Native Forest Harvesting - Native Forest Stand Management Guide - No 5

The harvest of a native forest is one of the most significant events within a timber stand’s management cycle. Harvesting, after the many years of managing the forest using fire, thinning and other forest management activities is the culmination of the forest management cycle but unfortunately is frequently not treated as such.
Forest Harvesting is often seen as an opportunity to cash in on accumulated forest growth when farm cash flow needs to be boosted, rather then the ultimate forest management tool. This form of harvest usually results in the removal of most of the trees that can make a product, regardless of a trees potential to grow on and produce a higher value return, or the considerations for the future productivity of the forest. Selection of trees to be retained after the harvest is critical to the stands future productivity and has obvious long term implications for the future of the forest. It is nonsensical to have gone through management over many years, simply to asset strip the forest, particularly when many of the products have not reached their optimum size. With this in mind, harvest should be regarded as the pinnacle activity of all forest management.
Harvest operations generate capital which in turn provides the landowner the opportunity to re-invest in the management and long term health and viability of the future forest. A re-investment of a small percentage of the harvest return in critical follow-up management has major implications on future productivity of the stand. Post-harvest management includes the removal of non productive or damaged trees, ensuring quality regeneration, fuel reduction burns and general maintenance of tracks and log dumps. The investment will be returned many times over at the next harvest.
Planned and well managed forest harvesting requires an understanding of the stand to be harvested, its condition, likely product range and who will purchase them, access and landscape constraints and who will ultimately mange and undertake the harvest. There are pitfalls that the landowner should be aware of in the planning and subsequent harvest operation. There are many stories of landowners being short changed, taken advantage of or left with a forest in a very poor condition for future productivity, basically due to the fact that they did not know, what they did not know.
Interpreting forest condition, the importance of understanding product specification and the hierarchy of values and the optimal harvest scenario are highlighted within this guide for the purpose of raising landowner awareness of the benefits of Forest management planning, particularly in the lead up to a harvest.

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