The following is a transcript of my news story and feature in today’s Weekend Australian.
IMBIL STATE FOREST – NEWS
Thousands of hectares of pine plantation would be converted to rainforest under a radical proposal under consideration by the Queensland Government.
Land use experts and scientists say a move to make the Imbil State Forest in the Sunshine Coast hinterland a conservation park would be a turning point in long-running efforts to save what is left of subtropical lowland rainforest, a critically endangered habitat.
The rainforest was once widespread in south-east Queensland and north-east NSW but was reduced to small fragments by clearing for agriculture and hoop pine plantations. Surviving forest remnants are threatened by cattle grazing and introduced weeds.
Under a proposal submitted this week to the Palaszczuk Government, leases to log hoop pine plantations in the 21,000ha Imbil State Forest would be revoked and the plantations allowed to regenerate as subtropical lowland rainforest.
The move would create the only large reserve of its type and be the first time in Australia that commercial timber plantations were converted to forest.
The plan is opposed by some conservationists because it defies a widespread view that pristine natural areas are worthy of protection but the likes of man-made pine plantations have no environmental value.
Others argue that a key problem in the country's environmental decision-making processes is a misplaced view that once natural landscapes have been altered substantially by human intervention, they are beyond redemption.
Leading landscape ecologist Peter Stanton said the Imbil plantations would easily regenerate as rainforest because hoop pine is a dominant native rainforest tree naturally. If left unlogged, the plantations would be seeded from adjoining rainforest remnants.
“This is a great idea and its aims are quite achievable,” said Mr Stanton, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy's land management officer.
“If you want to rehabilitate a rainforest, the best place to start is with hoop pine and that's already there in the plantations. As long as there are seed sources nearby, the rainforest will come up from under the trees.”
But Sunshine Coast Hinterland Bush Links co-ordinator Susie Duncan fears the plan will detract from a separate proposal being pushed by conservationists to add 20,000ha of natural forest to the nearby Conondale National Park.
“We don’t want to throw that into the mix of the [Conondale] proposal and risk losing the traction we have to date,” Ms Duncan said.
The proposal was submitted to Queensland Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch and Agriculture Industry Minister Mark Furner.
Imbil State Forest is part of 330,000ha of Queensland pine plantations under lease to logging company HQ Plantations. HQP group manager stewardships David West said the company was open to negotiation but needed further information.
Leading Queensland zoologist Glen Ingram said the destruction of subtropical lowland rainforest was an environmental disaster.
“It was a mindless series of mistakes and the impact on our fauna and fauna was devastating. The return of the Imbil forests would be an important step towards rectifying those mistakes,” Dr Ingram said.
FEATURE - INQUIRER
A still winter night in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland is shattered by an unearthly, raspy scream. It's the call of a masked owl as it feasts on a small possum it has caught. A rare and secretive bird, the owl is not in a forest or woodland, as might be expected, but deep inside a plantation of pine trees in Imbil State Forest.
According to conventional wisdom, native wildlife is not supposed to inhabit monocultural plantations comprised of a single tree species. Such places are considered environmental wastelands, not far removed from cotton farms or inner-city suburbia. Try telling that to the masked owls and a host of native plants and animals that are thriving in the hoop pine plantations of Imbil.
The plantations grow on what was once subtropical lowland rainforest, which in its natural state is unparalleled in Australia as a habitat for its rich biodiversity. The rainforest once occurred across a large area extending from Maryborough in Queensland south to Grafton in NSW.
Most of the forest was bulldozed in the nineteenth century for agriculture. Large areas in Queensland were later cleared for hoop pine plantations. Today just tiny fragments of the forest remain; subtropical lowland rainforest was listed federally in 2011 as critically endangered. No other native vegetation type in Australia has been depleted so comprehensively.
That could now change. The Queensland Government is considering a radical proposal to stop logging pine plantations over 21,000ha of Imbil State Forest so the plantations can regenerate as rainforest. Similar moves could follow in other areas. The plan would create the first extensive reserves of subtropical lowland rainforest, giving the many plants and animals that struggle to survive in its dwindling remnants a second chance.
It would be the first time in Australia that commercial timber plantations were converted on a large scale to native forest. Botanists, ecologists and zoologists are backing the proposal. The timber industry is lukewarm, though open to discussion. Environmentalists are divided, with some arguing that plantations are man-made and therefore not worthy of protection.
The proposal submitted to the Palaszczuk Labor Government this week argues that human modification of the landscape should not be a barrier to environmental protection. Protecting endangered plants and animals does not necessarily require locking up vast areas as national park or wilderness.
The Imbil plan requires a simple change of leasehold tenure in a relatively well-populated part of the country to secure solutions to what ecologists have long described as an environmental catastrophe.
A key problem in the country's environmental decision-making processes is a misplaced view that once natural landscapes have been altered substantially by human intervention, they are beyond redemption.
For some rainforest inhabitants, it is already too late. The brightly coloured Coxen's fig-parrot once nested in the Imbil area; flocks were seen in many parts of south-east Queensland and north-east NSW. The bird has not been recorded reliably since the 1980s and is likely extinct - just the second bird species on mainland Australia (the other is the paradise parrot) to meet this fate.
Many endangered plants and animals, like the giant barred frog and the black-breasted buttonquail, struggle to survive in the small lowland rainforest patches that remain. In Queensland, land care groups work tirelessly to try to stop the forest remnants being overrun by vines and other weeds introduced from overseas. In NSW, scores of landholders are replanting rainforest in parts of what was known as the Big Scrub; 99 per cent of the 75,000ha rainforest was cleared for dairying at the end of the 19th Century.
