WA’s EXPENSIVE WASTE
POLITICAL INACTION HAS LED TO PILES OF WOOD FIBRE LANGUISHING
When Western Australia’s withdrawal from native forest harvesting was announced in 2021 for implementation at the start of 2024, experts warned that the short time frame for transition would lead to multiple unwanted impacts.
Now those impacts are being seen and the cost to the state is stacking up.
Butcher is an independent forester and former director of the WA Forest Products Commission. He spoke with T&F Enews about the situation, saying that the problem was complex, but with two root causes.
“Wood is being produced from ecothinning by the bucket load and is being removed from the forest to avoid the fire risk,” said Butcher. “But the method of thinning employed is largely only producing small logs unsuited to standard milling. Even then they aren’t being recovered and sent to mills. The only exception is veneer logs being supplied to Wesbeam from karri thinning.”
While the small log sizes represent a challenge, Butcher and Utting point out there are highly productive opportunities for the use of this wood, ranging from finger-jointed timber to biochar, biomass pellets and veneers. Such ventures would actually pay for the thinning project and return southwest WA to being a timber manufacturing hub. But the government has been unwilling to contract for this usage. Instead, the stockpiles represent $160 million (the figure coming from Budget estimates) of waste, which they rightly say could be used in hospitals, housing or schools.
Butcher acknowledges the numbers of mills in the region has dropped significantly since the native timber ban. “Most mills left because there was a bigger payout to go than compensation to stay,” he said. “They could see that there was no guarantee for a large business. Smaller family businesses stayed, hoping to continue to eke out an existence, based on the government advice.
“However, they have contracts with no minimum (ie no obligation for government to deliver a log) and there has been very little for 18 months, so unless they can get private wood (which is rare in WA) they are starving to death. The Minister refuses to make a commitment to supply any wood so no-one can invest in the appropriate technology to process this wood as biochar, biomass energy, using small peeler technology, etc. Instead, it’s just being stockpiled. This obviously can’t go on for too long as the cost of storing and managing this wood is likely to be astronomical.”
The SFIR has criticised the WA Government and Jackie Jarvis, MLC, Minister for Agriculture and Food, Forestry, and Small Business for failing to commit to secure timber supply contracts, including innovative solutions that could make use of the smaller logs. Butcher said, “[The government has] been approached for 3RT technology and biomass as options but these have been knocked back.”
At the time of the Native Forestry Transition announcements, the WA government said that it would be supporting forestry jobs with development grants that “will attract new and sustainable industries to the regions and allow existing businesses to expand and create jobs to future-proof WA’s economy.”
In actuality, the failure to offer secure timber contracts that would allow for investment to use this resource productively is creating a big pile of decaying carbon that could instead be locked away in people’s homes and other products.
“There’s very little future for WA sawmilling unless harvesting methods change,” said Butcher. “There isn’t enough wood. The only markets for these logs at present are export, but the minister doesn’t want to be seen to export unprocessed wood, so this, too, is banned.
“It would take time to develop the local industries that could use this wood but there is no industry plan or signal from the government that they are willing to seek any investment in native timber processing. Instead, there’s just waste.”
