The future of forests

Shortly after Black Saturday, David Lindenmayer was giving a seminar on post-bushfire recovery when a member of the audience yelled out, ‘If it wasn’t for you greenies, none of this would have happened.’ Lindenmayer’s response was neither defence nor attack, but rather to rephrase the man’s words. ‘Your hypothesis,’ he said, ‘is that a fire in a forest that is logged and regenerated will be less severe than a fire in an intact forest.’ Many years of research followed this heckle. The result? A counter-intuitive finding that fire severity increases in logged forests.

This anecdote, recounted in Lindenmayer’s latest book, goes to the heart of his character: a philomath inspired to ask questions; a tireless ecologist who has explored and worked in the same forests for more than forty years. But there is a second Lindenmayer, a more recent creation: an accidental celebrity who has become increasingly outspoken as his detractors have escalated their attacks. It would, as he once said in an interview for the Wonderground journal, be morally irresponsible if he did not communicate what he has learned.

For those researching Lindenmayer online, it can be hard to sift through the rubble of brickbats and sensational headlines and find the scientific work that makes Lindenmayer one of the world’s most oft-cited scientists. For this reason, The Forest Wars is a necessary compendium, a summation of four decades’ worth of research against the backdrop of a rapidly changing industry. Indeed, the timing of this book could not be more opportune. Shortly after Lindenmayer finished the first draft, the Victorian government announced that the cessation of native logging was to be brought forward from 2030 to 2024.