<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/19/australia-deforestation-hidden-official-figures-conservationists-report>
"At face value, the amount of forest in Australia is officially increasing, and
has been since 2008.
But if an old-growth tree is felled in a forest and seedlings grow elsewhere,
is the official account ecologically sound? Not according to new analysis,
which suggests that the way Australia calculates forest cover obfuscates the
impacts of ongoing deforestation.
Australia calculates forest cover as a net figure, in which forest losses are
“netted off” against forest gains. That is problematic, according to a report
led by Griffith University’s Climate Action Beacon, because new forests do not
store as much carbon or have the same wildlife benefits as established forests
that are being destroyed.
Prof Brendan Mackey of Griffith University, one of the study’s co-authors,
described measuring forest losses and gains in net terms as “an accounting
sleight of hand”.
“We need to measure gross losses and gains, and collect much better information
about what’s been lost and the regeneration that’s happened, to assess whether
we are meeting our global obligations to climate and ecosystems,” he said.
Australia is a signatory to the Glasgow leaders’ declaration on forests and
land use, made in 2021, which pledges to reverse forest loss and land
degradation.
According to the federal government’s latest
State of the Forests report,
published in 2023, “Australia’s total forest area increased by 0.75 million ha
… from 2016 to 2021, maintaining the increase in total forest area that has
been observed since 2008”.
But the new analysis suggests “there is considerable uncertainty about whether
the reported net increase in forest area in Australia is real”.
It suggests that the official dataset used to estimate increases in forest area
tends to “overreact”, misclassifying areas as experiencing change when none has
occurred.
The research, commissioned and funded by the Australian Conservation Foundation
(ACF), found that most forest destruction has occurred in species-rich forests
while regrowth was mostly in drier regions with sparse vegetation, which are
not comparable carbon sinks.
It estimates that clearing in intensive regions releases up to 120 times more
greenhouse gas emissions per hectare than could be removed from the atmosphere
via the thickening of existing vegetation where most forest gains have
occurred.
“If mapped gains in forest area are not really new forests, just greening or
thickening of existing wooded lands … then Australia’s seemingly positive net
increase in forest cover statistic may be hiding even more substantial losses
to biodiversity and much higher greenhouse gas emissions than claimed,” the
report found."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
