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Neil Davidson explains forest restoration techniques to
concerned midlands residents
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Neil Davidson and his team (Dr Dugald Close, Dr
Robert Barbour and PhD student, Tanya Bailey) ran a field
day/workshop on native forest restoration at Oatlands on Friday 14
March 2008. The field day outlined techniques that are being used
in restoration of native dry forest in the Midlands. In addition to
fencing, these include patch scale cultivation, scarification,
intense burns, importing of course woody debris, planting and
seeding. The workshop started with an outline of current
understanding of the ecological processes that have been changed in
degraded forest and areas affected by tree decline, based on
previous studies funded by Natural Resource Management South and
the CRC for Forestry. Landowners and government agencies
(Department of Primary Industries and Water and Private Forests
Tasmania) provided valuable input about practical approaches to
applying treatments. Neil and his team will run a similar field day
/ workshops for CRC for Forestry industry partners at the time of
the Annual Meeting in November 2008. This event was hugely popular
with the media, enjoying coverage from the Mercury newspaper
(Thursday 13 March), Southern Cross 6.00 p.m. news (Friday 14
March), commercial FM radio (Friday 14 March), ABC Rural Report
(Tuesday 25 March) and TasCountry newspaper (Thursday 27
March).
