Jamax Forest Solutions

08/09/2026

Australia's forests face threats that don't respect tenure boundaries - fire, invasive pests, disease and climate are among them.

This ABC story on polyphagous shot-hole borer is another reminder of why maintaining Australia's forest-management and biosecurity capability matters.

The beetle has more than 400 recorded host species and poses potential risks not only to horticulture and Perth's urban tree canopy, but also to Australia's native forests. Scientists are warning that early detection will be critical if it begins moving beyond its present containment area.

Importantly, eradication in WA has already been judged technically infeasible. The response has therefore shifted to surveillance, containment, integrated pest management, research and building the skills needed to manage the pest over the long term.

There is a broader lesson here.

Protecting forests is not achieved simply by drawing a boundary on a map and calling an area "protected". Healthy forests require monitoring, access, skilled people, research and the capacity to intervene when threats emerge.

Whether the threat is fire, pests or disease, passive management is not a forest-health strategy.

And as governments confront multiple biosecurity emergencies simultaneously, maintaining enough trained people and operational capability to deal with them must be treated as essential national infrastructure.

With the nation's biosecurity experts tied up managing the bird flu outbreak, there are concerns that attention has been diverted from the destructive shot-hole borer beetle.

07/09/2026

Forest decline is rarely explained by a single symptom.

In Part 2 of his examination of snow gum dieback, forest scientist Vic Jurskis challenges the proposition that Phoracantha beetles are necessarily the primary cause of decline, and asks whether they may instead be exploiting trees already stressed by drought, altered soil and root conditions, and the legacy of repeated high-intensity fire.

It is an important distinction for forest management. If insect attack is a symptom of underlying physiological stress, simply identifying the beetle does not tell us why the trees became vulnerable in the first place.

Jurskis argues that future research should look more closely at soils, roots, water stress and fire history, particularly how changes in forest structure and fire regimes may be affecting tree health.

Whatever conclusions further research reaches, healthy forest management starts with understanding the whole system, not just the most visible symptom.

An interesting and worthwhile contribution to the continuing debate on snow gum health and management.

I reckon research should look at how soils and tree roots and bark have been affected by the recent unnatural history of high intensity fires rather than at the beetles that have benefitted from that history.

04/09/2026

Farmers need inaccurate mapping fixed - and fast

This week, the NSW Government’s Native Vegetation Regulatory (NVR) Map came into effect statewide.

Farmers have been saying for years that the map does not accurately reflect what is actually on the ground, particularly when it comes to grasslands.

NSW Farmers will keep pushing for a practical, transparent and timely process to fix inaccurate mapping and reduce unnecessary red tape.

https://www.nswfarmers.org.au/NSWFA/Posts/Media_Releases/MR051.26.aspx

31/08/2026

Well done Bob Talking Point Timber

How a former builder turns fallen storm debris into fine art.

28/08/2026

Ken Henry is again championing the INFM carbon method - the same approach ACBF says it developed through research with Professor Andrew Macintosh - while attacking a rival method that would allow forests to continue producing timber.

But there is another question Senators should be asking before the disallowance vote.

The INFM credits carbon for 15 years but claims a 100-year permanence benefit. Yet the final method appears to allow a non-State project proponent, while the specific obligation in s18 to cancel ACCUs for increased harvesting during years 16-100 applies only to a proponent “that is a State or the government of a State.”

That matters even more when ACBF openly promotes using forest carbon to generate revenue and attract investment.

So who asked for the private-proponent provision? Why was the 85-year liability written only around State proponents? And was that change deliberate?

For an already contentious methodology facing serious questions over additionality, leakage and carbon accounting, this potential 85-year liability gap demands an answer before Senators vote.

If it is a drafting mistake, fix it. If it is deliberate, explain why.

Larissa Waters Senator Nick McKim Senator Sarah Hanson-Young Senator Mehreen Faruqi David Shoebridge David Pocock Senator Lidia Thorpe Senator Jacqui Lambie Alison Penfold MP for Lyne

A second native forest scheme is being worked up, Ken Henry says, and he attacked it on air minutes before the timber industry answered him.

26/08/2026

A former CSIRO chief research scientist, Timber NSW, and a forest communities body want seven categories of evidence released before senators vote.

25/08/2026

When is a poll not a poll?

Timber NSW is calling on the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation to release details of its latest marketing campaign including the opening statement, full list of questions, sample size, and margin of error from its latest push-polling effort to end timber harvesting in NSW.

