Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The future of forests

A critique of Australian forestry
by
June 2024, no. 465

Forest Wars: The ugly truth about what's happening in our tall forests by David Lindenmayer

Allen & Unwin, $34.99 pb, 288 pp

The future of forests

A critique of Australian forestry
by
June 2024, no. 465

Shortly after Black Saturday, David Lindenmayer was giving a seminar on post-bushfire recovery when a member of the audience yelled out, ‘If it wasn’t for you greenies, none of this would have happened.’ Lindenmayer’s response was neither defence nor attack, but rather to rephrase the man’s words. ‘Your hypothesis,’ he said, ‘is that a fire in a forest that is logged and regenerated will be less severe than a fire in an intact forest.’ Many years of research followed this heckle. The result? A counter-intuitive finding that fire severity increases in logged forests.

This anecdote, recounted in Lindenmayer’s latest book, goes to the heart of his character: a philomath inspired to ask questions; a tireless ecologist who has explored and worked in the same forests for more than forty years. But there is a second Lindenmayer, a more recent creation: an accidental celebrity who has become increasingly outspoken as his detractors have escalated their attacks. It would, as he once said in an interview for the Wonderground journal, be morally irresponsible if he did not communicate what he has learned.

For those researching Lindenmayer online, it can be hard to sift through the rubble of brickbats and sensational headlines and find the scientific work that makes Lindenmayer one of the world’s most oft-cited scientists. For this reason, The Forest Wars is a necessary compendium, a summation of four decades’ worth of research against the backdrop of a rapidly changing industry. Indeed, the timing of this book could not be more opportune. Shortly after Lindenmayer finished the first draft, the Victorian government announced that the cessation of native logging was to be brought forward from 2030 to 2024.

Forest Wars: The ugly truth about what's happening in our tall forests

Forest Wars: The ugly truth about what's happening in our tall forests

by David Lindenmayer

Allen & Unwin, $34.99 pb, 288 pp

You May Also Like

Comment (1)

  • There is a weird non sequitur that emerges here and frequently elsewhere with respect to climate change: the idea that, in a future of climate extremes, anything resembling a 'recovery of our native forests' is possible. This is a child-like fantasy.

    Large shifts in rainfall patterns and averages are already able to be identified, but the potential for droughts of such deep and extended duration that whole forests could be lost is very real and indeed, as evidenced by recent impacts in the southwest of WA, potentially imminent.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    04 June 2024

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.