Submission by Ian Mott
President - The Landholders' Institute
The NSW Government is undertaking a review of the regulations that
underpin the Native Vegetation Act. A draft of the proposed Native
Vegetation Regulation, Environmental Outcomes Assessment Methodology and
Private Native Forestry Code of Practice have been released for public
consultation.
Submission in respect of
The Draft Native Vegetation Regulation 2012, the Regulatory
Impact Statement, the Draft Revised Environmental Outcomes
Assessment Methodology and the revised Private Native Forestry Code of Practice
By Ian Mott, President, The
Landholders Institute. 24/08/2012
Overview.
The facts are capable of establishing that,
of the three options available under the review, the only option that does not constitute an
improper exercise of power, as defined under the grounds for judicial review,
is to postpone this review of this regulation and its subordinate instruments
until the Native Vegetation Act 2003 (NVA2003) itself has undergone proper
review. The other two options, of
retaining the old regulation or adopting a new one, will entrench the
fundamental breaches of legislative standards and statutory obligations that
are embodied in that Act.
It is fundamental to this review framework
that each instrument is assessed in terms of its contribution to achieving the
objects of the NVA2003. But those objects were drafted on the basis of gross
misrepresentation of the essential facts that were used to determine the
objects and justify the legislation. And
the variance between the circumstances used to justify the legislation and
reality is of such character and scale as to render that Act a totally
disproportionate measure.
We hold grave concerns that any delay in
addressing these breaches could cause landowners serious, entirely foreseeable,
and accumulating detriment and the Minister has a duty of care to take all
reasonable, practical and timely steps to prevent or minimise that harm.
The situation on the ground.
The original State Environmental Planning
Policy 26 (SEPP26) and the Native Vegetation conservation Act 1997 were
presented to the voters of NSW and the Parliament as a response to an annual
clearing estimate of 150,000 hectares.
This much publicized estimate was provided to the NSW Vegetation Forum
by Dr John Benson of the NSW Botanic Gardens.
And to arrive at this total, Benson took detailed information on the
clearing of Brigalow regrowth (now the subject of the Draft Invasive Native
Vegetation RAMA) for the expanding Cotton industry on the Moree Plain and extrapolated
to the entire state. The fact that most
of the state had neither Brigalow nor interest from cotton growers (or any
other expansive agriculture) was ignored.
Indeed, much of that extrapolated clearing total would have been applied
to districts that had been almost totally under cropping or pasture for
decades.
And despite the fact that SEPP26
specifically exempted the clearing of native regrowth, and despite historical
aerial photographic evidence presented to the Forum by Mr. David Lovell, (pers
comm.) a member of it, to the effect that native regrowth had taken place on a
massive scale, no attempt was made, by either the NV Forum or those drafting
the NVCA 1997, to determine a net flux in native vegetation cover.
There was not the slightest interest at the
executive level in obtaining a “true and fair view” of native vegetation change
in NSW. All through this period I was a
member of the Steering Committee for the Qld Statewide Land and Tree Study
(SLATS) which analysed the satellite clearing data for that state from Landsat7. It is a matter of record that NSW was offered
the use of excess computer capacity to conduct the same analysis of NSW
vegetation at a fraction of the cost but this was declined. It is my understanding that such a scan was
eventually run on behalf of the Commonwealth which revealed an annual range of
all clearing between 8,000ha and 16,000ha with a sub-decadal average in the
order of 12,500ha. I do not have the
reference but it is my recollection that approximately 50% of this total was
regrowth on private land with another 25% being clearing by power utilities.
Only the remaining 25% (3,125ha/pa) was of
the kind of mature forest that the public and the Parliament had been led to
believe was under threat and almost all of it was already subject to some sort
of assessment and approval, either as clearing for housing and infrastructure
(most of which is in the Sydney Basin and not covered by the NVA2003), or as
protected land under the Soil Conservation Act 1934, or harvesting of State
Forests.
We are in receipt of correspondence from
then NSW Minister for Land and Water Conservation, Aquilina, dated 19 august
2002, that referred to a figure of 14,000ha/pa for the period 1997-2000
provided by the Environmental Research and Information Consortium (ERIC).
In contrast, internal DLWC data that fell
from the back of a truck indicated that the 2003 wildfires destroyed 700,000ha
of forest in NSW public parks and reserves, some 70,000ha of NSW State Forest
and only 7,000ha of private native forest.
