Does Sustainable Timber Tasmania harvest leatherwood trees?

A closer look

Sustainable Timber Tasmania licenses apiary sites in public production forests to support honey production. An apiary site is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania assists 67 Tasmanian beekeepers to access flowering leatherwood trees (Eucryphia lucida) and other plants in public production forests for honey production.

Commercial quantities of leatherwood trees are not harvested by Sustainable Timber Tasmania. ‘Commercial quantities’ means areas within a forest that contain a certain number of leatherwood trees clustered in one location.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania has Planning Guidelines for Apiary Values. These guidelines outline how commercial leatherwood trees are managed and excluded from harvesting (felling).

The steps taken by Sustainable Timber Tasmania around leatherwood trees in its forests include:

• designing harvesting operations to minimise risk to the leatherwood tree sites
• marking commercial quantities of leatherwood trees with tape so they are not harvested
• occasionally planting leatherwood seedlings after harvesting (felling).

Sustainable Timber Tasmania works with Tasmania’s apiary industry for the benefit of honey production and forest operations. This is an important part of Sustainable Timber Tasmania’s land management work.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania has a collaborative partnership with the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association and the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council. This partnership was formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 2019.