Objective knowledge, ideology and the forests of Western Australia

Summary The thesis that Western Australia's forests are managed according to a set of biological principles is defended, both by enlarging on the evidence already presented and by providing additional evidence. A paper by Calver et al. (1996), critical of Abbott and Christensen (1994), is flawed factually and logically, and purports to justify with scientific data a personal ethical belief that forest management irrevocably damages the environment. They fail to address, with objective knowledge, the key issue of our 1994 paper: forests can be logged sustainably, i.e. while still retaining the species and processes of the forest ecosystem essentially intact.