Forestry Corporation of NSW has overseen 16 million pine and hardwood seedlings hand planted this year, a record effort to rebuild State plantation forests lost in the Black Summer bushfires and previously harvested. Source: Timberbiz
Forestry Corporation’s Strategy and Risk Manager, Gavin Jeffries, said these trees would grow in State Forest plantations for around 30 years before being harvested for renewable timber products like timber framing, kitchens and flooring.
“Timber is a long-term cyclical product with the seedlings planted today growing into the house frames, kitchen cupboards and flooring of tomorrow,” Mr Jeffries said.
“This winter’s 14,000-hectare softwood record planting was an important milestone in the organisation’s bushfire recovery program, but not without its challenges.
“With around a third of State forest plantations affected by the 2019-20 fire season, we’ve expanded and fast-tracked our nursery programs in time for a record 2021 season,” Mr Jeffries said.
“As seedlings need to be hand planted, this year also presented a series of issues connected to COVID restrictions and our contractors’ securing workers on the ground.
“Fortunately, we’ve been able to work through these and adapt, even planting an additional 1,300 ha than planned due to the high seedling quality this year.”
This year’s seedling crop was predominantly grown in Forestry Corporation’s Tumut and Grafton production nurseries (12 million seedlings) following upgrades last year. The remaining 3.8 million seedlings were grown under contract with other nurseries in Narromine, and Colac in Victoria.
Forestry Corporation’s nursery upgrades were funded through a $46 million equity injection from the NSW Government, and part of the larger $100 million COVID stimulus package, designed to directly stimulate economies in regional NSW.
This equity injection has seen investment to support the forestry industry and recovering regional communities, said Forestry Corporation CEO Anshul Chaudhary.
“Over the last 12 months, the equity injection has seen Forestry Corporation repair priority damaged public infrastructure, expand our Grafton and Blowering nurseries and start replanting bushfire-affected State forests.”
Work has started on the 2022 planting season already with seed sowing initiated in the organisation’s nursery. Around 13.9 million seedlings are expected to be sown across 12,600 hectares by the end of winter 2022.
