DEAR News Of The Area,

WELL may the NSW Minister for Bathurst Paul Toole come out as the ‘white knight’ of the State’s native hardwood forestry industry (NOTA 25/08/23).

At least he could get his overinflated and misleading numbers correct.

I wish he would answer the bigger question of why haven’t a long succession of previous State Governments, including his own, not made the necessary structural changes and long term investments required to ensure a public forestry industry manager who could deliver a viable native hardwood plantation industry in this State?

If he is also concerned about the lack of supply and the import of overseas timber, he might also like to answer as to why successive governments have and continue to grant export licenses to businesses which are exporting our timber overseas; part of the reason softwood house framing was in short supply during the Covid pandemic adding to overall inflation and increasing pressure in the construction, housing and rental sector.

I sat in uni lectures in the mid 70s and listened to then NSW State Forestry spokespeople telling us about the exciting developments in worlds best practice silviculture and their investment in hardwood plantations which would secure the industry for a future increasing demand.

Sure, it was always going to be a long term investment commitment by successive Governments but it would have gone a long way to ensuring a viable and hopefully profitable industry in the long run.

Half a century later and here we are still using destructive third world forestry practices which still cannot satisfy demand or viability targets with increasingly questionable environmental outcomes.

Anyone with foresight (and I suspect a sawmill) could see this coming.

To those confronted with the reality, the ecologists on the ground and locals living adjacent to hardwood forestry operations, the persistent “we only harvest less than one percent of the twelve percent of native forests available” statement which the industry and advocates insist on trotting out as some form of justification is sadly missing the point.

Regards,
Dave WOOD,
Boambee East.