Diversifying Forest Landscape Management—A Case Study of a Shift from Native Forest Logging to Plantations in Australian Wet Forests

David Lindenmayer and Chris Taylor
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David Lindenmayer: Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Chris Taylor: Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Natural forests have many ecological, economic and other values, and sustaining them is a challenge for policy makers and forest managers. Conventional approaches to forest management such as those based on maximum sustained yield principles disregard fundamental tenets of ecological sustainability and often fail. Here we describe the failure of a highly regulated approach to forest management focused on intensive wood production in the mountain ash forests of Victoria, Australia. Poor past management led to overcutting with timber yields too high to be sustainable and failing to account for uncertainties. Ongoing logging will have negative impacts on biodiversity and water production, alter fire regimes, and generate economic losses. This means there are few options to diversify forest management. The only ecologically and economically viable option is to cease logging mountain ash forests altogether and transition wood production to plantations located elsewhere in the state of Victoria. We outline general lessons for diversifying land management from our case study.

Keywords: sustainable forest management; forest history; pattern and process; fire regimes; biodiversity; ecosystem values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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