Dead native forest rotting for weeks/months on Burnie Wharf, Tasmania

13th February 2013

[Source: Tasmanian Times, 20130213,

^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/appalling-waste-of-eucalypt-and-speciality-timbers-at-burnie/]

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The Tasmanian Greens (yesterday) condemned Forestry Tasmania’s appalling waste of valuable specialty timber species, which rots and splits on the Burnie wharf as sawmillers cry out for access to such a valuable resource.

Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP today took a group of Tasmanian country sawmillers and timber merchants to inspect the growing mountain of logs on the Burnie wharf, which was delivered to the mill as valuable timber and now awaits export to China as virtually worthless split and cracking logs.

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“There’s enough high value logs stacked up on the Burnie wharf right now to keep a generation of small family owned sawmills in business, but instead they are being sold into China as downgraded and virtually worthless whole logs,” said Mr Booth.

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“We saw thousands of tonnes of Eucalypt, Blackwood, Myrtle, and black heart Sassafras all splitting up in the sun and going to waste.”

“Many of the logs were of the highest quality, with a dense grain and a rich colour and could have been turned into superb furniture, musical instruments, wooden boats and other high value sawn boards and building timber.”

Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor)

Listed as endangered under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 and the Federal Act.

Its favoured feed trees include winter flowering species such as Swamp Mahogany (Eucalyptus robusta), Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), Red Bloodwood (Corymbia gummifera), Mugga Ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon), and White Box (Eucalyptus albens);

species targeted in Tasmania for logging.

[Source:  Photo by 0ystercatcher on Flickr,

^http://www.birdlife.org/community/2010/11/hope-for-tasmania%E2%80%99s-forests/]

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“The sawmillers were rightly upset and dismayed that they have been unable to get hold of these logs because Forestry Tasmania simply will not sell them to them.”

“This puts the lie to the claim that there is a shortage of specialty timber logs in Tasmania.”

“The only specialty timber trees that are locked up at the moment in Tasmania are the ones lying horizontal and splitting in the sun behind a cyclone fence on the Burnie wharf and locked up for export by Forestry Tasmania.”

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[Source:  ‘Appalling waste of eucalypt and speciality timbers at Burnie’, by Kim Booth. MP Greens Forestry Spokesperson, 20130213, Tasmanian Times, ^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/appalling-waste-of-eucalypt-and-speciality-timbers-at-burnie/]

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Comment by Posted by R. Langfield 20130213:

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“Shut Forestry Tasmania down.

It’s nothing but a fully publicly subsidised, completely incompetently run, spitefully driven, mendicant not-for-profit club operated for the benefit of a select few overfed underworked bludgers of little or no intellect.

Forestry Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government are deliberately creating unemployment in the private forestry sector.“

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State Forest on Forestier Peninsula,  south eastern Tasmania

Incinerated last month in the Forcett Fire

[Photo by Editor, 20110926, free in public domain]

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Tags: Blackwood, Eucalypt, Forestry Tasmania, Logging, Myrtle, Sassafras, specialty timber species, Swift Parrot, Tasmanian Government