Each of these three tenures have similar areas of resource so one must
also conclude that in private native forests the overall context of adverse
impact is only a fraction of the pressure that public tenure forests are
exposed to. The largest, most intense
and concentrated adverse impacts occur in national parks with mostly old growth
forest while the smallest, least intense and most dispersed adverse impacts
occur in regrowth on private land.
The amazing disappearing regulatory impact
assessment prepared for this review noted that well over 90% of the native
vegetation in the state was either substantially modified (a.k.a. regrowth on
previous pasture) or of a class consistent with an existing use for forestry. I
would have been glad to go into more detail if it had not been snipped. It was
an extraordinary insight into the problems that private foresters have endured
over the past 35 years.
Mr. Dick Condon, former NSW Western Lands
Commissioner has estimated that there is 12 million hectares of invasive
regrowth in the western lands district alone.
There would certainly be another 3 million in the rest of the state, not
all of it invasive, and most of this is less than 30 years old. From this one
can only conclude that the average annual increase has been in the order of 500,000ha
(15m/30=0.500). At the very least, the
2004 regrowth total was in excess of the 777,000ha of forest that was burned
out by wildfires in 2003.
It is in this context that parliament
was misled:
1.
The case was fabricated to
mislead both the parliament and the public to believe that the NVA 2003 was a
proportionate measure. The NVCA 1997 was drawn up in response to an assumed
clearing rate of 150,000ha per annum. But if that Act was a proportionate
response to 150,000ha of annual clearing, then the new more stringent Act can
only be a disproportionate response to an actual clearing figure that is more
than twelve times smaller and off-set by forest expansion more than three times
larger.
2.
The case was fabricated to
mislead both the parliament and the public to induce them to implement a “zero
net loss of native vegetation” policy when the evidence is overwhelming that
there had been no net loss of native vegetation in the state for decades.
3.
The case was fabricated to
mislead both the parliament and the public to induce them to implement a “zero
net loss” policy that only recognized additions to native vegetation cover
after the fact, not before it. A farmer
who may have overseen the addition of 10,000 trees or more since he last cut
down a tree is given no credit for them, required instead to provide punitive
additional off-sets for any subsequent removal of a single tree.
4.
The case was fabricated to
continue misleading both the parliament and the public to believe that the
objects of the act were only served by the retention of stems or the
maintenance of canopy cover. The
evidence is overwhelming, from RG Florence down, that the continued retention
of all stems when growing trees collectively reach the limits of growth
accorded by their spacing leads to significant decline in the entire leaf, sap,
flower and seed based food chains.
5.
The case was fabricated to
continue misleading both the parliament and the public to believe that the “cutting
down, felling, thinning, logging or removing ” of a single tree, or the
“killing, destroying, poisoning, ringbarking, uprooting or burning” of a single
tree amounted to an activity (broad
scale clearing) which was of a character, scale and intensity that rendered it
a material change in the lawful use of all development units. This is unlikely
to be the case on any vegetated private property that is subject to the Act,
i.e., not listed in Schedule 1 as Urban.
6.
The case was fabricated to
continue misleading both the parliament and the public that the removal of a
part of a tree (a branch or one of two or more leaders) resulted in the death
of the tree. The propensity of the
overwhelming majority of non-mature trees to continue growing through coppice
growth after even single stem removal, and thereby produce a very rapid
recovery of ecological values, is a highly relevant matter which was completely
ignored in the formulation of the objects and definitions of the NVA2003.
7.
The case was fabricated to
continue misleading the parliament and the public that the entire native
vegetation resource was of a climax nature, or equilibrium old growth, which
makes up only a very small proportion (circa 2%) of the vegetation subject to
the NVA2003. Climax is the only vegetation class that will suffer no adverse
ecological outcomes if all forms of tree removal are excluded. All other classes are responses to past
disturbance which involve a progression of increasing size and spacing that
produces significant degradation of growth rate and habitat quality if human
intervention in the form of regular proportionate tree removal does not take
place.
8.
The case was fabricated to continue
to mislead both the parliament and the public to believe that a duty of care on
landowners was necessary to maintain native vegetation at stem numbers and levels
of canopy cover that were significantly greater than that which the resident
wildlife species had evolved and adapted to suit since the last ice age (i.e.
10,000 years).
9.
The case was fabricated to
mislead both the parliament and the public
to believe that the significance of
threats posed to wildlife, and threatened species in particular, in static
or contracting habitats were of equivalent scale, character, frequency and
intensity to those found in consistently expanding habitats.
10. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that a measure that actively discourages the continued
expansion of native vegetation onto former forested land that is now pasture is
consistent with the principles of ecologically sustainable development, the objects of the NSW EPA Act 1979, and the
objects of the NVA2003 itself.
11. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that the adverse impacts being inflicted on a supposedly
severely degraded landscape were in need of such urgent remedy that legislative
standards, regulatory impact assessments and the proper exercise of power could
be ignored.
12. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that imposed measures that deprive a forest owner of the
central attribute of a lawful use over part of his land falls within the
meaning of a regulation, rather than “a taking”, or “the deprivation of the
thing of it”.
13. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that the character, scale and intensity of an activity, like
tree removal, that is normal and necessary for the maintenance of a pasture for
grazing purposes is not derived from, and determined by, the rate and scale at
which those trees accumulated there in the first place. Trees that grow in a paddock as an attribute
of an existing lawful use cannot be regarded as a material change in use if or
when they are removed.
14. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that a farmers decision to allow a number of small trees to
remain in a paddock for shade purposes etc, amounts to an undertaking to allow
or accept all possible additional shade that might be produced if those and
subsequent trees were to grow to full maturity. Both the initial discretion to
add shade and any subsequent discretion to prevent additional shade or to
reduce shade are fundamental attributes of the same lawful grazing use and
cannot separated or treated as a material change of use.
15. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that an arbitrary date, like 1990 or 1983, was appropriate
for determining when a future intention to remove a regrown tree in a paddock
has been abandoned. This is an arbitrary
exercise of power, the adverse impacts of which are not remedied by the
provision to modify this date under PVPs.
16. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that the sole discretion of a parliamentary majority to
define the nature and extent of their power to govern “for the peace, order and
good governance” of the state, and to determine what the “interests of the
state” that native vegetation is to be managed for under the objects of the NVA
2003, extended to misleading the parliament itself and the voters. The oath of
office, “to well and truly serve”, and every other parliamentary convention, clearly
demands honesty as the first and only recourse.
17. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that the acquisition of rights, powers and privileges over
land by way of the NVA2003 fell within the meaning of a “just cause”, the only
grounds, other than as a corporation in trade or commerce, on which a state may
acquire property of any kind.
18. The case was fabricated to
mislead both the parliament and the public to believe that the agreements
called Property Vegetation Plans that may be entered into under the Native
Vegetation Regulation were not entirely voidable by the landowner. These
agreements are negotiated under duress, and in a context that does not respect
the landowner’s right to exercise fully informed consent. If it were not for
the shield of the crown they would be in breach of the Trade Practices Act
1974, as the product of unconscionable
conduct in the assignment of an interest in land, being the rights, powers and privileges over land
that are embodied in the existing uses to which land may lawfully be put.
19. The case was fabricated to mislead both the parliament and the
public to believe that the removal of the “minimal clearing exemptions” that
had been carried forward from the Soil-Con Act of 1934, through SEPP26 and into
the NVCA 1997 were justified on the basis of fact and validated
assumptions. These exemptions ensured
that any conditions attached to clearing approvals did not deprive a tree owner
of the ultimate right to dispose of any tree, provided the impacts were
dispersed in sufficient space and time, and of a scale that ensured they were
subsumed within the normal range of climatic variation. The serious
errors, omissions and totally groundless
extrapolations made by the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) in its analysis
of the actual and potential impact of these exemptions is outlined in the
formal complaint lodged by the Regrowth Foresters Association in 20th
May, 2002. It is attached as Appendix I. No action was taken and the matters
mentioned were completely ignored in the drafting of the NVA2003
The facts outlined above are capable of
establishing that the justification for the act and the drafting of the Native
Vegetation Act 2003 are so tainted by fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation
that the act itself, let alone the regulations under review, nor even the proposed
revision, is incapable of serving its own objects.
Indeed, the dissonance and
inconsistency between the entirely laudable objects of the act and the content
of the legislation and the regulations is of such magnitude and materiality
that the very objects of the act itself constitute a gross misrepresentation of
fact to both the parliament and the public.
The only reasonable and informed conclusion
is that the NSW Native Vegetation Act 2003 was specifically designed to obscure
the fact that both the legislation and the regulations are still Environmental
Planning Instruments (EPI) under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act
1979.
