Environmental challenges

In the past few months, eastern Australia has been battered by a series of environmental calamities in the form of the bushfires in Victoria, the continuation of the drought in the southern Murray-Darling Basin and the floods in Queensland.

All Australians have been affected to some degree by these terrible events and Timbercorp has not been immune from them.

Victorian bushfires

The worst of the Victorian bushfires have occurred in the eastern part of the state, which means Timbercorp’s forestry plantations have been largely unaffected. 

However, 117 hectares of the Company’s plantations were burnt as part of a larger fire near the town of Branxholme in late January. The quick and courageous response of Timbercorp staff in fighting this fire, with help from the Country Fire Authority and staff from Great Southern and ITC, helped contain its spread. 

Timbercorp Forestry staff are well trained and equipped to fight fires and are currently undertaking ongoing preventative measures such as establishing fire breaks and securing water supplies to ensure the Company can do everything it can to minimise the chance of a major fire event. 

Timbercorp’s eucalypt seed orchard is located close to Kinglake, a town to the north-east of Melbourne that was critically affected by bushfires. Fire did pass through the area around the Kinglake seed orchard. Fortunately, no staff members were hurt and the site whilst affected was not destroyed. 

Trees were mostly scorched by the fire, but not burnt. The heat induced the release of most mature seed capsules and around three to five million seeds were lost. The bulk of seed has already been harvested. Capsules from this year's flowering were not badly affected so we can expect a reasonable seed harvest next year.

Drought in the south, floods in the north

The fires are a severe illustration of the extremely dry and hot conditions that have affected Victoria, South Australia and southern New South Wales of late. 

Continued below average rainfall and very low river levels, have meant the irrigation water allocations for Timbercorp’s almond, olive and citrus orchards in this area range from 18-35%, which represents historic lows. 

These restrictions on water availability have been exacerbated by the extremely hot conditions that were experienced at times in January and February. 

Our orchard managers have been implementing comprehensive water management plans to minimise the impact of these conditions. At this stage, no major damage to crops has been detected however, we will continue to monitor for adverse affects. For example, AgriExchange are currently assessing the situation with the citrus crop, where some sunburn to new fruit has been detected.
 
In contrast, northern Queensland has been experiencing very high levels of rainfall in recent months, leading to floods in some parts of the state. Fortunately, Timbercorp’s avocado and mango orchards have not been impacted by the floods. Our strategic alliance partner, CostaExchange, also has significant holdings of banana production assets in Queensland, but these have not been seriously affected by the floods.