Benefits

Benefits

Forests represent diverse ecosystems that provide timber, aesthetic and cultural heritage, sequester carbon and maintain air, soil and water resources.

The reforestation was conducted as a private initiative before carbon farming or biodiversity incentives were conceived. Planting trees across the site aimed to create a new habitat suited to the terrain that could provide environmental and aesthetic benefits to the region. The small plantation area was initially part of a State Government program based on owner financial inputs that aimed to stimulate self-supporting enterprises. Expectations of the development of sustainable commercial operations around such plantations were not realised in subsequent policy directions.

In lieu of expected commercial outcomes to underwrite part of the reforestation costs, the private forest is now managed for a longer-term option of environmental and aesthetic benefits with provision for minor use of wood. Conversion of the plantation is an ongoing process that envisions a corridor for wildlife migration if small parts of adjoining degraded lands are one day rehabilitated to link to the Mt Piper Nature Conservation Reserve. As the wider region is expected to come under increasing urban development pressure, it is envisaged that the forest and agricultural areas will remain as an essential greenbelt and wildlife haven.

The ecological benefits that forests provide can be metaphorically anthropomorphised under such titles as the social life of forests. The ecosystems of which forests are part underpin essential life elements on which we all rely. While it is common to refer to forests producing oxygen and even removing pollutants and so supporting human health, wider benefits accrue from the forest ecosystem, which in fact might just as well be called a microorganism ecosystem. Mycorrhiza assist in nutrient and water uptake by tree roots that in turn supply sugars to the mycorrhiza. Other plants fungi and animals also interact in the ecosystem with transfer of carbon between species. Most are invisible to the eye although diverse fungi are also evident above ground, and wildlife abound in Falvey Forest. 

As we discover more about trees, we find further diverse interactions, such as the implication that tree bark hosts trillions of microbes that remove climate-active gases of methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  Natural interdependence like this has long been appreciated in philosophy and science. It is not necessary to claim it all as a new discovery or to ascribe perceptive emotions to trees or to exaggerate the importance of such symbiosis. Perhaps it is sufficient to accept that romantic notions about forests support re-plantings such as Falvey Forest, among the many reasons for why trees are important .