New South Wales’ biggest producer of pine trees says there is no plan as yet to increase softwood plantings. Source: ABC News
The Tumut Shire Council says there is an urgent need to put more trees in the ground to ensure supply for massive investments in local mills, including Visy and at Tumbarumba.
The Forestry Corporation’s Strategy and Risk Manager, Gavin Jeffries, says around nine million pine seedlings will be planted next winter, with sowing happening over the next six weeks at the Blowering Nursery in Tumut.
But he says that is to make up for what has been harvested.
“It’s interesting to see the council supporting the investment in plantation, that’s tremendous,” he said.
“From a Forestry Corporation point of view our current focus is to maintain our existing plantations, we don’t have any direct plans to go and expand at this point in time.
“We’re interested to hear what Tumut Council has got to say and no doubt they’ll be in touch with the local managers about what can be done in the Tumut basin.”
Mr Jeffries says growth is not on the corporation’s radar.
“As a broader industry it’s certainly on the radar,” he said. “At the present time we’re absolutely focused on just maintaining our existing land base.
“It’s not something that we’ve got as a key criteria to go and expand by 1%, 2%, 5% at the moment, that’s not part of our plans.”
The Forestry Corporation owns 220,000 hectares of softwood plantations with forests at Casino, Bathurst, Oberon, Moss Vale and Bombala, but almost half are in the Tumut region.
“Forestry’s a good long term investment, it’s just a challenge I guess to get new players into the market,” Mr Jeffries said.
“You know land is expensive, the impacts of the weather and the like, there are plenty of risks there.
“As a forester I think it’d be great to see more pine trees, more trees out there for a number of different reasons.
“We’ve got to balance that I guess with the competing interests in land, food production, water availability.
“It’s a discussion I think that it’s appropriate to have.”