About Regional, a widely read online news source, reports that Ken Henry’s Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation commissioned a poll which apparently suggests overwhelming support among South Coast voters for converting state forests into national parks and significant support for ending native forest logging in the region.

According to Timber NSW Chief Executive Maree McCaskill, ‘The published headline figures cannot be judged as reliable measures of informed support for the park proposal. This was nothing more than a push poll to support Ken Henry’s campaign to destroy the timber industry in Australia.

‘The skewed polling was released by the National Parks Association to further muddy the waters as to the true intention of this campaign in which respondents were asked about large new protected areas without being given a detailed description of the boundaries, effects on forestry or park-access.

‘An enormous amount of what we do is trying to educate people about forestry. Our job is made much harder when we have to counter the false narratives perpetrated by people and organisations trying to ruin Australian industry by disguising their intent and wilfully ignoring hard facts and proven statistics.

‘The obsession with destroying the timber industry in Australia has already led to bizarre outcomes - Australia now relies on imported hardwood from questionable sources. This includes Merbau, a listed threatened species imported from unregulated forestry operations across Asia’ said Maree.

Some other information the commentators like Ken Henry and numerous politicians ignore is:

 90% of publicly owned forests are already in national parks and conservation reserves in NSW (nearly 8M ha)

 State forests cost less than a tenth of the cost of managing National Parks

 State forests contribute to an industry that generates $1.1b annually in value added to the NSW economy.

 State forests that have been well managed for timber over 100 years remain full of native species.

17/08/2026

This is an interesting historical paper that deserves to be read in today's debate about bushfire, fuel management and what we mean by a "natural" Australian landscape.

The Australian Landscape – Observations of Explorers and Early Settlers goes back to the journals and diaries of the people who actually travelled through Australia during the earliest period of European exploration.

Again and again they recorded smoke, Aboriginal burning, recently burnt country, open grassy forests, park-like woodlands and landscapes very different from the dense forest and scrub we often assume existed before European settlement.

The significance is difficult to ignore.

Aboriginal Australians had been actively managing this continent with fire for thousands of years. When those burning regimes were disrupted, early settlers subsequently recorded formerly open country becoming progressively occupied by young trees, scrub and dense regrowth.

That doesn't mean every forest should be frequently burnt, or that historical observations alone determine modern fire-management prescriptions. But it does challenge one increasingly common assumption: that excluding fire and allowing vegetation to become progressively denser somehow recreates the pre-European Australian landscape.

In many places, the historical record suggests precisely the opposite.

Fire wasn't simply something that occasionally happened to the Australian landscape. It was one of the processes that helped create the landscape Europeans first encountered.

Recognising that history should be part of any serious discussion about prescribed burning, fuel loads, forest management and Australia's future bushfire risk.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t655ajuqb4d69ajogk3px/The-Australian-Landscape-Observations-of-Explorers-and-Early-Settlers.pdf?rlkey=tjrtotm8bn1bnn9fp1e7o7abt&dl=0

17/08/2026

A new (amended) report prepared by PF Olsen for WWF Australia provides a useful reality check on the claim that plantations can simply replace native forest timber.

The report acknowledges that, following reductions in native forest harvesting associated with the Great Koala National Park, new and existing plantations will not fill the timber supply gap in the short term. Instead, the likely result is increased timber imports, with new plantations only beginning to materially assist supply 15-30+ years from now.

It also highlights just how difficult plantation expansion is. NSW would need around 135,000 hectares of additional softwood plantations to meet projected demand, while the report says further research is still needed to determine how much long-rotation hardwood plantation would be required to replace lost native hardwood supply.

The economics are equally revealing. Timber-only returns are often below commercial investment thresholds, with new projects increasingly reliant on carbon credits, government establishment grants and other revenue streams to make them viable.

The report also recognises concerns about converting productive agricultural land to plantations and supports greater use of agroforestry and silvopasture, where trees complement farming rather than replace it.

The message is clear: Australia does need more plantations - but plantations planted today are a long-term supply strategy, not an overnight replacement for sustainable native forestry.

Closing domestic timber production before replacement resources exist simply shifts demand elsewhere.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vtigc97g5a84k8ux8owuh/230426-Expansion-of-Plantations-in-NSW_FINAL.AMENDEDpdf.pdf?rlkey=uxp0yp191dontwx8bg0fnq15m&dl=0