FORESTRY Corporation is currently collecting seeds in Wedding Bells State Forest to help grow a million native seedlings to replant 1,000 hectares of hardwood timber plantations in State Forests on the north coast next year.

The Corporation’s Hardwood Plantation Manager Craig Busby said the seedlings would restock plantations that have recently been harvested for timber.

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He told News Of The Area that before COVID-19, professional seedling planters from overseas were employed but the pandemic has resulted in work for local planters.

These workers carry150 seedlings at a time and plant them by hand.

Usually, the seeds from which the seedlings are grown come from ‘seed improvement orchards’ up and down the coast, but the need for timber in the future has resulted in more seed being collected from State Forests.

Forestry Corporation’s Nursery Manager Kath French said Grafton Nursery staff were currently collecting seeds from specially selected trees in preparation for the 2022 planting season.

She said, “We have doubled the capacity of Grafton nursery, allowing us to grow a million eucalypt seedlings this year to replant hardwood timber plantations, and we’re now getting ready to plant another million eucalypt seedlings in 2022.”

Mr Busby said seed ripening has been poor across Australia for the past three years, because of weather fluctuations.

He said that Forestry Corporation proactively grows seed for high quality timber but it does not get high yields each year and that Wedding Bells State Forest had desirable species, particularly blackbutt, ripening.

Mr Busby said that the Grafton nursery can grow five million seedlings but was currently also growing radiata pine for planting at Tumut after the fires.

He described how eucalypts release seeds after a trauma such as a fire or harvesting and that with enough sunlight and cleared land, the seeds are released and can grow.

He said Forestry Corporation has a commitment to seed orchards for plantation growing.

Mr Busby said that an area at Tarkeeth has been upgraded to be a future seed bank and there are others up and down the coast.

He said that native forests cannot be cleared for plantation purposes so agricultural land or existing authorised plantations, such as Maria River plantation near Kempsey are used.

He said that the Tarkeeth is ex-agricultural land planted privately for pulp and paper but bought by Forestry Corporation and that it now contains three-year-old trees that are now ten metres tall.

Mr Busby said that in addition to plantation seedlings, 50,000 seedlings have been supplied to local koala and Landcare groups.

By Andrew VIVIAN