Three million pine seedlings will be planted in local forests at Bathurst, Orange, Oberon and Lithgow from this week according to the NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson. Source: Timberbiz
Ms Hodgkinson met Forests NSW staff in Bathurst ahead of the 2012 planting campaign.
“These seedlings are part of a Forests NSW planting operation that will see approximately nine million seedlings across 7500 hectares around the State,” Ms Hodgkinson said.
“The re-establishment process is vital to the sustainability of the Central West softwood forestry industry, which employs approximately 2000 people in full-time or equivalent jobs across the forest management and timber processing sectors.
“Forests NSW manages about 235,000 hectares of State-owned planted forest across NSW, of which, almost 74,000 hectares lies within the Macquarie Region.
“The planting of 2700 hectares of pine in the Macquarie Region is the culmination of 12 months hard work preparing land and growing seedlings,” Ms Hodgkinson said.
“The entire planting program is contracted out to many specialised small businesses in the Central West to ensure planting can be completed in the tight timeframe.”
Ms Hodgkinson said most of the seedlings being planted are genetically improved containerised stock, which have been sourced from Forests NSW’s nursery at Tumut.
“The benefit of containerised stock is that if conditions are not right, the seedlings can be held until the optimal time to plant, and even held over to the following year’s planting season if necessary.
“The Macquarie region supplies more than a million tonnes of timber to NSW processors in Bathurst, Oberon and Tumut each year.
“Approximately $800 million is estimated to be invested in processing of timber in the Macquarie Region,” Ms Hodgkinson said.
