Forest Products Industry

Across the country, self-seeding “wilding conifers” are spreading beyond managed forests, taking over open land, and by the government’s own assessment, cutting into water supplies in sensitive catchments. Source: Techy44 That is why this is no longer just a forestry story. It is a water story, an energy story, and a public spending story, too. The numbers help explain the urgency. New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries says wilding conifers now affect more than 2 million hectares. Before the national control program was created, they were spreading across about 90,000 hectares a year, and the ministry estimates that as much as a quarter of the country could be covered within 30 years if the spread is left unchecked. That is a huge shift for landscapes that were never meant to become pine thickets. And what happens when those trees move into the wrong place? Less water, for the most part. A 2022 cost-benefit analysis tied to the national control effort says wilding conifers reduce surface flows and aquifer recharge in water sensitive catchments. It cites catchment studies showing annual surface water yields falling by 30% to 81% when pasture is replaced by radiata pine forest, and notes one study that found a 40% drop in mean annual flow when two-thirds of an experimental catchment was planted within pines. In practical terms, that can mean less water reaching rivers, reservoirs, irrigation systems, and hydro plants. Why hydroelectric power is part of the problem. That last point matters more than it may seem. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has warned that wildings spreading into hydro lake catchments can reduce water yields, and in turn, dam generating capacity. So yes, this reaches beyond remote hillsides and into the power system people depend on every month when the electric bill lands. New Zealand’s wilding conifer control program now costs millions. New Zealand has responded with a large, long-term control effort. MPI says that from July 2020 to June 2021, the program and its partners spent almost NZ$40 million (USD $23.45 million) on control work across 817,000 hectares. In its latest official update, the government said it has invested more than NZ$150 million (USD $88 million) in the National Wilding Conifer Control Programme since 2016, with more than NZ$33 million (USD $19.35 million) added by partners and communities. Ministers have described the trees as a threat to farmland, water catchments, native biodiversity, and wildfire resilience. That is the real takeaway here. What was once sold as useful planting now comes with a national cleanup bill.  

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In February, mining company Alcoa was hit with a $55 million penalty for illegally clearing about 2,000 hectares of WA’s Northern Jarrah Forest. About $40 million was earmarked for so-called “permanent ecological offsets,” for Alcoa to repair the damage in terms of ecology lost. Source: PhysOrg In the same breath as imposing the fine, Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt also granted Alcoa an exemption. This exemption allows Alcoa to continue mining for at least 18 months as Watt mulls a proposal to extend the company’s mining operations until 2045. This decision may rest on a critical minerals deal struck between Australia and the US last year. The Northern Jarrah Forest is a subregion in the sprawling jarrah forest bioregion, located south and east of Perth. Jarrah trees (Eucalyptus marginata) known in Noongar as djarraly, are tall, straight-growing trees whose timber has historically been in high demand. The South West of WA is the only place on Earth that plays host to the jarrah forest ecosystem, which was ostensibly protected when the WA Government banned commercial native forest logging in 2024. For at least 60 years, Alcoa has mined the vast layer of bauxite that stretches beneath the forest, clearing an estimated 28,000 hectares out of the roughly 1.8-million-hectare region. Bauxite is a reddish, clay-like rock with a high aluminum content. It is refined into a white alumina powder then smelted into solid aluminum metal. Australia is the world’s second major producer and biggest exporter of alumina. Demand for aluminum is rising, in part for its use in “green technology,” including electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure. The World Economic Forum predicts demand to increase by 40% by 2030. While Alcoa is required to restore any land it clears, a 2024 study found that cleared jarrah forest sites were not being rehabilitated to their pre-mining state. The problem is, there are two giants competing for this landscape, the mining company and the sprawling old-growth forest that grows atop it, as Kingsley Dixon points out. Dixon is a botanist at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He believes the multilayered bauxite deposits structure the ground, aiding water retention, which the northern jarrah forest has evolved to exploit. “It’s a geological relationship between the forest and the bauxite,” says Dixon. “You’re fundamentally removing the very substrate that’s created this extraordinary forest.” However, the science behind how bauxite and jarrah trees in this region support one another has not been extensively studied. Jarrah trees are slow growing, meaning they recover on scales of centuries, not decades. Professor Stephen Hopper, a botanist and conservation biologist at UWA, says that the many other plant and animal species beneath the jarrah canopy also need to recover or the whole ecosystem crumbles. “As with all Mediterranean climate areas, it’s really the shrub layer, the plants that are below the canopy, that are incredibly diverse,” says Hopper. “There are complications with trying to get stuff like that back into the landscape.” In 2023, a group of scientists released a statement with more than 150 signatories calling for a total halt to mining operations in the Northern Jarrah Forest. They warned of a potential “extinction catastrophe.” The Northern Jarrah Forest is among the most biodiverse temperate forests on Earth, with more than 800 native plant species and at least 10 endangered animal species. The South West global biodiversity hotspot—of which the Northern Jarrah is a part—boasts more than 8,000 species. Around 80% of these aren’t found anywhere else on Earth, including the critically endangered Baudin’s cockatoo, the western quoll and several rare orchid species. Alarmingly, Hopper says that about two-thirds of the threatened plant and animal species in this bioregion live in the uplands, which is where bauxite mining tends to happen. “Bauxite is deepest and richest in the remnant fragments that are highest in the landscape,” says Hopper. “The notion of extending the mining leases to take out substantial further areas without having a clear biological understanding of how to care for this stuff is of concern.”  

