Planning Plantations | Plantation Management

Case Studies – PDF Format

Walcha Shire, NE NSW (192kb)
This case study describes how Walcha Shire Council in NE NSW have developed a strategy to encourage plantation investment in their Local Government Area.
Latrobe City, Victoria (40kb)
This case study will describe successful industry and local government cooperation to achieve more robust coupe auditing.
Private Forests Tasmania – Local Government Tasmania (40kb)
This case study will describe the work that Private Forests Tasmania has done to actively inform local government about plantation activities across Tasmania .
Timber Towns Victoria (1.42mb)
This Overview and Charter describes how Timber Towns Victoria operates and what they achieve by working collectively as a State organisation of Local Governments.

Plantations in AUstralia

Overview & Case Studies

Overview

Plantations have been part of the Australian landscape for well over a century. Plantations make up only 1% of the total forested land area in Australia, and supply more than 66% of our timber resources.

The recently released Bureau of Rural Sciences report ‘Australia’s Plantations 2006’ highlights the following points:

Australians consume around 27.4 million cubic metres of timber and paper products each year. Most of these products are made from logs grown in Australian plantation forests.
Australia’s total plantation area increased to nearly 1.97 million hectares in 2008. That area includes about 1,014,000 hectares of softwood species (e.g Radiata pine Pinus radiata 75% of total softwood area ) and about 949,000 hectares of hardwood species (e.g Blue Gum Eucalyptus globulus 61% of total hardwood area)
Private ownership of plantations increased from about 30% in 1990 to over 61% in 2008. Public ownership is at 33% and about 5% is jointly owned. Plantation owners include Governments, investors in managed investment schemes, timber industry companies, superannuation funds and farm foresters and private owners.
People who have purchased woodlots in managed investment schemes own over 722,000 hectares of Australia’s plantations.
Most expansion of plantations since 1990 has been of eucalypts on farmland or other previously cleared sites and managed to produce woodchips for paper manufacture.
Australia has an approximately $2 Billion deficit in wood and paper products annually - $1.45 B of this being in pulp and paper products i.e we import a lot of pulp and paper but are reasonably self sufficient in solid wood products.
Plantations supplied 66% of the logs harvested from Australia’s native forests and plantations in 2008. Those logs are used to make sawn timber, fibreboard, particleboard, plywood, paper and other products. Plantations are essential for helping us to achieve self sufficiency in wood and paper products.

Case Studies

Local government and the plantation industry have developed strong and functional partnerships in many regions and local government areas. This set of Case Studies provides some examples of what has been undertaken, what has worked or what has been learned to address challenges in working cooperatively for improved mutual understanding and benefit.

Top of Page