Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00270:body:0:p41
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00270
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 112263–115179

Historical timber harvesting
Note that timber harvesting on state land by the Victorian government will cease 1 January 2024. Coverage is now restricted to past and legacy impacts of historical harvesting.
Timber harvesting has reduced habitat suitability, extent and connectivity in Leadbeater's possum's montane ash forest environments, but does not occur in the far smaller areas of sub-alpine (snow gum) woodland or lowland swamp forest habitat.
A total of approximately 38,000 ha of montane ash forest was harvested in the Central Highlands from 1978 to 2016, when clear-felling became the predominant form of harvesting. Clear-felling is a method of harvesting in which all merchantable trees, apart from those to be retained for wildlife habitat or other values (for example, water quality), in a defined coupe area are removed in a single operation (Department of Environment and Primary Industries 2014a).
The remaining debris was burnt to provide a seedbed to regenerate the new stand of trees. This creates an even-aged area of forest with few or no hollow-bearing trees within the harvested part of the coupe. Leadbeater's possums do not occur in recently clear-felled areas (Lindenmayer et al. 2015b), and are unlikely to occur in these areas for approximately 10 years after harvesting. As the habitat regenerates, Leadbeater's possums can use this harvesting regrowth as foraging habitat (Smith and Lindenmayer 1992; Nelson et al. 2015; Keith et al. 2016; Nelson et al. 2017) if there are suitable nesting sites nearby.
Since 2014, VicForests undertook 'regrowth retention harvesting' (VicForests 2019), which aimed to increase the amount of retained habitat within the coupe by retaining clusters of trees as habitat islands or peninsulas, and was designed to retain stands of trees able to continue to grow on and in time form hollows and Leadbeater's possum habitat.
Not all areas were harvested, with on average approximately 32% of the coupe left unharvested (data from VicForests in 2014 to 2015), due to a range of features, including streamside reserves, steep areas, Leadbeater's possum Zone 1 habitat and aggregated retention areas. These areas retain some older forest, and can allow younger forest to mature. Post-harvesting regeneration that was surrounded by sufficient retained (older) habitat to support colonies could then form a landscape-scale spatial mosaic of age classes providing older forest for nesting and dense young forest for foraging.
The majority of the recent timber harvesting in Central Highland ash forests occurred in areas that regenerated after the 1939 bushfires, with small amounts from stands resulting from fires between 1900 and 1938. These forests are classified as regrowth forests and regenerating trees in them have typically not yet formed hollows.
Thinning of younger regrowth forests (typically 18–30 years old) occurred in some areas, with the aim of