Landholders face some serious issues after bluegums are harvested.  Will they "go round again" plant a different species? manage coppice? replant? remove? return to grazing land? return to cropping land?

SWAN is hosting a field day - 9.30am - 3pm - on 6th May to look at some of these issues.  A large area of bluegums on land leased by WAPRES on Wirring Road has been harvested and subdivided.  

The various owners have different priorities and have followed different paths which makes it an ideal setting for sharing ideas. Four of the landholders have generously offered to share their stories.

In addition, we will have a spokesperson talking about the Forests for Life proposal and Per Christensen from the Blackwood Basin Group outlining their Pine and Cockatoo initiative. See flyer for full program 

Meeting - 9.30am at 444 Tanah Marah Rd, Margaret River. (5km south of Cowaramup and 6km north of Margaret River on the Bussell Hwy.)
 
Registration (includes morning tea and lunch) $40 per person ($30 for members) & ½ price for kids. Pay on the day. 

RSVP – by 1st May for catering purposes

mob. 0429 926 731, email. [email protected] 

SWAN and AFG  regularly field inquiries from people interested in specific types of timber.  This highlights a need to manage this information, especially with the increasing interest in private plantations, to address a predicted shortfall of timber in the future.

​AFG SWAN Branch is co-ordinating a register of timber assets on private land. This will benefit growers across the South West WA by matching their timber with any opportunities for existing and new markets.

If you are paid up a financial member of AFG, this is included in your member benefits, but to ensure it becomes a viable initiative we have extended the register to include any timber growers for a small annual fee.  

This is the link to fill in details of your trees and plantings e.g. area, species, purpose, date planted, thinned, pruned height etc

Registration:

• Free for AFG members. If you are a member, please login and select the Events tab to register for free or just enter your planting details.
• $50 incl GST for non-members - register online here

Other benefits - access to SWAN services including:

• The Peer Group Mentoring Program (i.e. support for landowners who want to use trees but aren't too sure how to start)
• Master TreeGrower courses
• Discount for field days
• Gate sign with SWAN logo

(Note: AFG is offering up to 2 months 'free' membership for anyone who joins AFG in May or June. Please join online, pay the full subscription, then email [email protected] to notify AFG that you would like to take advantage of this offer)

If you are interested in using trees on your property, the Australian Master TreeGrower course gives you skills and contacts to meet your particular interests and circumstances.

The program is flexible and will be adapted to suit the interests of participants. The approach is non-prescriptive as it is recognized that everyone’s situation is unique.  DAY 1 is FREE - but RSVP required for catering.

• What: 8-day course for landowners using trees for conservation and profit.
• When: Day 1 Friday 28 July.  Continues Fri every fortnight.  9am - 4pm.
• Where: Northam (venue to be confirmed)
• Cost:   $200 (ex GST) - a contribution to food & materials
• Food:  Lunches and morning/afternoon teas provided.
• Gear:  Paid-up participants receive a MTG hat, MTG gate sign, tree measuring tape, course notes, certificate and more.

A participant in the 2014 course said " We have already become part of a wonderful network for tree growers in the area and for me the main benefits were:

• Understanding the benefits of thinning and pruning and making the contacts with to get it done.
• Seeing the different trees that grow well in this area gave us more options of trees to plant.  We planted over 600 this year.
• The main thing is finding out that we could generate an income from the property sooner than we thought.  The spotted gum are 20 years from harvest, but we should be able to take some of the regrowth from the remnant vegetation before then. 
• Honey and seed collecting are both new ideas. 

For more information or to register contact Richard Moore; mob. 0429 926 731 or email. [email protected]

Fri 28 July
Introduction, multi-purpose tree growing, field visit to local examples

Sat 29 July
Markets for tree products, environmental services from trees, field tour

Fri 11 August
Tree and forest measurement, field exercise

Sat 12 August
Tree establishment, growth and management, field visit to local examples

Fri 25 August
Integrating trees with farming – local examples

Sat 26 August
SW Agroforestry Network field day, managing native bush and more

Fri 8 September
Integrating trees into rural landscapes, trees for aesthetics

Sat 9 September
Economic aspects of tree growing, partners in trees and revegetation

More information on the Master TreeGrower Program....

