Bushland battle: biodiversity or bioenergy

Opening our native forests to the bioenergy market will be 'all pain for no gain', according to a leading Australian economist and forestry expert. Judith Ajani from The Australian National University will discuss this and other points at a seminar today, which brings the two main opposing views about native forests in climate change policy face-to-face. "The forestry industry argues that we should substitute fossil fuels and emission-intensive products with native forest wood because trees re-grow," she said. "But ecological and other scientists oppose this view, highlighting the current and potential carbon stocks in native forests and their biodiversity values." To test the arguments, Ajani analysed a representative hectare of native forest used for wood production on a 100-year rotation. She said the results were clear cut. "We found that logging a native forest stand released large amounts of carbon which, in this scenario, took 100 years to recover," she said. "We also demonstrated that if all of the native forest logs that were cut in 2009 were shifted into energy production, it would substitute for only 2.8 per cent of our coal-based electricity production.