What is regenerative forestry?
Plantations can be more than a carbon sink, or a source of wood or capital for private gain. Hardwood plantations actively managed for timber production become more like natural forests over time. These assets can be managed to support biodiversity while generating a permanent supply of renewable wood, timber and bioenergy products that help sustain local communities.
Adapting to climate change demands land-use change, and in some great part - this means trees. By framing plantations as forests in the making, we offer a business-case with inherent incentives for communities, landowners and investors to establish new commercial-scale forestry assets.
The problem
Threats to the natural environment include decline of biologically diverse ecosystems, climate change and salinity, as well as degraded evapotranspiration and hydrological cycles. These impacts make our communities vulnerable to a range of impacts with concerning implications.
In addition to these challenges, the sawlog timber industry, which exploits native forests and woodlands, is under significant pressure and in large parts of the country has been scheduled for complete cessation. Logically, there is a renewed focus on facilitating and funding the development of new plantations as both a natural climate solution and an alternative source of renewable timber products.
Regen Forestry - Part of the solution
Regenerative Forestry describes the strategic silvicultural management practices and interventions that can be used to create functional-forests and help asset owners realise additional private value and public benefit from forest assets.
Commercial plantation trees provide biological infrastructure and shelter as well as an in situ source of biomass. The selective harvesting and strategic promotion of individual trees allows resources to be redistributed, creates structural heterogeneity and an opportunity to kick-start biological activity and diversity. This can include the facilitation of an under-storey to boost habitat value.
With over 60 years combined experience at the intersection of forestry and ecology, wood4good has developed a set of regenerative forestry silvicultural principles and practices designed to:
Provide net-benefits for nature & biodiversity
Restore carbon & water cycles
Generate products & enterprise opportunities
Displace and substitute unsustainable resource consumption
Mitigate climate change & deliver climate adaptation
Produce high-value, carbon positive firewood & durable native forest products
Impact
Regenerative forestry can help build links between wood-users and land holders to deliver ecologically beneficial land uses. This brings flows of wood, timber and other forest products into a market in which demand outstrips supply. These timber products perform better than the minimum standards set out in current industry standards and certification schemes.
In addition to net gains in biodiversity and ecosystem co-benefits within regenerative forestry assets, development of such assets and associated timber products releases pressure on endangered ecosystems displacing products from both mandated and illegal extraction.