Jamax Forest Solutions

26/08/2026

A former CSIRO chief research scientist, Timber NSW, and a forest communities body want seven categories of evidence released before senators vote.

25/08/2026

When is a poll not a poll?

Timber NSW is calling on the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation to release details of its latest marketing campaign including the opening statement, full list of questions, sample size, and margin of error from its latest push-polling effort to end timber harvesting in NSW.

About Regional, a widely read online news source, reports that Ken Henry’s Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation commissioned a poll which apparently suggests overwhelming support among South Coast voters for converting state forests into national parks and significant support for ending native forest logging in the region.

According to Timber NSW Chief Executive Maree McCaskill, ‘The published headline figures cannot be judged as reliable measures of informed support for the park proposal. This was nothing more than a push poll to support Ken Henry’s campaign to destroy the timber industry in Australia.

‘The skewed polling was released by the National Parks Association to further muddy the waters as to the true intention of this campaign in which respondents were asked about large new protected areas without being given a detailed description of the boundaries, effects on forestry or park-access.

‘An enormous amount of what we do is trying to educate people about forestry. Our job is made much harder when we have to counter the false narratives perpetrated by people and organisations trying to ruin Australian industry by disguising their intent and wilfully ignoring hard facts and proven statistics.

‘The obsession with destroying the timber industry in Australia has already led to bizarre outcomes - Australia now relies on imported hardwood from questionable sources. This includes Merbau, a listed threatened species imported from unregulated forestry operations across Asia’ said Maree.

Some other information the commentators like Ken Henry and numerous politicians ignore is:

 90% of publicly owned forests are already in national parks and conservation reserves in NSW (nearly 8M ha)

 State forests cost less than a tenth of the cost of managing National Parks

 State forests contribute to an industry that generates $1.1b annually in value added to the NSW economy.

 State forests that have been well managed for timber over 100 years remain full of native species.

17/08/2026

This is an interesting historical paper that deserves to be read in today's debate about bushfire, fuel management and what we mean by a "natural" Australian landscape.

The Australian Landscape – Observations of Explorers and Early Settlers goes back to the journals and diaries of the people who actually travelled through Australia during the earliest period of European exploration.

Again and again they recorded smoke, Aboriginal burning, recently burnt country, open grassy forests, park-like woodlands and landscapes very different from the dense forest and scrub we often assume existed before European settlement.

The significance is difficult to ignore.

Aboriginal Australians had been actively managing this continent with fire for thousands of years. When those burning regimes were disrupted, early settlers subsequently recorded formerly open country becoming progressively occupied by young trees, scrub and dense regrowth.

That doesn't mean every forest should be frequently burnt, or that historical observations alone determine modern fire-management prescriptions. But it does challenge one increasingly common assumption: that excluding fire and allowing vegetation to become progressively denser somehow recreates the pre-European Australian landscape.

In many places, the historical record suggests precisely the opposite.

Fire wasn't simply something that occasionally happened to the Australian landscape. It was one of the processes that helped create the landscape Europeans first encountered.

Recognising that history should be part of any serious discussion about prescribed burning, fuel loads, forest management and Australia's future bushfire risk.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t655ajuqb4d69ajogk3px/The-Australian-Landscape-Observations-of-Explorers-and-Early-Settlers.pdf?rlkey=tjrtotm8bn1bnn9fp1e7o7abt&dl=0

17/08/2026

A new (amended) report prepared by PF Olsen for WWF Australia provides a useful reality check on the claim that plantations can simply replace native forest timber.

The report acknowledges that, following reductions in native forest harvesting associated with the Great Koala National Park, new and existing plantations will not fill the timber supply gap in the short term. Instead, the likely result is increased timber imports, with new plantations only beginning to materially assist supply 15-30+ years from now.

It also highlights just how difficult plantation expansion is. NSW would need around 135,000 hectares of additional softwood plantations to meet projected demand, while the report says further research is still needed to determine how much long-rotation hardwood plantation would be required to replace lost native hardwood supply.

