Jamax Forest Solutions

21/04/2026

"Russia (57 million hectares), Brazil (36 million hectares), Canada (34 million hectares), and the United States (23 million hectares) accounted for nearly half of all global forest canopy loss over the decade, with fire-related disturbances dominating in boreal zones including Russia and Canada whilst non-fire causes — industrial logging and agricultural land clearance — driving the bulk of losses across tropical nations including Brazil, the Congo, and Indonesia."

FSC and PEFC alone cannot stop global forest loss — ANU satellite data from 91 countries finds no link between certification and reduced deforestation rates.

21/04/2026

New study shows 42 million people worldwide work in forestry

Forests employ approximately 42 million people worldwide, with women accounting for one quarter of the workforce, according to new research from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Thünen Institute of Forestry. Source: Timberbiz

Updated methodology to quantify forest-sector employment: Global and regional estimates presents fresh estimates that help close critical data gaps in global and regional forest-sector employment between 2011 and 2022.

The joint paper draws on annual data for the sector and its subsectors for 182 countries, representing 99% of the world’s forest area.

The study also presents the first global sex-disaggregated employment estimates for the forest sector, revealing that women account for nearly 10.6 million jobs, or 25% of forest-sector employment, and highlighting persistent disparities between women and men across regions.

The widest disparity was found in Europe, where 1.8% of men and only 0.5% of women were employed in the forest sector in 2022. By contrast, these disparities were narrower in Africa, the Americas and Asia.

“To help build a more sustainable and resilient forest sector, we need a clear picture of who works in our forests, and that starts with sex-disaggregated data,” said Zhimin Wu, FAO Assistant Director-General and Forestry Division Director. “Internationally comparable data on employment in the sector is essential for creating policies that protect both people and forests.”

The forest sector contributes to national economies and sustainable development by creating jobs, generating economic value and supporting environmental sustainability.

Building on earlier joint work, FAO, ILO and the Thünen Institute of Forestry have developed a new methodology – the Forest EMployment (FEM) model – to improve the availability and consistency of forest-sector employment data. The model generates annual, sex‑disaggregated estimates for the forest sector and its subsectors, providing more robust evidence base for policy and analysis.

The study estimates that the forest sector employed at least 42 million people worldwide in 2022, around 1.2% of total employment, epresenting a decline of approximately 3.1% compared with 2011.

Asia continues to account for the largest share of forest-sector employment in total employment (around 1.4%). In Europe, the share declined slightly, from 1.3% in 2011 to 1.2% in 2022. Africa saw fluctuations – starting at 1.2% in 2011, peaking in 2016, and decreasing to 1.0% by 2022, while employment levels in the Americas remained relatively stable at around 0.8%, with minor fluctuations following the COVID‑19 pandemic.

Across the sector, wood and wood product manufacturing remains the largest source of employment, accounting for approximately 58% of total forest employment, followed by forestry and logging, and pulp and paper manufacturing.

The FEM model was developed in the context of FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2025, with the assistance of the European Union.

Compared with previous estimates, the FEM model introduces several methodological improvements, including annual estimates instead of three-year intervals, and the use of country‑specific socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, labour‑market indicators and forest‑sector variables to estimate missing data.

21/04/2026

“Australia is great at making its own future precisely because, where possible, it has exercised strategic self-sufficiency. What could be more strategic than growing the fibre and turning it into the dwellings we need, to sustain our own population?”

Australia spent $3.011 billion importing wood products in 2025. China supplied 44pc. New ABS data ranks the top ten source nations and the product categories exposing Australia's sovereign manufacturing gap.

21/04/2026

Courtesy of the Port Macquarie News of the Area

21/04/2026

"The problem isn’t a shortage of trees, it’s an overabundance of koalas.

"The problem is not a conservation problem but an animal welfare problem. Diseased, wasted and seriously injured koalas should be euthanised. Instead millions of dollars are spent researching diseases that are consequent to overcrowding. Frequent mild burning should be re-introduced in forests to improve their health, reduce their carrying capacity for koalas and restore their ability to support truly endangered wildlife requiring open sunny habitat, for example Hastings River mouse, broad-headed snake, Imlay Mallee."

Landline’s segment about koalas last Sunday, Need for Trees: Charity plants half-a-million trees to help save koalas - ABC News would have been better directed at the need for common sense.

21/04/2026

Updates to the proposed koala park boundary

The NSW Government has updated the proposed boundary for the Great Koala National Park. The proposed park now includes areas of native forest, isolated plantations without practical access and existing conservation areas such as flora reserves to maintain and enhance the overall conservation footprint. Source: Timberbiz

The government says that now the refined boundary supports effective long-term management, makes park operations simpler, and strengthens protection for koalas and other native and threatened species.