Establishing local trees for high-value timber
20 May 2017
Region:Boyup Brook
A field walk will be held from 9am – 12.30pm looking at Species selection & woodlot design.
Cost: Free
David Singe and Natalee Kuser have been revegetating their blackwood River property for over 15 years. In 2012 they planted a woodlot of mixed local tree species for higher value craft and furniture timber. Two more woodlots were planted in 2015 and 2016, which involved 8 species and a number of alternative establishment techniques including swaling, mulching and summer watering. See story in December 2016 newsletter.
RSVP by May 15 to David Singe 08 9761 1312 or [email protected]


Free Workshops for Essential Property Planning
The Blackwood Environment Society with local partners is running a government funded initiative to help landholders with Property Planning. Experienced local mentors have developed training on 12 topics including: 
Water Storage; water use efficiency, bushfire risk, soil productivity, livestock managment, weed control and successful tree planting.  More details from Adrian Williams 0427 086 299 or [email protected]

​FOR SALE:    SERRA MONTANA 90-7-2.0-MOBIL
Unused Serra Montana mobile 18kw electric sawmill.
Hydraulic 1 man operated 
computer guided 
horizontal band saw, 
built in log lifter and bark remover.
Extra 10 blades and sharpener
will process 900mm X  7m logs
Imported from Germany but unused due to ill health.
I have added  a slow start to allow a small  generator to start it and also allows a change the speed of the saw - an advantage with hard woods. The generator I added is a Perkins 35kw diesel which weighs 1ton also unused. Web site www.serra.de

Peel-Harvey Catchment Councils Community Environment Grants
Grants to support local communities and landholders to undertake projects that protect and enhance natural assets is now open. Applications need to be in accordance with the Peel-Harvey’s NRM Strategy – Bindjareb Boodja Landscapes 2025 and National Landcare Program objectives.
 
Individual grants up to a maximum $50,000 are available for activities undertaken within the Peel-Harvey Catchment. To view this grant and other grants on offer by the PHCC click here.
 
Environment Grants are funded through the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.
www.peel-harvey.org.au


​

By Sharon Rose, Manjimup

To echo that wonderful commercial from Planet Ark, about prescriptions of tree plantings in favour of medications and away from technological devices: Has anyone heard of "Forest Bathing"?

This is a practice developed in the 1980s in Japan and is about the scientific and health benefits of being surrounded by nature. As a consequence millions of people in Japan regularly take walking tracks through the forest to immerse themselves mindfully in the natural world to combat the stress associated with the modern lifestyle.

South Korean researchers have produced much literature on this science and places for forest bathing or "Shinrin-Yoku", are now being established world wide. I feel our south west forests have much potential to link in with this movement; the benefits of which we maybe take for granted when living and working on the land.

http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-yoku.html

​It’s not often that you can find a book that’s not only easily understandable from a laymans or technical perspective, and rarer yet when it has been translated from another language to English.

​Peter writes from the perspective of someone who has spent most of his life working in the forestry sector, from active logging and management to currently looking after an old growth forest in Germany and integrating the management with innovations with positive economic outcomes.

I’d had this book on my must-read-list for some time. I’m an environmental scientist, avid gardener and now, with my partner have recently bought a rural property in the south west that currently has a pine plantation (about half way through their harvest cycle) and quite a lot of coppicing bluegums. Trees have always fascinated me, but now having more of them to care for than I’d ever imagined learning more about them and their management seems essential!

Peter provides detailed explanations (with clear examples and case studies) the connectivity between trees and their environment that I had always suspected. Is this a hippy-touchy-feely-greenie book? Absolutely not! But it does make you think about “what is management” and what are the outcomes we want as tree growers? Do we just want a quick (relatively speaking) harvest and income – or, do we want to use forestry areas for other purposes? Why do some trees grow better (or worse?) in some areas? How do we keep them healthy?

There is considerable research going on in the world about the interactions between trees and the interconnectivity with their ecosystem. Peter does a great job of summing it all up and I highly recommend anyone with an interest in trees (or our general environment) read this.

If I had to give it a star rating, I’d definitely give this a 5 out of 5 stars *****

SWAN took part in the Balingup Small Farm Field Day on Saturday 22nd April. We were hosted in the SWCC tent along with a number of other NRM and environmental groups.  It was a very busy day and a number of your committee members manned the stand at various times. 

Our display this year focused on the Peer Group Mentoring Program (PGM) and several of the visitors to SWAN display expressed an interest in participating. The poster shown above was part of the SWAN display and shows the reach of the PGM program across the southwest highlighting the mentors in yellow and the mentees in pink.

