We hear about the 'World's Best Practice' over the pulp mill. The same thing is said about our Forestry, and yet neither can stand up to the light of day. I watched a timber truck haul it’s load of split myrtle out of a coupe the other day, destined for the chippers, and I remembered a fine timber worker telling me how he was finding it difficult to get the wood he needed for his business, as forestry were charging such exorbitant prices, and burning the stuff on the ground. They were excluded from salvaging any of this by locked forestry gates. They actually prefer to burn it than sell it.
It then struck me why they are doing this, when they purport to be supporting the fine timber industry.
If they were to properly harvest all the fine timber and store it, there would be a glut - probably already enough to keep the industry going for a couple of hundred years. But if they did this, they would not then have the excuse and spin that they needed to continue clearfelling, based on the myth of supplying timber to the fine wood trade, so it is better, from their point of view, to destroy the stuff at source and retain their current modus operandi. In this way, they can continue with their more profitable lines of chipping and transforming old growth to plantation.
Of course, they are unaware of this!
