Collaborative forest management in Victoria's Wombat State Forest — will it serve the interests of the wider community?

Summary

Collaborative forest management is being promoted as a solution to Australian forest use conflicts and a precursor to a wider devolution of government forest management responsibility in favour of greater community empowerment. Its mooted introduction, however, is based on an acceptance of the righteousness of continuing anti-logging sentiment despite the reality that wood production is already excluded from most public native forests.

Australia's first formal trial of collaborative forest management, in Victoria's Wombat State Forest, has so far demonstrated that conflict will be reduced only where wood production is substantially reduced. After two and a half years, the trial has led to a marginalisation of professional forestry expertise by permitting ‘interested’ community participants to assume responsibility in areas where they have for years been distrustful of government decision-making. This has been allowed to occur in an unrealistic vacuum free from the normal constraints of economic accountability, by a government willing to accept the substantial costs of supporting the trial. This includes artificially keeping alive a local timber industry seriously affected by the trial's failure to deliver anywhere near its licensed sawlog entitlement.

This experience suggests that wider introduction of collaborative forest management in accordance with the participatory model being used in the Wombat State Forest, would involve considerable costs arising from the gradual demise of local timber industries, and the need to procure wood from alternative sources or use substitute products. Although this may appease local conservation groups, it may not be in the best interests of the wider community.

Keywords:

• forest management
• community forestry
• community education
• silvicultural systems
• yield targets
• timber harvesting
• Victoria