The economics are equally revealing. Timber-only returns are often below commercial investment thresholds, with new projects increasingly reliant on carbon credits, government establishment grants and other revenue streams to make them viable.

The report also recognises concerns about converting productive agricultural land to plantations and supports greater use of agroforestry and silvopasture, where trees complement farming rather than replace it.

The message is clear: Australia does need more plantations - but plantations planted today are a long-term supply strategy, not an overnight replacement for sustainable native forestry.

Closing domestic timber production before replacement resources exist simply shifts demand elsewhere.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vtigc97g5a84k8ux8owuh/230426-Expansion-of-Plantations-in-NSW_FINAL.AMENDEDpdf.pdf?rlkey=uxp0yp191dontwx8bg0fnq15m&dl=0

17/08/2026

Thank you WoodCentral for printing our open letter on revoking the INFM carbon methodology to NSW Premier Chris Minns and Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen!!

Dobbyns, Raison, and McCaskill have asked both governments to revoke the determination, with the method paying for 15 years and committing the State for 100.

17/08/2026

The world’s most forested countries

Forests are among the planet’s most important natural resources, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity, and supplying everything from timber to clean water. Source: Visual Capitalist

This graphic ranks the 15 countries with the most forest in 2025, from Russia’s vast boreal forests to the tropical forests of South America and Central Africa.

The data comes from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Russia ranks first with 833 million hectares of forest, about 70% more than second-ranked Brazil and equal to roughly one-fifth of the global total.

Canada ranks third with 369 million hectares, followed by the US at 309 million and China at 227 million hectares.

Russia’s vast forest area is closely tied to its geography. Much of it stretches across Siberia, part of the enormous boreal forest belt spanning the northern reaches of the planet.

Together, the 15 countries in this ranking account for nearly three-quarters of the world’s forest area.

The Americas are especially prominent, with eight countries making the list: Brazil, Canada, the US, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela.

The top five countries, Russia, Brazil, Canada, the US and China, account for more than half of global forest area.

Forest area matters for more than timber, biodiversity, and carbon storage. In the US, which ranks fourth globally, forests also play an outsized role in the country’s water supply.

Overall, forests generate about 46% of the surface water supply in the contiguous US.

By capturing precipitation, filtering water, and feeding rivers and reservoirs, forests directly support water supplies that millions of Americans rely on every day.

17/08/2026

The National Environmental Protection Agency is providing practical support to farmers and landholders with the release of a new guide to help them comply with Australia’s national environment laws.

The National Environmental Protection Agency is providing practical support to farmers and landholders with the release of a new guide to help them comply with Australia's national environment laws.

14/08/2026

The broad fuel related benefits of prescribed burning across Australia

Prescribed burning is the only landscape scale tool capable of reducing fuel loads, simplifying fuel structure, breaking fuel continuity and moderating dangerous fire behaviour across Australian forests. Source: John O’Donnell

As noted in the attached review, prescribed burning is the only landscape scale tool capable of reducing fuel loads, simplifying fuel structure, breaking fuel continuity and moderating dangerous fire behaviour across Australian forests.

Decades of scientific and operational evidence, from McArthur (1962) to Burrows et al. (2023), demonstrate that fuel quantity, fuel structure and fuel continuity are the dominant drivers of fire intensity, severity, rate of spread and spotting. Weather and topography matter, but only fuel can be modified at scale.

The impacts of intense, severe and long duration bushfires across south eastern Australia are enormous, spanning 32 impact areas and affecting communities, ecosystems, water supplies, infrastructure and national resilience. The combined impacts across SE Australia are huge, especially considering intense and severe bushfires.

With severe fires becoming more frequent, fuel management has become a critical national priority.

