Trees' role in climate change 'unclear'

(AAP) - Trees could hold the key to tackling climate change - but it's not clear whether the planet benefits from leaving them in the ground or chopping them down.

Conservationists and the forestry industry went head-to-head on Tuesday over how Australia's native forests can best be used to fight global warming.

Both sides agree that forests - which consume carbon when they grow - could be
central to Australia's efforts to cut carbon emissions.
Conservationists say native forests should be left in the ground, locking up carbon.
But the industry says logging native forests then replanting them will do more to
fight climate change.
The National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) released a paper saying the
carbon stored in timber plantations could meet 20 per cent of Australia's emissions
reduction target by 2020.
NAFI wants tax breaks for plantations to be expanded, and has backed the federal
government's proposed emissions trading scheme, which excludes emissions from
logging.
NAFI chief executive Allan Hansard said calls by the Greens for native forests to be
locked up to create carbon sinks were misguided.
He said harvesting forests and converting the trees into wood products meant carbon
was still stored. Replanting with more trees would consume carbon - a double benefit
for the environment.
"If you leave trees there for a long period of time you only get the carbon that's
stored in them once," Mr Hansard told AAP.
But Greens leader Bob Brown said NAFI's stance was "snide and deceptive".
He said the climate benefits of creating plantations was "nowhere near the
destruction that NAFI, including (timber giant) Gunns, is wreaking day by day in the
forests of Australia - these great living natural carbon banks".
Senator Brown pointed to new research which shows native forests store three times
as much carbon as previously thought.
The Australian National University research found the eucalypt forests of southeast
Australia - stretching from Queensland through NSW and Victoria and into Tasmania -
store 25.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.
Senator Brown said the research underscored the danger posed by logging in an age of
climate change.
"The destruction of these carbon banks and the wildlife, the rare flora and water
catchments has got to stop," Senator Brown told reporters.
Logging will not be included in emissions trading when it starts in 2010. Private
companies can opt-in for carbon credits when they sow plantations on cleared land,
but a company which logs a forest will not pay under emissions trading.
Senator Brown said the Greens would continue to push for forestry to be included in
emissions trading.