Forestry and Bushfire Protection

No Harvest, no protection: why Tasmania’s forests need their foresters

Every summer, when smoke rises over the Huon, the Derwent Valley or the north-west, many of the first people on the fireground are not who most Tasmanians imagine. They are foresters, contractors, machine operators and ecologists. For the rest of the year, they grow, manage and harvest our forests.

That link between timber harvesting and bushfire protection is one of the least understood facts about Tasmania’s forests. It needs to be understood now, because the future of one depends on the other.

A small footprint, a big responsibility

Critics like to describe native forestry as destruction. The numbers tell a different story.

In 2024–25, Sustainable Timber Tasmania harvested 5,804 hectares, less than 1 per cent of the land it manages. Every hectare harvested is regrown. Last year that meant sowing 100 million locally collected seeds, with 99.5 per cent regeneration success.

Alongside that harvest, STT manages around 129,000 hectares purely for conservation. It verified and protected 161 giant trees, surveyed 37,000 hectares for eagle nests and reserved 10 hectares around every new nest found. It holds about two tonnes of native seed in a strategic bank, ready to regrow forests after bushfire.

That is not destruction. It is stewardship, and the careful harvest of regrowth native forest is what pays for it.

Harvest pays for protection

The state pays STT $12 million a year for community service obligations. Only $2 million of that is for fire prevention. In 2024–25, fire prevention and firefighting cost STT $4.7 million. The year before, it was $7 million.

Timber revenue covers the gap. It also pays for the people, vehicles, heavy machinery and roughly 10,000 kilometres of forest roads that make a fast fire response possible. Around 70 per cent of STT’s people are fire-ready at all times: trained, equipped and already working in remote country when lightning strikes.

So the claim that this industry only survives on taxpayer bailouts has it backwards. Harvesting and regenerating a sliver of the estate each year funds the protection of the rest, at a fraction of what it would cost the public purse.

What happens when the harvest stops

We don’t have to guess. Victoria ended native forest harvesting on 1 January 2024.

Victoria’s 2024–25 budget then set aside $115.7 million to manage 1.8 million hectares of state forest that was no longer being harvested, including the forest roads needed for emergency access. A further $36.9 million went to making 54 short-term forest firefighter roles permanent. Former harvest contractors were moved onto government fire and forest management contracts.

In plain terms, Victorian taxpayers are now paying to replace capability the timber industry used to fund. Scaled to the size of Tasmania’s permanent timber production zone, a comparable bill here would be several times what the state pays STT today.

And if that money is not found, the capability simply goes. Fewer trained crews. Fewer machines. Roads left to close over. Fuel loads building year after year with no one managing them.

In a warming climate, with longer and harsher fire seasons, that is a recipe for disaster. Without native forestry, a catastrophic bushfire in our forests is not a question of if, but a question of when. And fire does not respect the line between production forest and reserve. It would take the giant trees, the eagle nests and the swift parrot habitat: the very values forestry’s critics say they want to protect.

2019: who stood in the line

Remember the summer of 2019. As the Riveaux Road fire bore down on the Southwood timber complex near Geeveston, only a handful of forest contractors stood between the flames and the mill. Southwood’s mills were shut and around 70 jobs were affected.

Where were STT’s foresters? In the Styx Valley, defending the giant trees. Those giants are in reserves. They will never be harvested. Faced with a choice, our foresters protected Tasmania’s forest heritage ahead of their own industry’s infrastructure.

That tells you everything you need to know about the people who work in our forests.

Harvesting and fire protection go hand in hand. Take away one, and you lose the other.

This summer, when you see a fire crew heading out into the bush, there is a fair chance,  sustainably harvested, regenerated native forests are why you are seeing them at all.