Opposition Can’t See The Wood For The 20 Million Trees

The Wilderness Society Inc
Media Release
3 February 2010

9.3 Billion Tonnes Of Carbon In Old Forests Ignored In Climate Policy

The Federal Opposition has missed a golden opportunity to focus on the huge stores of carbon in Australia’s remaining old-growth native forests as part of its plan to reduce greenhouse emissions, the Wilderness Society said today.

The carbon benefit of planting 20 million trees will not be realised until the trees mature and is also dwarfed by the iconic eucalypt forests of south east Australia, where the average amount of carbon stored is about 640 tonnes per hectare, The Wilderness Society’s climate change negotiator Peg Putt said.

World first research from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU in 2008 found that around 9.3 billion tonnes of carbon can be stored in the 14.5 million hectares of natural eucalypt forests in south-east Australia if they are left undisturbed.

“Australia’s unlogged iconic eucalypt forests in the south east of Australia are among the most carbon dense in the world, but the Opposition has completely overlooked them in its climate change policy.

“Planting 20 million trees sounds nice but it will be many years before they make any real contribution to reducing emissions. The emissions cuts on offer by intervening to protect the huge old native trees and soils of unlogged forests are available now and they wouldn’t come at a cost to consumers.

“Protecting those forests and the carbon stored in the trees and soils would help Australia not just meet its ridiculously small commitment to reduce emissions by 5 per cent, but it would help make much deeper cuts.”
 
The largest stocks of carbon are found in the mountain ash forests of the central highlands of Victoria and Tasmania. The eucalypt trees in these undisturbed forests are up to 80 metres tall (about the height of a 25 storey building) with trunk diameters of up to 4.5 metres.
 
If Australia’s natural forests continue to be cleared and logged then the C02 released will significantly increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Ms Putt said.

Allowing logged forests to regrow to their natural carbon storage capacity would be equivalent to avoiding emissions of 136 million tonnes of C02 per year for the next 100 years. This amount of emissions is equal to about 25% of Australia’s total emissions generated from all sectors in 2005.