The full review is attached herehttps://www.timberbiz.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Benefits-of-prescribed-burningfuel-mgt-Fin.pdf

Fuel layers, understanding how fires actually spread

A central insight of the review is that prescribed burning directly modifies the fuel layers that govern fire behaviour. Cheney’s (2026 a per. comm) fuel layer framework shows that dry eucalypt forests contain six distinct layers, including canopy, intermediate, elevated, near surface, surface and duff, each contributing differently to flame development, vertical progression and spotting. Cheney observes that “the structure of the vegetation in a dry eucalypt forest can be identified in 6 layers of different density” and that the near surface layer “is the first to dry after rain and always burns.”

This layered understanding clarifies why prescribed burning is uniquely effective: it reduces the fine fuels that dominate rate of spread, removes ladder fuels that enable crown fire and chars bark fuels that drive spotting.

Relative Fire Hazard and risk

Relative Fire Hazard (RFH) analysis highlights the enormous differences in hazard between fuel types. Cheney (2026 b pers comm) shows that under very high fire danger, “a fire in a wet forest is 3000 times more hazardous than an eaten out or fine one year old pasture.”

These hazard ratios incorporate both intensity and burnout time, the latter being crucial because long combustion periods drive soil heating, tree mortality and deep duff ignition. RFH demonstrates that fuel structure, fuel mass and combustion duration, not weather alone, govern the destructive potential of bushfires.

Fuel load reduction, the cornerstone of bushfire mitigation

Fuel load reduction is a major benefit of prescribed burning. Fine fuels accumulate rapidly after fire, and without regular mild burning they reach levels that support high intensity, fast moving and uncontrollable bushfires.

Prescribed burning reduces surface litter, near surface fuels, elevated fine fuels, bark fuels, understorey shrubs, and parts of the duff and coarse woody debris layers.

Western Australia’s long-term data demonstrates this clearly: maintaining prescribed burning at ~8–9% of public land annually keeps roughly 40% of the landscape in 0–5 year fuels, resulting in low bushfire area and high suppression effectiveness.

Fuel structure simplification

Fuel structure, the vertical and horizontal arrangement of combustible material, is as important as fuel load. Long fire free intervals produce dense understorey, low canopy base height, heavy bark fuels and continuous vertical ladders, conditions highly conducive to crown fire initiation.

Fuel arrangement can have a greater impact on fire behaviour than overall fuel quantity.

Prescribed burning simplifies fuel structure by reducing understorey density, removing juvenile eucalypts and shrubs, reducing dead woody debris, increasing vertical separation between fuel layers and charring fibrous bark, reducing spotting for several years

These structural changes directly reduce flame contact with elevated fuels and limit crown fire potential.

Breaking fuel continuity creating landscape mosaics

Horizontal fuel discontinuity slows fire spread, reduces flame contact with elevated fuels and limits spotting. Landscape mosaics created by regular prescribed burning provide natural containment lines, reduce the probability of large fires, and support biodiversity by maintaining varied successional stages and unburnt refuges.

Prescribed burning creates landscape mosaics and reduces fuel continuity.

Reducing woody thickening and dead timber fuels

Prescribed burning reduces woody thickening, a widespread issue in long unburnt forests. Thickened understorey increases fuel mass, reduces visibility, lowers canopy base height and increases ladder fuel density.

It also reduces dead timber fuels generated by intense bushfires and by eucalypt decline associated with long term fire exclusion. Prescribed burning reduces quantities of dead timber fuels from intense bushfires and from decline processes driven by lack of regular, mild fire.

These dead fuels significantly increase fire intensity, smouldering duration and suppression difficulty.

Fire behaviour moderation and safety benefits

In conclusion, prescribed burning moderates fire behaviour across all key dimensions, including intensity, severity, duration and rate of spread. By reducing fine fuels, simplifying structure and breaking continuity, prescribed burning lowers flame height, reduces ember production, limits crown fire potential and improves firefighter safety.

Prescribed burning remains the only practical, scalable mechanism for reducing fuels, moderating fire behaviour, improving suppression effectiveness and reducing the likelihood of megafires.