Paul Hemphill, who lives on a property in the Tarkeeth State Forest, sent the following inquiry to the Courier-Sun.
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As truckload after truckload of tiny Tarkeeth twigs roll through the town centre, people in Bellingen keep asking: “where are all those tiny logs coming from?”
Forestry Corporation's 2018 Tarkeeth plantation harvesting plan states: “The timber crop (planted 1969) is now mature and ready to be harvested to supply the local timber industry.”
But what can anyone do with logs that are smaller than a woman's hand? Is it worth destroying important Koala habitat for these?
Perhaps it might be worthwhile for you to follow up with Forestry Corp as to where these tiny logs are headed. I believe this is a matter of public interest.
Back in 2016, Forestry Corp informed us that "residue" would be shipped to China via Brisbane for pulping. Forestry Corp makes much about the importance of supplying the timber industry.
Many of the trucks from the current Tarkeeth operations are heading north with loads of mixed log size size. It is unlikely that they will be sorted so they are probably going to just one one destination.
So we are concerned that a significant proportion of the current harvest may be being exported to Asia for pulp.
If so, it is a high price to pay for cutting down a fifty year regrowth forest in an environmentally sensitive area. We should not be losing it to paper.
Forestry Corporation senior manager Dean Kearney’s response was:
The very small logs in the photo are from the tops of the trees that have been harvested.
When we harvest a timber plantation, such as the area in Tarkeeth we have two primary aims.
- We aim to utilise as much of each tree as we possibly can
- We aim to ensure that each log achieves the highest value possible
Our records show that in the last few years 70 per cent of the material harvested from Tarkeeth has been delivered to local sawmills. These are the larger logs from the lower parts of the harvested trees.
Twenty-four per cent has been delivered to customers who onsell to export markets and six per cent has been used for bio-energy generation. These products are sourced from the small higher sections of the trees and other defective parts that can not be used by local sawmills.
The harvested plantation is then planted next season with 1100 trees per hectare and the cycle starts again.