Carbon offset: A proposal to reduce native forestry harvesting
Friday 9 May 2025
Opinion and opportunities piece, John O’Donnell. The author read an ABC article by Fiona Willan, in relation to a carbon scheme to protect trees from logging.
It is understood that this would see state forests added to the nation's existing carbon credit scheme and the proposal is one of four chosen for priority development by the federal government and the state government agencies that manage the forests could then earn carbon credits by slowing or stopping logging. Industrial polluters could then buy those credits to offset their emissions as the nation moves towards its goal of reaching net-zero by 2050.
The proposal has been criticised by the timber industry and the federal opposition. The author glanced through the article and proposal, other information at hand, and noted important issues that were not and apparently are not being considered.
The US is well onto reducing bushfire risks, increasing forest fire resilience, reducing carbon emissions and tackling community safety under their US bipartisan infrastructure bill, US National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and other legislation and policies. Here in Australia, much of the focus appears to be focussed on destroying native forestry harvesting, and it is the author's belief is that Australia is currently paying and will pay the price for this.
The author has outlined 10 important factors in Section 2 in relation to the push to stop or reduce native forestry logging under an expanded carbon credit scheme, these are outlined in the full review document attached here.
There is considerable science supporting the success of native forest harvesting in capturing carbon, this is outlined in detail in the review.
In the author's opinion, what is usually missed in relation to native forestry and harvesting and carbon capture and offsetting science include a number of issues:
- The science supporting the value of native forest harvesting in relation to carbon capture is ignored;
- The areas harvested each year are small;
- Growth of older trees slows down and in most cases decay increases, reducing carbon storage;
- Regrowth is progressive each year over the small areas allowed for native forestry, capturing carbon. If past harvesting hadn’t occurred, there would have been a lot more emissions;
- Adaptive and active management assist in addressing the carbon issue. Forest Corp are working on tackling eucalypt decline, due to the lack of mild fire across landscapes to improve forest health and optimise carbon capture;
- Considerable volumes of carbon are stored in harvested wood products. Including sawn timber, veneers, beams, flooring, poles, fencing etc etc;
- Considerable areas are retained in flora reserves and other areas;
- Forest access, fire trails and skilled forestry operators increase speed of bushfire attack in many situations, reducing loss of carbon from bushfires;
- Inevitable intense bushfires resulting from minimal prescribed burning and long fire interval policies kill large numbers of trees and markedly reduce the health of remaining trees for around 10 years plus, the carbon impacts are that high. This further reduces carbon storage, in most cases markedly. In relation to the disastrous impacts of the 2019/ 20 bushfires on carbon emissions, there are many papers in relation to this; and
- Transport distances and carbon usage is low with local production and large with imported timber.
The US bipartisan infrastructure bill, US National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and other legislation provide an effective approach to reducing fuels, increasing prescribed burning, improving forest health and forest resilience and expanding community wildfire mitigation work, reducing the extent and impacts of wildfires and consequent carbon emissions. This provides a model for Australia, a practical approach and not an offsets scheme.
Full Report
Source & image credit: John O’Donnell
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