Thanks to the day, many more people are now aware of SWAN.  In fact, as a result of seeing our display and having a chat with a volunteer,  a number of landowners have signed up for this newsletter. They will now be able to see the range of services we provide to landowners interested in using trees. 

SWAN thanks the South West Catchments Council for having us in their Landcare Tent again this year.  Its a great opportunity to meet new people interested in multi-purpose trees and to catch up with colleagues.

Don't forget to like the SWAN Facebook page for regular updates on forestry and timber topics. I will include a selection of the more popular stories in each newsletter.

The West reported that the soon-to-be-opened interpretive centre inside Railway House has seen the addition of a number of historical timber tools that will help tell the story of Busselton’s timber history.

Several Busselton residents have donated tools to the centre which will be displayed alongside the recently preserved Ballaarat Engine. Some of the tools that have been donated include a broad axe, a replica swamper spoon, an adze and a cant hook. 

Busselton Historical Society president Brian Slee said timber from Busselton had been exported all over the world and used on several railway lines, including the North Indian Railway Line. Read more

Phys.org reported that trees are constantly pulling water up from their roots to the topmost leaves, and pumping sugars produced by their leaves back down to the roots. This constant stream of nutrients is shuttled through a system of tissues called xylem and phloem, which are packed together in woody, parallel conduits.

Now engineers at MIT and their collaborators sandwiched together two plastic slides, through which they drilled small channels to represent xylem and phloem. Read more

An Australian wood pellet processing plant is set to be recommissioned due to a low Australian dollar and increased international demand.

Plantation Energy secured $7 million of funding from multinational energy company ENGIE to recommission the plant in Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia.

The three-year venture to secure funding was aided by advisory company Argonaut, which had been working with Plantation Energy owner Renewable Heat and Power Limited (RHP).The plant will have the capability to produce 250,000 metric tonnes of wood pellets a year, making it the largest plant of its type in Australia.

Wood pellets are used in coal-fired power stations as a renewable energy replacement, with major markets in Europe and Japan. The process of producing wood pellets involves making an energy-dense wood pellet from sawmill residue and woodchips milled to less than 5mm in size. Read more

In the AFR,  leading British architect Andrew Waugh says Timber construction is the only way cities can build enough housing for their growing populations and keep within agreed climate change emissions reductions. 

"Urban housing is what it's about," Waugh told The Australian Financial Review. "London is supposed to be building 50,000 homes per year – it didn't even make one-third of that target last year. We need to densify our city. The only way to do that really, without making a massive impact on the environment, is to look at low-carbon technology."

Australia lags the northern hemisphere in CLT use, but the industry got a boost last year when the building code changed to make approval for buildings of up to eight storeys. New Zealand company XLam is planning its first Australian production plant in Wodonga, on the Victoria-NSW border. 

10-storey Dalston Lane is all timber. It has no concrete core and no steel frame. Timber is used for the entire structure – including nine lift shafts, consisting of 12 metres-by-three-metres CLT panels that are 110 millimetres thick, standing on their end. Read More

Trump slaps 20% Tariff on Canadian Softwood-Lumber Imports
U.S. President Donald Trump intensified a trade dispute with Canada, slapping tariffs of up to 24 percent on imported softwood lumber in a move that drew swift criticism from the Canadian government.  Trump announced the new tariff at a White House gathering of conservative journalists, shortly before the Commerce Department said it would impose countervailing duties ranging from 3 percent to 24.1 percent on Canadian lumber producers. This is a long standing issue with most Canadian timber harvested on public lands compared to the US where much of the timber is in private ownership.   Canadian provinces that own the forests from where softwood lumber is sourced are basically subsidizing logging activities, which allow Canada to dump the lumber in the US at below-market prices. Read more

Vermont Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year 
The Vermont Woodlands Association and the Vermont Tree Farm program announced David and Jenny Stoner as the 2017 Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year. The Stoners 361-acre Certified Tree Farm, purchased in the late 1990s, is located in Greensboro. They have worked as a family to manage it from the ground up for the last 20 plus years. The Stoner Family began considering owning and managing land in Vermont when they attended a workshop in the early 1980s led by Ross Morgan, who then became their Consulting Forester. The Stoners have implemented a variety of habitat management practices with assistance from the Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS), in addition to working with Morgan on commercial harvest. Their land is important to two major watersheds in Vermont. Read about other regional winners