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Forest Growers Research has announced the first commercial licence from its Precision Silviculture Program, with Interpine launching TreeTools, a new platform that uses LiDAR and drone imagery to help forest managers assess thinning quality faster and at greater scale. Source: Timberbiz The commercial licence is the first to be delivered through the programme, which is supported by a Primary Sector Growth Fund partnership between MPI and the forest industry. The launch marks a shift from research trial to commercial deployment of technology designed to solve one of forestry’s persistent challenges, helping forest managers check whether thinning work has achieved the right stocking levels without relying solely on field crews manually measuring trees on site. Claire Stewart, Precision Silviculture Programme Manager, says TreeTools can reduce the need for extensive fieldwork, potentially lowering costs, improving consistency, and enabling faster decision‑making after thinning operations. “TreeTools brings Interpine’s remote-sensing capability into two online tools: SilvaCloud, which analyses LiDAR data to count trees and assess stocking across forest blocks, and VirtualPlot, which uses drone imagery to estimate post-thin stocking,” she said. Ms Stewart says confidence in the quality of the data is critical for foresters. “The testing showed TreeTools can produce stocking results that closely align with field measurements, while reducing the time and cost involved in checking every block on the ground. That means crews can focus field effort where it is most needed. “The platform was tested against traditional field-based assessments, with drone and LiDAR results aligning within ±5 per cent of manual measurements,” she said. “The sector needs tools that improve consistency, reduce avoidable cost, and help managers make decisions sooner. TreeTools is a tangible step in that direction.” TreeTools is available now at www.treetools.ai with further development underway for regeneration assessment, chemical thinning, and other silviculture activities.

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Eucalyptus bark, usually stripped from logs and treated as waste, could be repurposed to help clean polluted water, filter dirty air and capture carbon dioxide, according to new research from RMIT University. Source: Timberbiz Researchers at RMIT have shown the bark can be converted into a highly porous form of carbon that traps pollutants as water or air flows through it. The findings point to a practical way of turning a common forestry by product into a useful environmental material using a relatively simple processing method. Porous carbon materials are already widely used in water filters, air purifiers and industrial gas treatment systems. Their effectiveness comes from their structure rather than the source material itself. These materials contain a network of microscopic pores. As air or water passes through, unwanted molecules are captured and held within the tiny spaces. PhD researcher Pallavi Saini, who led much of the experimental work, said the performance of eucalyptus bark was unexpected. “It is usually treated as low value waste, but with a simple process we were able to convert it into a highly porous material with strong adsorption performance,” Ms Saini said. “It highlights how overlooked biomass can be transformed into something useful.” In the study, the researchers used a relatively simple, one step activation process to produce porous carbon from eucalyptus bark. While similar approaches have been explored using other biomass sources, many porous carbons are still produced through more complex, multistage routes that require additional energy and infrastructure. Plant-waste based carbons are being studied worldwide using feedstocks ranging from agricultural residues to forestry and industrial waste. These materials are typically assessed based on availability, sustainability, processing complexity and performance. Dr Deshetti Jampaiah said eucalyptus bark compared favourably on several of these measures, particularly in Australia. “The strength of this approach lies in its simplicity,” Mr Jampaiah said. “We are converting a widely available waste material into a functional carbon with promising performance, without relying on complex processing steps. That makes it highly relevant for real world environmental applications.” Australia is home to more than 900 species of eucalypt and related trees. As a next step, the researchers plan to work with Indigenous people and organisations with deep knowledge of eucalyptus species to help identify which species may be best suited for this type of application. The team says there is potential to further optimise the material by understanding species specific chemical and structural characteristics, guided by both scientific analysis and long-standing ecological knowledge. Any future work would be undertaken through genuine, respectful collaboration. Because the bark comes from existing forestry operations, it does not compete with food production and aligns with circular economy and waste reduction goals. Materials like this are already being explored internationally for a range of environmental applications. In time, eucalyptus bark derived porous carbon could potentially support: water purification, including treatment of contaminated groundwater and wastewater air and industrial gas filtration point of use filtration systems in regional and remote communities carbon dioxide capture, where pore structure, regeneration and material cost are critical considerations Any real-world use would depend on further work to assess durability, regeneration, scale up and performance in operating systems. Distinguished Professor Suresh Bhargava AM said the research demonstrated how waste materials could be re imagined as part of environmental solutions. “This work shows how eucalyptus bark can be transformed into materials that support cleaner water, cleaner air and carbon capture,” said Bhargava, Director of the Centre for Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry (CAMIC) at RMIT. “At CAMIC, we combine circular economy innovation with real societal impact, while mentoring the next generation of researchers to ensure the work remains purposeful.” ‘Sustainable valorisation of eucalyptus bark waste into microporous carbon materials for efficient CO₂ capture’ is published in the international journal Biomass and Bioenergy (DOI: 10.1016/j.biombioe.2026.109242).

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