Govt Funds A3P On Climate Change Plan

12 October 2007
The Australian Government has provided $250,000 for two projects that will help the plantation products and paper industry manage the challenges of climate change.
The funding is part of the Government’s National Agriculture and Climate Change Action Plan.
The Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council (A3P) received $200,000 to develop a Forestry and Climate Change Action Plan and $50,000 for a scoping study into managing plantations for timber and carbon.
A3P CEO Neil Fisher said the action plan would provide a national strategic framework for industry decision-making and business planning in the area of climate change management.
“The action plan will help the plantation products and paper industry to adapt to a change in climate and develop mitigation strategies to reduce or offset greenhouse gas emissions,” Fisher said. “Research and development strategies to enhance the industry’s capacity to respond to climate change will be examined.”
A3P will also undertake a scoping study to develop economically viable plantation management regimes that increases the total carbon with little or no impact on timber production capacity.

Forest Grower Levy Starts 1 November

Following formation of Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) in September, the new forest growers levy of 5c a per tonne on all logs harvested for processing or for export will come into effect on 1 November.
The Levies Revenue Service in the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) has written to intermediaries, such as a wood processors and exporters, advising them that they are liable to pay a levy on behalf of the producer (grower) and that they can recover the amount of levy paid from the producer, by offset or otherwise.
The levy is not payable on logs sourced from public (state) forests as state government growers will make payments directly to FWPA.

Cullity Fellows To Study In France

Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) has awarded two 2008 Denis Cullity fellowships to Australian scientists to further their knowledge and expertise overseas next year.
Both Dr Harry Wu, theme leader and principal research scientist at Ensis Genetics in Canberra, and Adam Redman, a research scientist in innovative forest products at the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, will visit France on the study mission.
Dr Wu will travel to France for four months to develop a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms causing an undesirable genetic correlation between wood stiffness (quality) and growth (volume) traits in radiata pine.
He will study optimal strategies to identify, overcome or breed out this unfavourable genetic correlation, which is the most challenging technical issue in advanced breeding programs for radiata.
“I am looking for a long-term genetic solution to the problem of weaker wood (a larger proportion of juvenile core wood in harvested logs), which has resulted from 50 years of breeding and silviculture to achieve faster growth and shorter rotations,” Dr Wu said.
He also expects to collaborate on development of a robust locus-based gene modelling system centred on the current population structure of the radiata pine breeding population in Australia, and to set up a framework for future joint research projects between CSIRO (Australia) and INRA (France).
Adam Redman will spend four months in France at the AgroParisTech - Engref in Nancy, where he hopes to develop expertise in vacuum wood drying of some Australian commercial hardwoods, a significant knowledge gap in the local industry.
Drying timber to produce material for high quality applications is an expensive and time consuming operation. However, vacuum drying, now an established technology for European and North American species, greatly reduces drying time, lowering costs and improving grade recovery compared with conventional drying, the primary method used in Australia.
Redman will use state-of-the-art equipment to obtain wood property data and apply that for the development of an accurate hardwood vacuum drying model to incorporate checking and collapse degrade.

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