Any breach of NVA 2003 provisions or of the
regulations becomes a “development offence” under Part 4 of the EPA Act and it
is worth noting that this act has a very curious but deliberately uninformative
definition which states that “an environmental planning instrument is (wait for
it) an environmental planning instrument”. It goes on to list SEPPs and council Local
Environment Plans (LEP)s as EPIs while specifically excluding Development
Control Plans (DCPs), and leaving the reader to assume that the absence of a
mention of the NVA2003 excluded it from this category. The clear intention is
to defeat or diminish the existing use protections accorded to all existing
lawful uses under Division 10, Part 4 of the EPA Act 1979. These can clearly
attach to farming and forestry purposes with trees that predate the arbitrary
1990 cutoff between regrowth and remnant native forest under the NVA 2003. The continuation of such existing lawful uses
may not be subjected to any requirement for development consent so the only way
the PVPs could be implemented was by deliberate deception through
misrepresentation by omission in the legislation itself.
This squalid exercise in venal malgovernance has
managed to single out the landowners who have spent the past 50 to 100 years
and more furthering the objects of both the EPA Act and the NVA 2003 and
subjected them to “very special
treatment”. They have ‘maintained or
improved environmental outcomes’, they have ‘protected water quality and biodiversity’
and’ prevented salinity and land degradation’, they have continually ‘improved
the condition of (their) existing native vegetation’ and they have ‘revegetated
land’ and ‘rehabilitated land with appropriate native vegetation’.
Indeed, they have done so throughout a
period when there was active encouragement by government to do the direct
opposite. And they generally did so with the intention of managing their native
forest resource for multiple uses IN PERPETUITY! And for their trouble they
were deprived of the existing use protections that all other lawful uses, even
porn shops and brothels, enjoy. And
under the guise of providing “certainty” their multi generational lawful use
was offered an “agreement” under duress that allowed them continued access to
only part of their forests FOR ONLY 15 YEARS (less than 25% of a single growth
cycle)!
The previous government had adopted a
business model that epitomizes the classic approach of the down market shonks
and spivs, who market their “certainty” exclusively to gullible new entrants
and those short term landowners who simply want as much return from their
forest as they can get before selling up.
The prospect of “repeat business” from multi-generational family
forests, with intergenerational equity a foremost consideration, is completely
outside their business model. The future
accumulated value of a healthy productive forest has been reduced to zero.
How the Private Native Forestry Code
operates counter to the Objects of the NVA 2003.
The PNF Code appears to have been drawn up
under the delusion that all forests that are not post 1990 regrowth are climax
equilibrium old growth. As mentioned in
point 7 above, the only forest type where the setting aside of ‘exclusion
zones’ and ‘buffers’ where no disturbance may take place will not result in
serious degradation is climax forest.
All other age classes involve some sort of growth response to past
modification. And as long as there are growing trees there will be a need to
cull some of them to ensure that the remaining trees can continue to grow. To
not do so produces a reduction in growth rates as an increasing portion of
plant energy is diverted to defensive competition with other stems.
But this is not merely a timber production
issue as the uninformed have concluded;
·
Increased competition depletes
soil moisture at a faster rate between rainfall events and the resulting
moisture deficit means that less of each rain event runs off into creeks.
·
The wider window of depleted soil moisture
reduces soil microbial activity and resulting nutrient supply to the tree.
·
The wider window of depleted
soil moisture produces sap deficits and leaf moisture deficits of equally
extended duration which, in turn, reduces nitrogen (protein content) of leaves.
·
For Koalas the critical points
are 65% moisture and 1.5% nitrogen, below which nutritional value is zero and
the tree produces defensive polyphenyls to render the leaves completely
indigestible.
·
In the same way, excess
competition for soil moisture can reduce the scale and duration of flowering
events with obvious implications for wildlife in the pollen, nectar, flower and
seed food chains.
·
Similar degradation is
inflicted on the under-storey vegetation and dependent species.
·
And on a seasonal scale the
volume of food supply, its quality and its reliability is all reduced with
obvious impact on wildlife health, reproduction, survival, stocking capacity
and diversity.
·
It reduces the benefits of good
years, turns average years into below average years and turns bad years into
worst case years and thereby significantly increases their frequency.
·
Left untended, it is the
equivalent of moving the forest 10km inland every year for a decade.
