Industry bodies assert SA forestry sector sustainability

Speaking to Engineering News, Pamsa executive director Jane Molony points out that public misperception, not just in South Africa but globally, is one of the biggest challenges facing the forestry and the pulp and paper sectors.

Molony emphasises that the fibre used in paper manufacturing in South Africa is not sourced from the wood of rainforests, indigenous or boreal forests. In addition, she says, the pulp and paper industry alone planted 260 000 trees on a total of 762 000 ha for this purpose. "We do not cut down indigenous trees to produce paper or manufacture furniture," says Forestry SA executive director Michael Peter. "The industry farms timber. And without farmed timber, which equates to 17-million tons a year, South Africa's indigenous forests would have been eliminated by now."

Only matured trees are harvested and replaced by saplings, Peter adds. Young trees are able to store carbon more rapidly than older trees so carbon absorption continues. Deforestation of South Africa's limited indigenous forests has never been nearly as significant as has been seen elsewhere in the world. "This is precisely because the plantation industry was established early on in the country's development to meet our wood and wood-product needs," Peter says, according to Engineering News.

Read the full article on www.engineeringnews.co.za.