The NSW Government has kept small buffers of native state forest outside the proposed park boundary where those buffers are needed for safe plantation access and operations. These buffers will be permanently placed in non-harvest zones, ensuring they will not be harvested in the future.

The NSW Government says it may need to make further minor refinements to the boundary before the park is finalised.

The final creation of the park is dependent on the successful registration of a carbon project under the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) Method, which is currently moving through the federal government assessment processes.

The NSW Government committed $80 million in the 2023–24 State Budget to support the development of the Great Koala National Park. An additional $60 million in funding has also been announced for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to support the establishment of the park.

This is in addition to worker support and industry compensation.

You can download the map of the refined boundary for the proposed Great Koala National Park athttps://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-02/great-koala-national-park-proposed-refined-boundary-map.pdf

21/04/2026

Australia is importing its timber needs, but exporting its emissions

Minister Chris Bowen's 2026-27 Safeguard reform inherits Professor Frank Jotzo's Carbon Leakage Review — but the $3B Russian-fibre-via-China LVL trade goes uncounted.

21/04/2026

Auditor-General: Victoria’s Timber Shutdown Leaves Regions Worse Off

Victorian Auditor-General finds 137 reported new jobs cannot be substantiated, most displaced workers pushed into casual roles - and no plan to manage impacts beyond June 2026.

The Victorian Government cannot demonstrate whether Gippsland timber workers are better off after the $1.5 billion closure of the state’s native forest industry, with most displaced workers pushed from full-time employment into casual and insecure roles. That is according to the Victorian Auditor-...

21/04/2026

We CAN see the forest through the trees.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

17/04/2026

The forests & bushfire conversation must stay grounded in evidence

There is no simple solution or single practice that can eliminate fire risk on its own, writes Dr Shaun Suitor. Recent commentary on bushfire behaviour in Tasmania’s forests has drawn heavily on a new study by Professor David Bowman examining how wildfire interacts with regrowth and mature eucalypt forests.

As someone working in the forest science space, I welcome both the scrutiny and the debate. Bushfire is a serious risk in Tasmania, and it is right that new research is examined carefully. At the same time, it is important that individual studies are interpreted accurately, and in the broader context of what we already know about fire, landscapes and a rapidly changing climate.

The study analysed the 2019 Riveaux Rd bushfire in southern Tasmania, using detailed pre-and post-fire data to examine how fire behaved across a mixed-landscape of mature forest and regrowth following harvesting. Under the moderate fire weather conditions experienced during that event, regrowth forests burned, on average, at higher local severity than adjacent mature forests.

That finding is not surprising, nor should it be dismissed. Forest scientists and land managers, including Sustainable Timber Tasmania, have long recognised that younger regrowth can contain denser lower canopies and more continuous “ladder fuels”, which can influence how fire moves vertically through a forest under certain conditions – acknowledging that reality is an important part of responsible forest management.

One needs to be careful not to conflate this site-specific result with a general explanation for large bushfires. Crucially, the research does not support the claim that forestry causes megafires, nor that regrowth forests, in themselves, drive bushfire spread at the landscape scale.

A substantial body of peer reviewed research, including work by Prof Bowman and colleagues, demonstrates that while some regrowth areas can experience higher fire severity under certain conditions, regrowth forests do not increase fire contagion, do not increase fire spread, and are not associated with elevated landscape scale bushfire risk, particularly where regrowth occurs as patches embedded within a broader matrix of mature forest.

These most recent findings are consistent with Bowman et al’s 2022 analysis of the 2019-20 Black Summer fires, which concluded that extreme fire weather overwhelmingly overrides disturbance history, including harvesting, when large and severe bushfires occur.

The Bowman study adds valuable insight into how forest structure can influence fire severity under particular conditions. But it does not support claims that forestry is the dominant driver of landscape-scale fire risk.

It is acknowledged that all forest types, whether in production forest areas or reserves such as National Parks, are increasingly exposed to bushfire risk under a changing climate. For this reason, fire risk requires active, evidence-based management across the landscape, regardless of forest age or land use.

https://assets.sttas.com.au/uploads/2026/04/Grounding-the-bushfire-debate-in-evidence.pdf

You can also listen to the interview https://app.mediaportal.com/isentia/ #/playnow/v2?id=R00131753355

Source & image credit: Sustainable Timber Tasmania (The Mercury)

17/04/2026

Trees making music in Argentina for a lost love

A man from Argentina planted a guitar-shaped forest of 7,000 trees, and more than one kilometre in length, in memory of his wife Graciela Yraizoz who loved music. Estancia La Guitarra (The Guitar Farm) is in Argentina. Source: Timberbiz.

This outstanding and unusual tree sculpture was planted by Pedro Martin Ureta back in 1979 using more than 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees forming a guitar 1100 metres long and 400 metres wide which is best viewed from the air.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IkOGwec1wQ

14/04/2026

Awesome