The routine
forest practice is to thin growing forests before they have gone too far into
this state of “lock-up”. The standard
approach of 50% stem removal is seen by the ill informed as a 50% reduction in
habitat value but the continually exacerbated rate of soil moisture depletion
will have already decimated the wildlife population in that forest. Population declines of 80%, like that
reported for Squirrel Gliders by Sharpe at Bungawalbin are not uncommon and are
becoming more widespread and frequent.
So when a
competent forester removes 50% of the stems he produces an immediate doubling
of available soil moisture for the retained stems and depleted
under-storey. And the forest will then
enjoy a period when soil moisture lasts longer, is replenished faster,
produces more than normal run-off, and
with shorter and less severe dry spells.
The food supply will be in excess of the needs of the now rapidly
recovering wildlife populations.
If the forest
surveyed by Sharpe at Bungawalbin had been thinned at any time in the previous
six years then the population collapse that was recorded there would have been
nowhere near as severe. Each of the 50%
retained stems would have had double the soil moisture that was available to
each of the 100% of stems. The interval between rain events would have been the
same but soil moisture at the start of that dry interval would have been higher
and its depletion would have taken longer.
And the complete failure of the flowering that the Gliders depended on
would have been a partial flowering that would have sustained the young and
adolescent cohorts.
The rainfall
data for nearby Broadwater Sugar Mill also explains the story. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_058065_All.shtml
The August, September, October and
November First decile monthly rainfalls are 8.1mm, 10.9mm, 23.1mm and 16.6mm
respectively. So even without the full range of decile figures, we can see that
a recent thinning would double the water available to each of the remaining
trees to replicate conditions in a 2nd or 3rd decile
year. A doubling of available moisture
further up the scale produces a more significant improvement, where a median (5th
decile) 65.9mm event in August, for example, lifts the available moisture of a
50% retained stand to the equivalent of a 131.8mm event, which is 85% of the 9th
decile value of 154.8mm.
So it is in
this context that one must ask; what on earth makes anyone seriously think that
the minor impacts of marginal soil erosion, or temporary disturbance, from
thinning in regrowing rainforests, steep slopes, within 20 metres of a wetland
or rocky outcrop, or within any of the species exclusion zones, are greater
than the benefits of a sustained recovery from, or prevention of, a
statistically certain 80% decline in wildlife populations from a 1st
or 2nd decile event in a ‘locked-up’ forest sometime in the next 6
years?
The current
denial of the certainty of exacerbated adverse impacts from lock-up in
unthinned growing forest is in direct contradiction of every one of the objects
of the NVA 2003. Does anyone seriously
believe that ignoring the impact of an 80% decline in animal density in a
regrowing Core Koala Habitat is consistent with the objects of the act?
Does anyone
seriously believe that leaving a Koala feed tree exposed to ruthless
competition for soil moisture from every other tree in a 20 metre radius is
actually helping the f@$%& Koala?
Does anyone
seriously believe that the Koala feed tree has any hope of surviving in the
long term when it’s own capacity to compete is also impaired by Koalas eating
every fresh leaf it produces while the competition has no such burden?
Any exclusion zone in a growing
forest is in direct variance with the objects of the NVA 2003.
Alternative
forms of forestry in sensitive areas.
The totally
perverse use of exclusion zones in growing forest is made all the more worse by
the fact that there have always been forms of the forestry purpose that are
well suited for minimizing disturbance in sensitive areas. The smaller the harvested product the less
disturbance is created by its removal. So the code is correct in determining
that snigging large sawlogs out of creek banks can cause damage. But the damage
caused by snigging a pole from the same location will be much less than proportionate
to the weights involved. And the use of overhead cables will reduce impacts
even more.
Coppicing for house poles, posts, stays and firewood
produces a harvested product that can be carried by hand to the point outside
the exclusion zone where it can be sledded out by winch. Coppicing on a topped 2.4m
or 3.6m “standard” can add strainer posts, yard posts and billets for post splitting
to the mix on a longer rotation. And all forms of coppice management ensure
that there is full root system maintenance at all times, especially when
conducted in partial harvests.
Simple flanged
wheel trolleys on wooden rails over the short distances in sensitive zones are
very cheap and easy to install and remove and they leave zero footprint at all.
Narrow gauge 50mmx50mm wooden rails can take an axel load of 1.5 tonnes at 650mm
cross member (small sleeper) spacing,
And that load, distributed to a 10cm wide sleeper of 75cm length produces a maximum ground
pressure of only 2kg/cm2 . Four metre sections of this rail have a weight of
only 30kg for each and a material cost (at retail prices) of only $10/metre. So 20 metres of temporary rail costing only
$200 can provide safe on-ground extraction from any sensitive part of a forest
with zero footprint.
