LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
READERS of the Gippsland Times need to take with a grain of salt some of the figures thrown around about native forestry.
One so-called fact thrown around is that only six per cent of the forests area of Victoria is available for harvesting, with 94 per cent not available for logging or in parks.
This is misleading.
There is about 7.7 million hectares of eucalypt forest in Victoria.
This counts almost every stick of native bush across the state, most of which are non-forestry species, including 1.1 million ha of Mallee forest, 680,000 ha of other scrubby and low types of native forest and 4.3 million ha of medium woodlands.
There is only 1.5 million ha of tall eucalypt forest, which is largely the target for commercial logging, but even that is not all commercially useful.
In the central highlands regional forest area (where ASH gets its wood from) 49 per cent of the area is working forest area allocated to the industry.
In reality, less of that area is suitable for harvesting, as it is too steep or on a river bank.
There are national parks, but they occupy about 30 per cent of the Central Highlands, not 94 per cent.
Perhaps people putting these figures out might like to explain how they come to it, so the community can be properly informed.
