Forestry Corporation has almost completed a groundbreaking replanting program that has seen more than 11-million seedlings planted in the state’s pine forests this winter.

Almost three years on from the Black Summer bushfires and the recovery effort in softwood plantations continues.

Forestry Corporation’s accelerated planting programs over the past three years have seen extensive replantings in state forests near Tumut, Bombala, Bathurst, Walcha and Grafton.

In Tumut, Silviculture Manager Roger Davies said more than 24 million pine seedlings have been replanted in fire-affected pine forests.

“Approximately 120 people, from five contracted plantings companies, have been involved in planting 5.6 million seedlings across almost 5,500 hectares of land here at Tumut over a 12-week period this winter,” Mr Davies said.

“We have replanted approximately two thirds of the area that was impacted by the fires in 2020 and a total of 24 million trees have been replanted in Tumut over the past three years.

“We are getting excellent results from recent plantings. It has been a bumper couple of years in terms of tree survival and seedling growth in wetter than average conditions.”

Each seedling is planted by hand with experienced planters planting between 1,500 to 3,500 seedlings a day.

“From the pine trees that have been planted this season it will take around 13-years before we can extract fibre and 25-years growth to obtain structural timber,” Mr Davies said.

“That really is the challenging part about forestry and other tree crops, while infrastructure damaged by bushfire can be rebuilt, for tree growers it takes a long time to recover.

“With that said a world-class salvage operation happened in the softwood plantations following those fires and now it’s been a case of setting the forests up for future harvests.

“As this season shows we are tracking well ahead of schedule in replanting those bushfire-affected plantations,” he said.

Forestry Corporation has around 230,000 hectares of pine plantations in NSW and on average produces enough timber to construct a quarter of the homes built in Australia each year.

For more information about Forestry Corporation of NSW, visit forestrycorporation.com.au