Any provision
of the PNF Code that fails to allow modifications to the forestry purpose that
would both protect the key ecological values in sensitive areas, AND allow some
form of forestry to continue in them, can no longer claim to be only a
regulation because it refuses to regulate. The exclusion of all forms of
forestry renders the Code an instrument of partial acquisition. And it is an
unlawful one at that.
Habitat
hollows.
The need for
appropriate shelter for hollow dependent species is self evident and entirely
consistent with the objects of the NVA 2003. And the retention of existing hollow
bearing Trees (HBTs), and the provision of future replacements for them is also
entirely appropriate in any native forest where such trees already exist. For in
such cases existing HBTs are clearly part of the existing lawful forestry use
to date.
However, the
PNF code does not distinguish between such forests and those forests that have
been re-established on former pastured land. In such cases there were no
habitat trees to begin with, and, in theory at least, there will be no wildlife
to supply them to. If the required
number of HBTs is as essential for the presence of viable hollow dependent
populations and diversity of species, as the current doctrine insists, then
regenerated forests without HBTs must be assumed to have no current need for
HBTs because there must be no population there to use them.
And in such
cases the requirement for an additional 10 recruitment trees /2ha, on top of
the 10 that are in lieu of absent HBTs/2ha, is not only unnecessary, it is
downright punitive. All 20 are likely to
start forming hollows some time after 70 years. And as such recruitment trees
are expected to be amongst the largest in the stand, they will all be aged
around 60 years already. So it logically follows that the appropriate cohort
for any subsequent batch of HBTs to yield hollows another 60 years later is
only just emerging as seedlings.
Of far more
relevance is the fact that the PNF Code takes the needs of hollow dwelling
species so seriously that they can sit back waiting for 70 years to give them
the housing that some of them might actually appreciate today. Waiting 70 years for a perfectly healthy tree
to rot would have to be the least effective means of delivering the service.
More
importantly it is also by far the most wasteful and expensive means with the
least certainty about the quality of the eventual product and the least
management input into the standard of that product.
Last month I
actually milled up a typical recruitment tree, a Blackbutt of 62cm DBH and 18m
of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th log, with
the 5th log still to be done.
It has already yielded $2100 worth of timber at retail (green off
saw). So the retention of 10 such trees
for future HBT service requires me to forego $21,000 per hectare, on every
hectare I own. The first thing I would
do with spare cash is to pay off my mortgage which costs me 7% in annual
interest. And that means my foregone
revenue will cost me and my family 7% per annum for the next 70 years until the
habitat service is actually delivered.
According to
Warren Lucas of Lucas Portable Mills, (pers comm.) there are in excess of 2000
portable mills in NSW and many of those will have a network of properties that
they mill for in respect of both commercial harvesting and RAMA products. So
there is absolutely no basis for valuing foregone timber harvesting volume at
any other rate than the full retail value (green off saw).
For the record,
those 10 sawlogs will be worth $58,000 by year 15, $160,000 by year 30,
$441,000 by year 45 and $1.217 million PER HECTARE by year 60.
And if I happen
to have a listed Brush Tailed Phascogale in my forest I will need to increase
this contribution by another 5 trees/ha which will increase my current
contribution to $31,500/ha and take the total at year 60 to $1.82 million/ha.
But wait, it
gets worse. That Phascogale has a home range of 78ha (a 500m radius) and each
of those hectares is supposed to have the extra 5 trees which comes to 390
sawlogs worth $819,000 today and a massive $47.5 million by the time a hole is
actually produced. The 78ha will support
I male territory and 2 female territories for an average of $15.8 million for each
adult.
And if that
doesn’t blow your mind then you should reflect on the fact that these little
guys only live for a year. The males literally bonk themselves to death. And as
they spend their first 6 months in the Den they only have about 180 days to
wander over their 78ha home range, which means they will only spend 2.3 days on
each hectare or 0.46 of a day in each of the $121,700 HBTs that is set aside
for them.
For the record,
these animals have a body length less than 10cm and a similar length tail. The
pregnant females prefer a hole between 40 and 45mm that will allow them to
squeeze through while keeping the smaller gliders, who compete for similar size
holes, out. The males can use smaller holes.
