An exciting new Gen X and Y career ‘reality’ website designed to stimulate, inform and entertain was launched today by national industry association Plantations 2020.
Young people gainfully pursuing careers in plantation forestry were interviewed on location at Tumbarumba in southern New South Wales; Launceston, in Tasmania; and Albany, in south west Western Australia.
The site at www.treedudes.com engages browsers through the scope of environmental benefits, real life issues for young people and the social and economic benefits the plantation industry generates throughout regional Australia.
Plantations 2020 is a unique partnership between federal, state and territory governments and industry producers and processors.
The overarching principle of the Plantations 2020 Vision strategy is to build regional economies and national export competitiveness through a sustainable increase in Australia’s plantation resources.
The new site underscores the critical economic and social importance of young people at work in plantation forest industries in regional Australia.
National coordinator for Plantations 2020 David Thompson and his crew during the past nine months video taped real time interviews with young people in forestry promoting life and careers in plantations to members of generations X and Y (25-35 and 18-25 year-olds) all around Australia.
Visit www.treedudes.com.au now to watch and learn from these young foresters with a refreshing passion for their work, industry and environment and with bright hopes for the future.
“The new website and videos show how the plantation industry is revolutionising wood production in Australia while providing vital career paths for young people,” according to David Thompson.
“Information on the site covers a range of forestry models – from small scale farm forestry up to large industrial plantations – and all the ancillary activities and environmental benefits that go along with growing wood.
“These people aren’t ‘gunnas’ they’re doers, real people enjoying going to work each day secure in the knowledge that their jobs are environmentally and economically sustainable.
“They’ve invested or are going through the process of investing time to learn their trade and reaping the financial and lifestyle rewards the plantation industry and local communities bring with them.”
Plantation people are champions of:
• producing an entirely renewable resource – wood
• carbon storage and combating climate change
• re-vegetating cleared land and improving wildlife habitat and biodiversity
• slowing rainfall runoff and improving the quality of water in our rivers and creeks
• providing shelter for livestock and creating positive synergies with agriculture through farm forestry
• providing the raw material for bio-energy to generate electricity from a renewable resource rather than burning non-renewable fossil fuels
• bringing new investment and jobs to rural areas.
Click through the digital video files on the site and listen to our plantations people tell their own stories.
It’s new people with new skills and new prospects for a new century.
The website www.treedudes.com.au contains links to plantation companies for career opportunities, governments agencies, industry and bioenergy sites.
