Rob de Fegely
At the opening of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Foresters conference this week Rob de Fégely of the Institute of Foresters suggested that Australia is not pulling its own weight in the wood industry. Source: Timberbiz
Australia has 125 million hectares of forest, we are the third most forested country in the world on a per capita basis and yet we are a net importer of forest products.
Rob de Fégely president of the Institute of Foresters of Australia opened the 8th Australian and New Zealand Institute of Foresters conference at Creswick in Victoria by asking: are Australians happy with the fact that we are clearly not pulling our weight in the production of a renewable material like wood?
The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Beyond Tenure’ and delegates will be challenged to think on how can we resolve these problems to ensure that our forests are well conserved across all tenures.
“Unlike agriculture where we can feed around three times our population we cannot even supply our own needs and our annual trade deficit in forest products of around $2 billion,” Mr de Fégely said.
Australia has more than five hectares of forest for every member or our community this is nine times the world average of 0.6 hectare per capita, he told the 300 delegates.
“In Asia, where we source many of our imports of forest products the difference is even more stark, Australia has over 30 times more forest area than our cousins in Asia,” he said.
“It is very un-Australian to ‘bludge’ on other countries particularly when they are neither as wealthy nor have the same strong forest management structures that we have.
“This conference will confront and discuss a number of challenges for forest managers not only in Australia and New Zealand but around the Pacific and the rest of world.
“For instance, in Australia we have substantial areas of conservation forests but they are underfunded, we have significant areas of private and indigenously owned forests that are undermanaged but overregulated and our productive plantation estate is not sufficient to supply to meet our demand.
Mr de Fégely final question was: “What must Australia learn and do to play its part in producing a renewable material like wood, not only for our own benefit but also assist countries who have not been as economically fortunate as we have?”