So we are effectively
talking about a hole that could be drilled in less than a minute, with a hand
drill and a standard spade bit, in just about any rough barked tree on the
hectare. Any lower branch of more than
75mm diameter and higher than 3 metres could be lopped off just 50cm from the
trunk and a hole drilled straight down the core of it. But of course, lopping that branch would
qualify as broadscale clearing under the NVA 2003, and you will need a PVP to
do it, just once.
If there are no
convenient lower branches a similar hole can be drilled into any 40cm length of
75mm diameter wood and attached to any appropriate tree. Or one can be extra
clever and cut the length into two 20cm lengths and drill most of both lengths
at 45mm with a narrower drill at one end to form an entrance and then join the
two halves back together again.
There was never
any need nor desire among private forest owners to have their forests debased
with the squalid array of little plywood “dunnies” that urban Australians seem
to think is the only way to produce an artificial hollow. These are the
products of people who are quite alien to forest landscapes and seek the
reassurance of their familiar little boxes whenever their minds turn to animal
housing.
Forestry
historians like HL Edlin, “Woodland Crafts of Britain” 1948, has identified a
whole range of traditional crafts and techniques that are capable of producing
exactly what each hollow dwelling species requires, and in the numbers
required, and at the time they are required, from materials that are readily
available right in the forest where they are needed.
Woodlanders
have been making hives for bees, stables for horses, coops for poultry, sties
for pigs, hurdles for sheep and goats, putchers for salmon, carts, coracles,
barrows, barges and barques and all manner of human dwellings from bodgers
hovels to cathedrals but for some curious reason we are excluded from applying
our skills for the housing of our own wildlife in our own forests.
My own estimate
is that there is enough wasted wood in the head of a single sawlog to produce
enough hollows (50) for ten hectares. And they can be sourced from durability
class 1 species, like Grey Gum and Ironbark, that are rated as capable of
lasting 40 plus years in the ground, let alone up a tree.
The simplest
form is to use the same technique that is still used to produce split posts on
farms all over the country. A round
billet of the appropriate length is sawn full length to a suitable depth at 6
to 8 points around the circumference and a wedge is then driven in the end and
along the grain so the post splits easily away from the centre. The only
difference when making artificial hollows is that the length is shorter and
more easily split and the depth of cut is not as deep. And when all the external
pieces are split they can then all be bound back together again to form a
hollow in the same way that primitive man first learned how to make a barrel.
It is rather ironic that departmental experts are yet to make the leap into the
7th century BP.
The requirement to use the most ineffective
and costly option to produce HBTs is a serious deterrent to the assisted
expansion of native forest because no such obligation is placed on planted
forest expansion. That means that local
genotypes are unlikely to be used and the result will often involve a clonal
monoculture. That outcome is clearly
inconsistent with the objects of the NVA 2003.
More
unfortunately, the requirement for ineffective and untimely HBTs in
regenerating forests is depriving our culture of a woodland occupation that is
unquestionably one of the most sustainable occupations mankind could ever
imagine. There are millions of hectares
that do not have any form of natural hollows and most of them will not get them
for 6 decades or more.
Yet, a properly
drafted PNF Code that is consistent with the objects of the NVA 2003 can create
the circumstances that justify that occupation on economic and ecological
grounds. A single man-week will be
required to construct and place a full suite of hollows for two hectares. So
each 100ha can be seen as a man-year and just 4000ha becomes what the Buddhists call a
“right livelihood”, a life well spent, for gentle souls who whistle well and
listen better, working with their hands in the shadow of the trees that grew to
form the stuff of their trade, and among the wee folk who know no other home.
But are you
equal to the task?
Far from the madding crowds ignoble
strife, their sober wishes n’er leaned to stray. Along the cool sequester’d
vale of life, they kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Thomas Grey.
The objects of this Act are:
(a) to provide for, encourage and promote
the management of native
vegetation on a regional basis in the social, economic and environmental
interests of the State, and
(c) to protect native
vegetation of high conservation value having regard to its contribution to
such matters as water quality, biodiversity, or the prevention of salinity or
land degradation, and
(d) to improve the condition of existing native
vegetation, particularly where it has high conservation value, and
(e) to encourage the revegetation of land,
and the rehabilitation of land, with appropriate native
vegetation,
in accordance with the principles of
ecologically sustainable development.
Ian Mott, 24/08/2012.
Motts Road Main Arm via Mullumbimby
NSW 2482.
