Australia's Forests
Forest area
Australia has 149 million hectares of forests comprising 147.4 million hectares of native forests and 1.97 million hectares of plantations. These forests cover about 19 per cent of the continent. This is about 7 hectares of forest for each Australian, one of the highest areas of forest per person in the world. The world average is less than 0.6 hectares of forest per person. Australia has about 4 per cent of the world’s forest on 5 per cent of the world’s land area.
Forest types and distribution
Australia’s forests are extremely diverse and unique. Native forest types in Australia are dominated by eucalypts (78%) followed by acacias (7%) and melaleucas (5%).
In contrast, about half (52 per cent or 1,015,000 hectares) of Australia’s plantations are exotic conifers (predominantly Pinus radiata), often referred to as softwood plantations, while the other half (48 per cent or 950,000 hectares) are hardwood (predominantly eucalypt) plantations.
Climate and soil properties broadly determine the distribution of forest types and classes across Australia, although other factors, especially fire frequency and intensity, are important.
Most of Australia is too dry to support forests as arid lands occupy about 70 per cent of the interior of Australia. Native forests are generally located in areas with an average of more than 500 millimetres of rain annually. Commercial plantations have been established mainly in areas with more than 700 millimetres of annual rainfall.
Further details on Australian Forest Profiles.
Forest tenure and ownership
Tenure is important in forest management because the owner of the land (and in most cases also the forest) has primary responsibility for its management.
Native forests – Six tenure categories are recognised for Australia’s native forests which can be further grouped under public and private management. They are:
|
Tenure |
Area (‘000 hectares) |
Proportion of total |
|---|---|---|
|
Multiple-use public forest |
9,410 |
6% |
|
Public nature conservation reserve |
22,371 |
15% |
|
Other Crown land |
10,862 |
7% |
|
Private forest (including Indigenous) |
38,099 |
26% |
|
Leasehold forest |
65,132 |
44% |
|
Unresolved tenure |
1,524 |
1% |
|
Total native forest |
147,397 |
100% |
Plantations – State governments were the major plantation owners until the early 1990s. Since then there has been increasing private sector investment in plantations. As such, private ownership of plantations has increased from about 30% in 1990 to more than 64% in 2008.