Buying Woodland in the UK
Money really can grow on trees for investors in woodland with annual returns from commercial forestry averaging 9 per cent over the past 20 years. But it’s not just landed gentry who can enjoy the thrill of owning a forest. People can get involved for as little as £10,000 which could buy them a one-acre wooded spinney. Buying woodland can enable families to enjoy activities such as camping out under the stars, coppicing and green woodturning – carpentry when the timber is still fresh and pliable. Rules for owning woodland mean permanent dwellings must not be built that can be slept in but tool sheds are allowed. You can camp in the woods up to a maximum 28 days a year. Owners can cut up to five cubic metres of timber every quarter – more than enough to keep a house heated using woodburners. If you want to cut more wood then you must apply for a felling licence from the Forestry Commission. Read More

NZ look to expand native forest for carbon credits
Wellington-based Motu Economic and Public Policy Research's report suggests establishing native forests is an environmentally and economically attractive way to decrease the risk for high CO2 emitting companies.  Report co-author Dr Suzi Kerr said about eight per cent of the forest land registered in New Zealand's main carbon mechanism, the Emissions Trading Scheme, was native.
Since 2008, however, only 500ha of new native forest had been established and registered. "If we established another 10,000ha of land in native forest, this would sequester 65,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, which would be eligible to earn 65,000 NZUs per year under the ETS." Read More

Reality bites for small scale woodlots in NZ
A possible 5% reduction in forestry replanting could mostly be the result of owners of small woodlots not replanting. Some of the blame also lies with corporate and large forest owners converting to other forms of land use, such as dairy, when irrigation has become available.  This is partly due to poor returns based on locality and size of areas planted under the post-1989 afforestation grant scheme. 

Many of the later growers did not bother with post-planting treatment, pruning and thinning resulting in low grade thin-stem woodlots with small volume and piece size trees. Apart from limited size of areas planted, it did not entice contractors to take on these jobs yielding light volumes, resulting in high prices for logging operations. This can explain many small woodlot owners not getting adequate returns. Other factors that should have been considered were distance to port or mill, price variations and availability through end buyers.  So can pruning and thinning improve returns for small-hectare plots?  Calculated on the back of an envelope, the difference would be as much as plus $6500 p/ha for the treated plot. Read more

Clearfelling in South Carolina for potatoes and corn
A land-use change has mowed down woodlands and pine plantations between Aiken and Columbia. Since 2012, loggers have cut about 6,000 acres of forests to make room for row-crop farms. Converting forested property for agriculture can cause loose soil to run into rivers, and it can result in groundwater pollution if farmers aren’t careful. "If you clear 5,000 acres and replace that with herbaceous grass or corn, and you irrigate and you add (fertilizer), you have the potential for nitrate to leave the root zone and get into the water table,’’ said Jim Landmeyer, a groundwater expert with the U.S. Geological Survey. The biggest farm in the Springfield-Windsor area is Walther Farms’ Augusta tract. It’s a 3,700-acre site near Windsor in Aiken County where about 1,800 acres were cleared so the company could plant its first industrial-scale potato farm in South Carolina. Since Walther’s arrival in 2013, the Michigan corporation and the Woody agribusiness group have acquired more land and cleared another 2,000 acres of forest.  Read more

US Forestry Facts
About one-third of the US is forested. Forests have an enormous impact on our water resources, economy, wildlife, recreational activities and cultural fabric. They also are major economic assets: The forest products industry manufactures more than $200 billion worth of products yearly, and is one of the top 10 manufacturing employers in 47 states. About 58 percent of the nation’s forestland is privately owned, mostly by families and other individuals. The public owns the rest.  Read more

Can an engineered wood product bridge ecological and social divides?
A quiet revolution in wood building products began is just now reaching the US. That revolution is the generation of mass timber products—extremely strong panels and beams created from the glue lamination of boards and slabs—that can be used as structural components in large buildings. Because CLT is built from small dimensional lumber, you can use smaller-diameter trees in their manufacture. This creates greater value for trees from restoration or fuel-reduction harvests in western and central Montana and creates an economic incentive to conduct habitat-improving activities that might not happen otherwise. 

From the 1950s to 1980s, the practice of conservation forestry was overtaken by administrators’ economically driven focus on achieve maximum allowable yield, with only localized emphasis on the health of the environment.  Predictably, the capacity of the federal forest system to deliver ecological services (clean water, habitat, and aesthetics) quickly declined.As the impacts of these practices became clearer, the public began to equate forestry with other extractive industries, such as mining and oil exploration. 

