Can lessons from the Community Rainforest Reforestation Program in eastern Australia be learned?

Abstract

SummaryThe Community Rainforest Reforestation Program (1993Program ( -2000 was an attempt to create healthy vegetated catchments that maximize wood production, environmental protection and employment in eastern Australia. Despite a AUD10 million outlay, these goals were not fulfilled, because of limited resources and continually changing circumstances (goals, staff, institutions) that hampered the efforts of both researchers and coordinators. Both technical and managerial lessons need to be learned: blanket guidelines are rarely helpful because species, nutrition and silviculture need to be matched to each site; vigour, provenance and nutrition of nursery stock is critical to plantation success; health surveillance should not be overlooked; early growth trends may not reflect commercial outcomes; experiments should be planned and adequately funded to examine mission-critical problems thoroughly; and records should be archived, and secured in more than one location. Inability to securely maintain long-term forest research data has been a common failing in many forestry endeavours. Experience suggests that researchers should rely on their professional networks rather than their employing agency to secure data and other records contributing to a professional knowledge base.

Species-site matching in mixed species plantations of native trees in tropical Australia

“…Mixed species tree plantations may also provide benefits of product diversification, improved risk management and increased productivity when compared to monocultures (del Rio and Sterba 2009;Potvin and Dutilleul 2009;Amoroso and Turnblom 2006;Forrester et al 2004). Despite mounting interest in mixed species plantations over the last decade , trials of mixtures of native timber species in Brazil (Yamada andGholz 2002), Costa Rica (Montagnini et al 2003), Thailand (Elliott et al 2003), Australia Vanclay 2006a) and China (Jian-min et al 2003) have failed to produce plantation models for adoption by landholders or commercial timber growers on a large scale. Framework native species with the best potential for inclusion in mixtures have been identified for most regions Elliott et al 2003;Jian-min et al 2003;Yamada and Gholz 2002) but a lack of successful operational scale demonstrations coupled with adequate financial analysis has impeded the adoption of mixed species systems in industrial plantations (Nichols et al 2006).…”

“…The CRRP was initiated in 1993 in response to the Australian Federal Government calling a cessation to timber harvesting from natural forests in the Wet Tropics of Queensland. The program aimed to create healthy vegetated catchments that maximise wood production, environmental protection and employment in Eastern Australia (Vanclay 2006a). Plantations containing a total of 170 tree species were established along the higher rainfall areas of the coastal lowlands and foothills, and on the tropical upland areas of the Atherton Tablelands.…”

“…Plantations containing a total of 170 tree species were established along the higher rainfall areas of the coastal lowlands and foothills, and on the tropical upland areas of the Atherton Tablelands. CRRP funding ended in 2000 and many of the broad social and production goals set for the program had not been fulfilled due to limited resources and continually changing circumstances (Vanclay 2006a).…”

“…However it has also been argued poor early performance of CRRP plantations can be attributed to poor site species matching, insufficient silvicultural knowledge and inadequate nursery stock (Vanclay 2006a).…”

“…Consecutive measurements of 10 focus tree species in these permanent plots at 52 sites form the basis of the study presented here. Some analysis of CRRP sites has occurred Dickinson et al 2008;Vanclay 2006a) but there has been limited progress in the understanding of how to match species to site. General estimates of growth rates of the study species in the Wet Tropics have been predicted using expert opinion (Herbohn et al 1999;Russell et al 1993) by obtaining intuitive guesses of species-specific rotation times.…”