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70 million reasons to celebrate launch of National Forestry Planting Day

MEDIA RELEASE

The planting of around 70 million trees this winter officially starts today, with the official launch of   National Forestry Planting Day to mark the start of the planting season for Australia’s forestry plantations.

The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) today launched the inaugural day to highlight the mammoth and unheralded task that the plantation industry undertakes every year of planting enough seedlings every winter to cover an area equivalent to 136,000 football fields, or more than 2 seedlings for every Australian.

Co-convenors of the Parliamentary Friends of Forestry and Forest Products – Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Forestry Joel Fitzgibbon MP and Member for Barker Tony Pasin MP – marked the launch with pine seedlings in front of Parliament House (download images from launch here http://bit.ly/2rNxxn0).

AFPA Chairman Greg McCormack said the annual event will be celebrated on 1 June every year to mark the start of the seedling planting season across Australia’s plantation estates.

“Australia’s plantations provide more than 80 per cent of the wood fibre and timber for our national forest product industries, which provides 120,000 direct jobs along the whole supply chain – many of them in regional Australia,” Mr McCormack said.

“Every year, our plantation estates grow enough timber to build the equivalent of 60,000 new houses, and that’s only possible because of the massive re-planting exercise they undertake every winter.”

Australia’s forest industries are recognised internationally as truly sustainable and managed to world-class standards. The forest products industry is based on a renewable biological resource that contributes to long-term carbon emissions abatement.

National Forestry Planting Day will be an annual opportunity to raise awareness about the plantations industry’s contribution to our environment and economy.

National Statistics

 

01.06.2017 – Media Release – 70 million reasons to celebrate launch of National Forestry Planting Day

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