Pine management, log quality, classification and specification ?

Bitter negotiations

Auspine's state manager Geoff Campbell said that the standoff involved many more factors than price -- including log quality, classification and specification.

Read the story here:
http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,19452900%255E3462,00.html

Now the logical questions that could be asked: "Has Forestry Tasmania managed the publicly owned Pine plantation resource in a sustainable way?"
Who was, and / or who is the responsible commercial manager(s) for the situation?
Who will take the blame among the expert staff in Forestry Tasmania? "

As I think about my time as the Forest Industries Training Officer, from late 1987 to mid 1989, I can still recall that at the time quite a lot of the harvestable pine trees in North East Tasmania where up to one metre in diameter at the base.
What is the final average log diameter, and numbers of sawlogs per hectare at final harvest cut nowadays?

As a forester and sawmiller, I can compare the value recovery of net sawn wood between large diameter and smaller diameter logs.
It seems that this terrible dispute between our state owned plantation resource manager, first of all Evan Rolley's Forestry Tasmania and the biggest Pine sawmilling company in this state, is clearly not just simply about a fair price per cubic meter of logs.

It appears that the dispute goes a lot further into technical and silvicultural issues, thus the commercial uncertainties seem to be also about
less numbers of logs available ,
less numbers of area of "mature" pine trees,
less recovery of quality timber per individual log,
less recovery of sawn wood per hectare of plantation, etc.

The smaller a sawlog is, desto higher the net costs per cubic meter of quality sawn timber.
Simply speaking, the higher the ratio of early growth (large growth rings) within a log, desto weaker the timber that can be sawn from it.

This is not rocket science, but based on proper understanding of forestry, silviculture and timber technology.

Surely the Tasmanian public can expect that the often called "world's best practice planation and forest managers, second to none" have proper records and book keeping data to hand, information that can be used to find out the actual amount, volume and quality of sawlogs per hectare grown, harvested and sold since ( let's just say) 1987, 1992, 1997, 2002, and the forecast for next financial year!?
Also the amount of pulp logs, residue, etc.
If not, than this case could be a serious matter to be investigated and should be assessed against other forestry agencies around the world.
So much for now.