With the state’s forestry industry in the spotlight, State Affairs reporter Phil Beck talks with a logging contractor and a traditional bushman who rely on the forests for their living.
As a logging contractor for more than 40 years, Tony Bennett could write several books on what he knows about our forests.

With his brother Baden, he began cutting timber for the apple industry and then sawlogs for the Risby Brothers sawmill.

He knows the southern forests like t.h0 back of his hand and firmly believes it’s the contractors and foresters who are the real conservationists.
‘I’m afraid the Greens want the boundaries of the World Heritage Area to start at the end of Davey St,” says Bennett.

“They just don’t understand what the forests are really about. We try to tell them where they are wrong but they just don’t want to listen.
“Their biggest misconception is
that trees live forever. They don’t ane if you don’t harvest them when they’re ready, you are just going to lose them.”
To back up his argument, he points to an untouched area of old growth forest just a kilometre from where his sons are harvesting 40ha of mixed forest in the Esperance Valley.

“As you can see, it’s full of dead trees,” he says. When he first began logging, t]1(‘ policy was to “take the best and leave the rest”.
It was a policy which Bennett says just didn’t work because many felled trees turned out to be rotten and were simply left on the forest floor; the modern practice of clearing a coupe. burning it and replanting it with seeds taken from the harvested trees ensures there will be a healthy forest for future generations to enjoy.

“We were doping more damage to the forests 30 or 40 years ago when we didn’t clearfell, as the practices then didn’t help the forests regenerate,” he says.

“In fact, we were ruining the forests, as you didn’t get the regeneration of trees which would turn into sawlogs.
“This will happen in the forests that are locked up today.

“The big trees will die. They won’t regenerate and we will be leaving a legacy of horizontal scrub and cutting grass. The only thing that will enable them to regenerate is a massive fire like 1967 – and we don’t want that again.”
He was handing over the running of TP Bennett and Sons Pty Ltd to his sons Adrian, 25, and Neil, 21, but he worries about their future,
“It won’t be through overcutting that they will lose their industry but through political decisions,” he says.

“There are more trees now than there were 50 or 60 years ago because the 1967 bushfires regenerated a lot of the poor areas.

“Those fires are something we never want to see again but at least it did have the beneficial effect of regenerating the forest.”