These worthy measures will at best retain or restore small patches, mostly less than 100ha. Converting large areas of hoop pine plantation to rainforest is a much more ambitious project.
Much of the surviving rainforest in Queensland is on steep slopes or in gullies wedged between hoop pine plantations in places like Imbil. Hoop pine is a native plant and one of the dominant trees in natural
lowland rainforest. If plantations are left unlogged, they are quickly invaded by native vines, palms and other plants from adjoining remnant forest patches.
The plantations soon resemble natural rainforest. Wildlife, like the masked owl and many mammals and reptiles, will happily inhabit them. In time the plantations would revert to what they once were: subtropical lowland rainforest.
Queensland botanist Michael Olsen has no doubt the plantations would readily regenerate as rainforest if left alone. “The plantations have increasing biodiversity with age after being planted or logged,” says Olsen, an environmental consultant.
“This is most apparent where they are located on former rainforest sites embedded in, or contiguous to, remnant rainforest. This is the case with the Imbil plantations.... The protection of such a depleted biodiverse community should be a priority from any perspective.”
Peter Stanton, a highly regarded landscape ecologist, agrees. “This is a great idea and its aims are quite achievable,” Stanton says.
Large areas of rainforest are protected in reserves such as Lamington National Park in Queensland and Border Ranges National Park in NSW. However, this is highland rainforest, quite unlike the threatened lowland forest and with a much less diverse range of plants and animals.
Conservationists have been content to secure these highland rainforest reserves while believing that little can be done to bring back lowland rainforest. Pine plantations, managed intensively as a commercial resource, have not previously been considered as having any potential to provide environmental solutions.
Not far from Imbil, governments did nothing to prevent the Yandina Creek Wetland on the Sunshine Coast being drained in 2015 because it was not considered to be suitably “natural”.
The Yandina Creek area was natural wetland before being drained for sugar cane farms in the 1920s. Farming stopped at the start of this century when a sugar mill closed. Cane land was inundated when farm floodgates collapsed and the wetland returned. The restored wetland became a waterbird sanctuary of international significance but was drained again to allow it to be replanted with cane.
The general view was that since the area was modified for farmland, it wasn't worth protecting. However, following intervention by BirdLife Australia and others, and coverage by The Weekend Australian, the land was acquired by Unitywater, a statutory authority. It is again being restored as a thriving wetland; surveys this week confirmed that large numbers of waterbirds have returned.
The proposal to stop logging at Imbil involves declaring the state forest a conservation park and scrapping grazing leases, as well as a government buyback or cancellation of logging leases. Herds of cattle are trampling the remnant rainforest patches as a consequence of a decision by the former Campbell Newman-led Liberal National government to open up state forests to grazing, which Labor has declined to reverse in government.
The Imbil plantations were the first to be established in Queensland, in the early-1900s. They are logged by HQ Plantations, comprising a small proportion of the 330,000ha of pine plantation in Queensland under lease to the company. (Unlike hoop pine, most commercial plantations in Australia consist of introduced pine trees of no environmental value.)
Losing logging access to less than 5 per cent of Queensland's state forests would have little impact commercially, and could be compensated for by enhanced opportunities for ecotourism offered by a conservation park.
Imbil State Forest is an important recreational attraction. It includes Charlie Moreland, the most popular bush camping ground in the Sunshine Coast region. The area round Charlie Moreland is a mosaic of pine plantation, rainforest remnants and eucalypt forest that is typical of the state forest more broadly. It ha
long been regarded as one of eastern Australia's primary wildlife-viewing hotspots.
David West, group manager stewardships with HQ Plantations, says the company is open to discussion but needed further information. West declines to put a value on the Imbil leases or speculate on whether the company would welcome a buy-back of leases. Timber Queensland, the state's peak timber industry body, declined to comment.
If the rainforest is restored, the area could be added to the adjoining 35,658ha Conondale National Park, increasing its size by more than 50 per cent.
But conservationists are divided, with some believing that only pristine forests should be protected. Several groups are campaigning for another plan that would link Conondale National Park to Wrattens National Park by adding 20,000ha of natural forest patches to create a newly named Yabba National Park; no pine plantations would be included.
Sunshine Coast Hinterland Bush Links co-ordinator Susie Duncan says plantations in Imbil and other state forests were traded off against natural forests which were earmarked to become national park under an agreement disbanded by the former Liberal National government. “Given the complexity of a buy- back of HQ Plantation leases, we don’t want to throw that into the mix of the Yabba proposal and risk losing the traction we have to date,” Duncan says.
But BirdLife Australia Sunshine Coast convenor Ken Cross is enthusiastic about the plantation plan. “We have lost too much of this habitat already and it may not be good enough in the long term just to protect the area that is left,” Cross says. “We support this plan to utilise existing native plantations to grow the area of lowland rainforest and increase the available habitat for many endangered birds.”
Former Queensland Environment Minister Pat Comben also backs the proposal. Comben was largely responsible for doubling the state's national park area by the Goss Labor government in the early-1990s. “We protected areas such as the Mitchell Grass Downs and mulga lands,” Comben says. “Now the challenge is to ensure the biodiversity of south-east Queensland is similarly protected before it is too late.”
Leading Queensland zoologist Glen Ingram describes the destruction of subtropical lowland rainforest as an environmental disaster. “It was a mindless series of mistakes and the impact on our fauna and fauna was devastating,” Ingram says. “The return of the Imbil forests would be an important step towards rectifying those mistakes.”