Diversifying Forest Landscape Management—A Case Study of a Shift from Native Forest Logging to Plantations in Australian Wet Forests
Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
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Academic Editor: Thomas Panagopoulos
Land 2022, 11(3), 407; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030407
Received: 22 February 2022
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Revised: 9 March 2022
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Accepted: 9 March 2022
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Published: 10 March 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Diversifying Forest Landscape Management Approaches)
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.
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Keywords:
sustainable forest management; forest history; pattern and process; fire regimes; biodiversity; ecosystem values
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MDPI and ACS Style
Lindenmayer, D.; Taylor, C. Diversifying Forest Landscape Management—A Case Study of a Shift from Native Forest Logging to Plantations in Australian Wet Forests. Land 2022, 11, 407. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030407
AMA Style
Lindenmayer D, Taylor C. Diversifying Forest Landscape Management—A Case Study of a Shift from Native Forest Logging to Plantations in Australian Wet Forests. Land. 2022; 11(3):407. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030407
Chicago/Turabian StyleLindenmayer, David, and Chris Taylor. 2022. "Diversifying Forest Landscape Management—A Case Study of a Shift from Native Forest Logging to Plantations in Australian Wet Forests" Land 11, no. 3: 407. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030407
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