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Wombat
Forest
The
Wombat State Forest
is located about 50 km
northwest of Melbourne, in a region known as the central highlands of
Victoria. This forest covers approximately 70,000- hectares.
The towns of Blackwood, Daylesford, Glenlyon, Hepburn Springs, Trentham
and Woodend all border the Wombat or are surrounded by it. The
Wombat is mostly a third-generation regrowth forest, which means
that it has been extensively harvested (logged) twice before.
A brief history of the Wombat State Forest
- The original condition of the
Wombat State Forest was not well documented.
However, eyewitness reports from the mid 1800s state that a
rider on horseback could ride at full gallop through certain sections
of the forest, so widely spaced were the ancient trees. It
sounds like a truly magnificent, even magical place to have known.
- Known history
begins with the gold rush era of the mid 1800's. The Wombat was
logged in order to provide timber for the mining works, and also the
gold rush-era towns such as Daylesford that grew up to support this
activity. In the 1870s and 1880s, timber from the Wombat was
shipped to Melbourne to supply the building needs of this growing
city, and logging activity reached a peak. This era is
considered to be the first "harvest" of the Wombat.
- A Royal Commission in the late
1890's called this exhausted
forest the “ruined forest”. To prevent it from becoming agricultural
land timber workers maintained their presence in the forest.
- The gold rush subsided and most of the claims abandoned.
For 50
years the forest was closed with the only activities aimed at
rebuilding the structure of the forest and the timber regrew. In
the late 1930's and early 40's, timber harvesting resumed in the
Wombat, but on a rather small scale. Thus began, slowly, the era
of the second "harvest" of the Wombat.
- By the late 1960's the lack of regeneration
in the Wombat had became apparent.
- In the mid-1970's, industrial logging began using a
harvesting
technique called “shelter wood”. This involved removing up to 80% of
all trees, followed by a regeneration burn, then a final removal 10 - 20
years later. The harvested timber was used for two purposes:
1) To supply timber for building materials and wood working
activities, and 2) To be chipped up, shipped overseas and sent to pulp
mills in Asia to be converted into paper products.
- During the 70's and 80's large areas of the forest were considered
for conversion to pine plantations (mainly to supply the growing
domestic and overseas woodchip / pulp industry),
with large sections at the western
end successfully bull-dozed and converted to pines. This marked
the heyday of the era of the second "harvest" of the Wombat.
- In the mid 1980's,
the Timber Industry Strategy was introduced and regional sustainable
yields were set. As part of the Midlands Forest Management Area, the
Wombat's sustainable yield was set at the historical sawlog license
levels of around 70,000 m3 per annum, with an added 63,000 tonnes of
waste going to the CSR Bacchus Marsh hardboard plant as woodchip. This
yield raised concerns from the surrounding community during the mid to
late 1980's and into the 1990's.
- In the early 1990's, the first
pro-environmental forest study and action group was founded, the
Wombat Forest Society. Under the
inspired leadership of its President and founder, Tim Anderson of
Daylesford, the WFS began to document the effect on the forest
sustained from the current harvesting / logging practices, and their
resultant damage. The WFS also began to collect data, figures
and statistics relating to then timber harvesting practices.
The Society also began to catalogue and list the various types of
trees, bush and plant life existing in the Wombat. These
pioneering and much-needed efforts of the WFS brought to general
public attention, the dangers that the forest was then facing.
- The Wombat Forest Society did not favour "direct action".
This involved concerned environmentalists - usually considered
"radicals" or "ferals" by the more conservative section of society -
trying to halt logging on a particular site by using a variety of
interventionist tactics, such as walking onto sites being harvested,
thus halting logging operations for safety reasons, or even more
extreme measures such as chaining themselves to machinery and forcing
a cessation of work until police could be called to remove the
demonstrators from the site. By the late 1990s, general public
concern over the destruction of the Wombat had reached such a level
that at first isolated individuals, then small groups of such
individuals began to practice such direct action techniques.
Other individuals who did not wish to participate in direct action,
but were also concerned about the destruction of the forest, began to
get involved in other ways, such as writing letters to the local
papers, and so on.
- By the early 2000's, a significant minority of the public had been
alarmed about the continuing
destruction of the Wombat,
and direct action by anti-logging, pro-conservation and pro-forest
individuals and groups - directed against various logging sites in the
forest - had begun to intensify and spread. Occasionally, the
anti-logging, pro-forest groups would set up a camp in the
forest, and use it is a base from which to employ direct action to
shut down or hinder logging operations on a site, sometimes for days
on end. These groups started to demand that the state government
of Victoria withdraw some or all of the timber licenses which it had
issued to various sawmills and local loggers. As is usually the
case, once a significant portion of society began to clamour for
change to existing conditions, the politicians had to sit up and take
notice.
