Forestry men are criticised

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34133, 21 April 1976, Page 18

Forestry men are criticised

FRANZ JOSEF, A visiting Australian conservationist has strongly criticised the forestry profession for its ‘‘continuing role in the destruction of native forest.” Mr Paul Scobie, campaign organiser for the Australian Conservation Foundation, told delegates to the annual conference of the Native Forests Action Council at Franz Josef Glacier that the foresters were too heavily

oriented towards wood production. Native forests had values for many purposes other than wood production, Mr Scobie said. “But the forestry profession takes the attitude that a good forester is a man who always gets his tree.” he said. There were obvious reasons for the bias of the forestry profession. “University schools of forestry traditionally have a strong economic bias. “This has got to be changed, but in the meantime forestry schools have turned out a whole crop of foresters dedicated to logging all native forests,” he said. Foresters also spent most of their working lives in small towns where logging or sawmilling was the main local activity. “The foresters are supposed to be supervising the logging contractors, but in these small towns foresters mix, work and play with logging contractors, and they end up thinking like logging contractors,” he said. The continuing destruction of virgin native forests was an obvious outcome of management by foresters, said Mr Scobie.