annual report 2011 - Forestry Tasmania

BIOLOGY AND CONSERVATION
Biology and Conservation - Key research and development projects
Sustainable Forest Management FT Staff and Project name and aims 2010-2011 Progress
Objective
Collaborators
1. Sustaining biodiversity and habitat
1.1 Reserve system
Maintain a reserve system in State
forests in accordance with the
Regional Forest Agreement and
Tasmanian Community Forest
Agreement.
Work with other forest managers
to maintain Tasmania’s
comprehensive, adequate and
representative (CAR) reserve
system.
S Grove
T Wardlaw
A Hingston
S Read
J Hickey
M Yee
R Gao
Collaborators
University of
Tasmania,
DSE, Victoria,
NSW DPI,
DEC, WA,
FPA
Effectiveness of CAR Reserves
Quantify the contribution of CAR reserves and
complimentary off-reserve management to
the conservation of biodiversity dependent
on mature forest habitats in production forest
landscapes across the continuum of forest
management intensity.
Documented the variation in coarse woody debris of mature forest and
older silvicultural regeneration in terms of landscape context and the
landscape prior to modern forestry.
Completed second summer / autumn of surveys for birds and beetles
(flighted and ground-active) in SFEFL.
Assembled a comprehensive set of site and landscape-level independent
variables to use in analyses testing the responses of birds, beetles and
vascular plants to attributes of site and landscape.
Analysed and documented the response of vascular plants in mature and
older silvicultural regeneration to landscape context and other attributes of
site and landscape.
1.3 Threatened species,
communities and habitats
Maintain viable populations of all
existing animal and plant species
and communities found in State
forests.
S Grove
T Wardlaw
L Stamm
Collaborators
CRC Forestry,
University of
Tasmania
Coarse woody debris
Prescriptions to apply to integrated harvesting
operations in wet eucalypt forests, which can be
demonstrated to sustain coarse woody debris
(CWD) habitat and its dependent biota.
Write-up of FT-funded PhD (Belinda Yaxley) on the autecology of selected
saproxylic beetles has progressed and is nearing completion.
Analysed Lee Stamm’s decay data (from Hons thesis) to test the validity of
FT’s log decay-class classification. Resultant paper published in FEM.
Paper resulting from Belinda Browsing’s MSc studies on bryophyte
succession in CBS and on logs as they progress through decay stages
published in Forest Ecology and Management.
S Grove
Collaborators
University of
Tasmania
Log decay
Develop ecologically sustainable management
practices in relation to biota dependent upon the
decaying log and mature timber habitat.
Analysed and documented changes in saproxylic beetle fauna during the
first 10 years of the succession in mature and regrowth logs. Two papers
published.
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