate, with agreement from the LDCs to then convert the value of the debt into a protected natural land area (ie the effect of the 3-way agreement is to cancel some debt in return for conserving a natural area in the LDC). But then of course there are contentious issues if impoverished locals want to exploit that same natural area to survive, but developed (MDC) nation values and/or govt agreements over their natural resources are depriving them of the opportunity. And further problems protecting the conserved area. Hence efforts, some successful, to involve the locals so deeply that they 'own' the outcome.