Strategies to promote private timber production

Summary This paper presents some preliminary ideas on the present position of private forestry in Australia. The broad term, private forestry, is disaggregated down into various components, to determine what is being done in each and by whom, the kinds of assistance available and from whom, and the major incentives and disincentives. Six groups of private forest owners are identified, each motivated by different objectives and with different available resources. We suggest though, that despite a plethora of incentive schemes, relatively little effort is put into assistance for anything but ‘core forestry’ Core forestry is what State forest services concentrate on—industrial plantations and managing native forests primarily for wood production, with hired or contracted labour and management. We suggest that incentive schemes designed to promote private forestry have often not addressed real constraints because they were never designed from the roots up, with the client—a prospective forest owner—in mind. They have rarely been specifically targeted and incentives offered are generally what was easiest or most familiar to core forestry. We conclude that so-called forestry incentive schemes for commercial wood production will continue to be ineffective unless they are specifically matched to the specific needs and resources of target groups of current and prospective forest owners, particularly in the area of marketing log output. Any schemes which are proposed and justified, should be designed from the client up. rather than from the head office down, because the needs of the forest owner, e.g. diversity and flexibility, are often divergent from the preference of the administrator, e.g. a single blueprint.