- In 2002, the state government established the Community Forest
Management (CFM) initiative, which was an attempt by the Victorian
government to bring the pro and anti logging factions, the pro timber
harvest and pro conservation sectors of the community, together to
discuss the issues involved and hopefully work out some sort of
compromise between the two. Daylesford was a focus of this
activity, although communities in Trentham and other places were also
involved. As the President and founder of Wombat Forest Society,
the pioneer group involved in raising public awareness of the issues
involving forest management, silviculture, harvesting and
sustainability, Tim Anderson was appointed to the position of
community liason officer by the state government. He was given
the mandate of setting up the necessary community forums to act as
meeting places and conflict resolution groups between the pro logging
and pro conservation opposing factions. But by this time,
though, Tim Anderson had somewhat lost the favour and confidence of
the individuals and groups that were practising direct action in the
forests, as it was perceived - rightly or wrongly - that he had moved
to a position of favour in regard to to the vested interests of the
timber industry and timber workers. By the time of the 2002
establishment of Community Forest Management, a number of other groups
had also been formed, such as the Glenlyon Group and Actively
Conserving Trentham. These were strongly pro-conservation,
pro-forest preservation groups, who sometimes supported direct action,
and sometimes did not. By this point, the fate of the Wombat had
become probably the "hottest topic" in areas such as Daylesford, and
not a week passed without letters to the local paper, both pro logging
and pro conservation, being printed.
- As the months and years passed, it became evident to most
observers and participants that the CFM process was not really set up
or empowered to consider any significant or radical revision of the
current timber harvesting practices in the Wombat. It was
perceived - rightly or wrongly - that CFM had been conceived as a
mechanism through which the sawmillers and loggers could continue
their forest harvesting methods and pursuit of timber yields, perhaps
with some slight ecological-friendly modifications. This it was
doing in conjunction with the Department of Sustainability and the
Environment (DSE), the Victorian state government department charged
with managing the Wombat and monitoring all timber harvesting
activities. Thus the strongly pro-conservation, anti-logging
individuals and groups participating in CFM felt increasingly betrayed
and marginalised by the process, as it appeared to them that they were
unwillingly being co-opted into a process which was continuing the
very activities which they had fought so hard to oppose, namely the
continued logging of the Wombat in order to secure the yields
mandated by the various timber licenses. By at least 2004, if
not earlier, Tim Anderson, in his role as CFM community liason officer, was increasingly regarded as pro-logging by the
pro-conservation groups, and as a result, generally lost any
confidence
that they may have formerly held for him. During this time
period, two large conferences were held in Daylesford which attracted
a large attendance of individuals concerned with the fate of the
Wombat, but the increasing tensions and antipathy between pro and anti
logging factions meant that very little of consequence came out of
either meeting.
- By 2005, the pro conservation, anti
logging groups had become sophisticated enough in their approach,
activities and information to make a startling discovery.
Contrary to the assertions by the DSE that yearly timber harvesting had been proceeding at a sustainable
level of somewhere around 40,000- cubic metres of sawlogs during the
preceding years, they found that the actual figure was a whopping ONE
HUNDRED THOUSAND cubic metres of timber harvested annually!
Thus, in the 10 year period 1995 - 2005, approximately ONE MILLION
cubic metres of timber had been harvested / taken from the Wombat.
Because the volume of timber taken from the Wombat was much higher
than had been stated, this meant that the remaining trees in the
forest would yield a volume significantly lower than what was
claimed to exist, which meant that in order to supply the
government-licensed timber quotas to the sawmills, the forest would
sustain much more damage, both long and short term, than what the DSE
was claiming. Once these figures and their consequences for
continued logging were revealed, any credibility that the DSE had had as
a responsible, reputable agency was fairly shredded.
- THE FINAL VICTORY
of the pro conservation, anti logging groups was obtained in March
2006, when the state government of Victoria bought out the final
license and timber allowance for the last remaining local sawmiller, Dwyers, located near Daylesford. This decisive
moment marked a clear victory for the pro conservation movement.
The various groups and individuals involved, who had fought a hard
battle during the four years from 2002 - 2006, and some for longer
time periods, had achieved a clear and momentous victory in their
struggle to preserve the Wombat State Forest. It is probably
fair to say that many of those individuals felt drained and exhausted
by this struggle, but elated nonetheless, that they had succeeded in
preserving the Wombat from continued destruction by unsustainable
logging methods and unsustainable timber figures.
- Since the 2006 victory,
many of the individuals concerned have returned to a more normal
lifestyle, and ceased their participation, feeling that the future of
the Wombat has been secured. Today, the most important group
that continues to meet and discuss forest issues, is
Wombat Forestcare
Inc. Under the inspired leadership
of Gayle Osborne of Glenlyon and others, this group continues to show
interest in the management of the Wombat, and produces an extremely
beautiful newsletter a few times per year (See the link to Wombat
Forestcare).
- The most promising and inspiring
example of cutting-edge Wombat forest harvesting techniques,
in the opinion of this writer, is the MCINTOSH METHOD, proposed by Gary McIntosh of Bullarto in the early
2000s and put into practical application from 2006 onwards. The
McIntosh Method is a means of sustainable silviculture, or ecological
thinning of a section of forest. The area in question is
thoroughly studied with the goal of increasing the size and growth of
the existing trees by removing other trees which compete for light and
space. Then a harvesting plan is drawn up, in which the trees
marked for removal (always a minority of the total number) are
extracted and removed with minimal or no damage to those left
standing.; The remaining trees benefit by having much more light
and space, while the removed trees are used either for sawlogs or for
firewood.
- The McIntosh Method is really a WIN / WIN effect, in
which the interests of pro conservationists to save the forest and
even improve it, and the interests of the loggers to obtain timber,
are both satisfied. Gary McIntosh has presented his method,
along with trial plots in which it was actually employed, to the state
government of Victoria, but so far, their response has been non-commital.
Prepared by Zachary Casper, Daylesford & Glenlyon
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