Media
Talks not out of the woods yet
Andrew Darby, Hobart
July 24, 2011
A NATIVE forests settlement eluded Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings yesterday, despite talks over federal aid.
''There's a real opportunity to be seized here and I believe we should seize it,'' Ms Gillard said of the talks to hammer out a settlement, following broad agreement between industry and green groups on shifting most logging out of public native forests.
The state and the timber industry are seeking federal help, which the industry considers could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Rare possum 'in trouble'
Adam Carey
July 23, 2011
LOGGING has begun in native forest north-east of Melbourne that environmentalists claim is home to the endangered Leadbeater's possum.
VicForests, the Victorian government's commercial forestry arm, began logging 19 hectares of forest at Sylvia Creek Road in the Toolangi State Forest yesterday.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment has been ''rechecking'' the logging coupe this week, following protests by anti-logging groups, to see that it is not home to the Leadbeater's possum. The small marsupial is endemic to Victoria's central highlands and is believed to number fewer than 1000.
Letter to the editor
22/07/2011
Save our possum
SURELY as an ex-Department of Sustainability and Environment manager of logging in Victoria, Peter Fagg must have been aware of the extensive non-compliance with logging prescriptions in this state. The area around Toolangi has been devastated by recent wildfires and salvage logging that has severely reduced the amount of habitat available for Leadbeater's possum. After the fires, this possum will struggle to survive. The area to be logged at Sylvia Creek includes habitat suitable for Leadbeater's possum. Let's give this possum, our state fauna emblem, a chance and make sure all the remaining habitat is not logged.
Dean Wotherspoon, Northcote
Biomass: a good idea or a good excuse?
By Aimee Volkofsky from Hobart 7000
Wednesday, 20/07/2011
Forestry Tasmania says a decision not to include biomass in the list of renewable energies under the Federal Government's carbon tax means it has missed an opportunity to deliver more reliable power to regional communities.
The company has plans to develop a biomass plant at its Southwood mill in Tasmania's Huon Valley.
Assistant general manager of Forestry Tasmania, Michael Wood, says the plant will go ahead even without Government support.
"In every other part of the world woody biomass is an acceptable part of the renewable energy spectrum, and we see no reason why that should not be the case in Australia."
Federal ploy to block Baillieu on alpine grazing
Tom Arup and Josh Gordon - The Age
July 21, 2011
FEDERAL Environment Minister Tony Burke wants to gain greater control over the vast majority of Australia's 500 national parks, in efforts to stop proposed cattle-grazing in Victoria's Alpine National Park.
National parks are the domain of state governments, but Mr Burke said he was considering listing them under federal environment laws, which would give him the ability to reject new mining, logging or grazing projects.
New plan for alpine grazing
Josh Gordon - The Age
July 20, 2011
THE Baillieu government has launched a covert plan to reintroduce cattle grazing to Victoria's Alpine National Park in an attempt to bypass federal laws that derailed last summer's controversial trial.
The move is so shrouded in secrecy that the Department of Sustainability and Environment has hired auditing firm Deloitte to comb through the emails of Parks Victoria staff to trace any leaks.
Forests absorb a third of fossil fuel carbon emissions
Scientists have long known that trees take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Now for the first time researchers have worked out exactly how much carbon is being absorbed by the world's forests.
The study, published in the journal Science today, has found that forests remove one third of all the world's fossil fuel emissions.
One of the study's authors is Werner Kurz from the Canadian Forest Service.
Click the link below to hear/read his interview on the ABC's AM radio program.
Forests can store more carbon emissions than previously thought
English.news.cn 2011-07-15
VIENNA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A latest study showed that the role of forests as carbon dioxide (CO2) stores was much bigger than previously thought. The findings were published in the latest issue of the journal "Science" on Thursday.
Carbon capture and sequestration
Click the link below to be taken to a range of interesting articles about carbon capture and sequestration on the Crikey website
Forests 'the key to reducing carbon emissions'
Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor
From: The Australian
July 15, 2011
LONG understood to be the lungs of the earth, the world's great forests are much more important in the carbon cycle than was previously believed, soaking up one-third of all fossil fuel emissions, according to new research.
Standing forests remove 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon a year from the atmosphere, almost five times Australia's total emissions.
On the other side of the carbon ledger, forest logging releases about 10 billion tones of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.