PFT's Annual Report now available

Posted 27 October 2022

Timber Economics PFT

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Private Forests Tasmania is pleased to present the 2021-22 Annual Report, officially tabled in Parliament on October 27 by Minister for Resources, Felix Ellis.

This year has seen the development of a new three-year strategic plan for Private Forests Tasmania with refreshed goals and strategies to reflect the changing priorities and challenges facing the private forest sector.

Developed through extensive consultation with private forestry stakeholders, our four key strategic goals include:

1. Working creatively and collaboratively with partners and stakeholders to improve private native and plantation forestry commercial wood supply and carbon outcomes.
2. Effectively communicating the benefits of private native and plantation forestry as an integral part of Tasmania’s agricultural growth strategies.
3. Working with government policy makers and regulators at local, state, and national levels to improve regulatory efficiency and practical policy settings for private native and plantation forestry.
4. Building organisational capacity by developing our people, knowledge, safety, systems, culture and funding resources.

The annual report outlines PFT’s achievement in each of these areas throughout 2021-22.

Six priority projects were identified and are reported on in detail in this annual report, which will continue into the next reporting period.

Priorities were particularly focused on alleviating Tasmania’s wood supply shortages with a major focus on our Tree Alliance marketing campaign to develop partnerships and alliances to educate, encourage and facilitate integration of commercially viable trees into the Tasmanian agricultural landscape. This long-term strategy aims to grow our future economy and ecology through trees.

Through joint state and federal funding, PFT has developed and executed its second round of demonstration sites - our Trees on Farms program, adding a further eight properties to the seven sites established in 2020-21, which will result in an additional 329 hectares of mixed shelterbelts and woodlots established throughout the state.

The private forest harvest reports 3.88 million tonnes of logs to market from the privately owned forest estate, an increase of 0.41 million tonnes which made up 73.6 per cent by volume of the state’s total production.

PFT looks forward to continuing to deliver on our statutory objectives and assist the sector in expanding and developing the private forest resource in Tasmania in the 2022-23 financial year.