Storing carbon in native forests ignored in first forestry statement by Rudd Government

The Wilderness Society Inc
Media Release
25 June 2009

The Rudd Government’s first parliamentary statement on Australia’s forests today has failed to recognise new scientific evidence on the role and importance of native forests in storing greenhouse gases as part of the suite of measure needed to fight climate change, The Wilderness Society said.

In a Ministerial Statement Minister, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke said this afternoon, that the current system of Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) continued to be the best way to manage Australia’s forests.

However, the Wilderness Society’s Virginia Young said RFAs were completed long before anyone understood just how much carbon Australia’s native forests store, let alone how much more carbon could be stored if logging of native forests was stopped.

“The government has also acknowledged in its green paper on the proposed emissions trading scheme that it does not adequately measure greenhouse gas emissions associated with logging.”

World first research from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU last year found that around 9.3 billion tonnes of carbon could be stored in the 14.5 million hectares of natural eucalypt forests in south-east Australia if they are protected from logging.

Preliminary analysis by ANU suggested that the carbon sequestration potential from allowing Australia’s eastern native forests to recover could be equivalent to 24 per cent of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions for each of the next 100 years.

Ms Young said the government must now fully assess how much carbon could be stored in Australia’s native forests, how much greenhouse gas could be prevented from entering the atmosphere if they are protected and what their long term ability to keep on pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is.

“There is a clear difference between the emissions associated with native forest logging and plantation forestry.

“Logging of native forests creates huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and the wood products produced store only a tiny proportion of carbon. There is no safer, longer term way to store forest carbon than in a forest.”

About half of Australia’s forests have been cleared in the last 220 years and the carbon stocks in more than 50 per cent of the remaining unprotected forests have been degraded by land use activities such as logging.