In the last few years, this new wood product has brought together foresters, environmentalists, lumber mills, green architects, urban planners, and agency personnel around a shared vision for a sustainable future. This group might be formerly have had very different or even antagonistic interests, but are now sharing a unifying goal of balancing sustainable forest management with green building, rural community well-being, and reduced suburban sprawl.

There’s still a lot more to learn about CLT, and how best to build an industry that will uphold the many values that need to be served, but perhaps the agreement around CLT exemplifies what is needed to overcome polarization and accomplish shared goals through a lasting bond. Read more

Unmanaged woodlands irk sheep farmers in Scotland
“Whilst there are many thousands of acres already planted with unthinned woodland, unmanaged regeneration and lodgepole pine which is uneconomic to harvest and replant, it is not acceptable to many of our members that government money should be buying good stock farms for planting,” he said. “I have yet to see sound evidence that a heft of 500 ewes replaced by commercial Sitka will provide more jobs or rural output, though I am open to figures if they are out there.  What I do have is evidence of neighbouring farms to those planted struggling to maintain fences 30 years on from planting, and lacking labour to help gather and to control vermin once the neighbouring sheep have gone.”  Mr Fyall added: “I do think that it is not morally acceptable to take a sustainable agricultural model and lessen its production abilities, whilst we import food and destroy forest in parts of the world where the climate and soils are not suited to perennial agriculture, and the water needed for crops and stock is diverted from local humans to European shelves.” Read more

Paper mill woes in India
Farmers who traditionally grew tobacco in the drought-prone Prakasam district took to social forestry plantations in a big way in the 1990s with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development promoting them. But they are now in an unenvious position with paper mills forming a syndicate and driving down the prices. The trouble began for the planters after the paper mills appointed brokers and purchased logs bypassing the Agriculture Market Committees.  The government should come to the rescue of the farmers by starting a paper mill on its own and create a healthy competition between public and private players in the field in the interest of farmers, opines Prakasam District Development Forum president Ch. Ranga Rao. Read more

Our future is in the forest and it’s Green Gold
SCOTLAND’S wealth of trees and forests is a national resource that can unlock environmental, social and economic riches. This rich resource is infinitely renewable, with many valuable end-uses – vital for a modern, industrialised society that takes its environmental responsibilities seriously.  A graph of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions shows forestry enjoys a unique position. While other sectors, such as transport, construction and agriculture sit ‘above the line’, the forestry sector sits, alone, below the line as a sector that locks up far more carbon than it produces. 

​The plan to use more timber in construction is a big deal and can help meet the Scottish Government’s target to build 50,000 new affordable homes by the end of the parliamentary session in 2021. Wood offers a greener, more sustainable alternative to other construction materials like brick, steel and concrete. Scottish sawmillers have developed independently-audited tools to measure the carbon life cycle of wood. The forest and wood processing industries are now challenging other building materials industries to set out what their carbon life cycle assessment is, and to include every aspect of the materials and building process. The sector’s confidence comes from the knowledge that a tonne of brick requires more than four times the energy to produce than a tonne of sawn softwood.  Read more

Forestry in West Virginia
One of the oldest and largest industries in West Virginia is the timber and wood products industry.  “We are the third most forested state in the United States. We have 7 million more forested acres in West Virginia than we did 100 years ago.  There are more than 250,000 forest landowners in West Virginia,” said Frank Stewart, Executive Director of the West Virginia Forestry Association. “There are 30,000 jobs that we provide by our industry and we have over $3 billion in income gross a year in the state.  We are a naturally regenerating, biodegradable industry.”   To see how different species of trees regenerate and thrive, we visited the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County, where, for nearly 70 years foresters have been studying how different management and cutting practices affect the regeneration and growth of trees – from seedlings to saplings to healthy, mature specimens. Read more

Forest conservation investment imperative in sub-Saharan Africa
Godwin Kowero, the Executive Secretary of Nairobi-based Africa Forest Forum (AFF) said healthy forest ecosystems will underpin the continent's future prosperity, stability and peace. "Africa is losing its forest cover faster than other parts of the world hence the need to prioritize investments in programs that can reverse this trend," Kowero said. He noted that climate change, governance hiccups, population growth and urbanization were exerting pressure on Africa's forests. African governments must overhaul outdated policies, enforce the laws and engage communities in a bid to restore degraded forests. Kowero regretted that poor enforcement of laws and lack of trained personnel were undermining forest governance in many African countries. Read more