One of the goals of our Elephant in the Woodland project is to enable Uralla Shire residents to source their firewood, in the knowledge that it is being collected in a way that has a low ecological impact. We have done a number of workshops to educate landholders, those who collect their own wood, those who buy their firewood and those who supply firewood for members of the community either for family use or to supply for income.
ZNET has been working with the Backtrack Youth Group to educate the students on sustainable firewood collection. They collect firewood as part of a fund raising measure to support the group as well as giving the students training in using chain saws etc. The first workshop was at Balala where they were a part of the biodiversity study on this property. The second workshop was on how to estimate how much coarse woody debris as well as identifying the type of trees.
You can download the Checklist for collecting wood. that was developed for the students as well as the Firewood collector package.
We had a training day for landholders and wood collector Shane Swilks to understand how to collect sustainable firewood. It was a great location to understand some of the different types of woodlands in the New England.
The sustainable firewood workshop held at Arding had a number of attendees. The landholder got a lot of invaluable information from ecologist Dave Carr about his site and preserving the biodiversity.
We are planning to have a workshop in 2020 when the restrictions on groups are lifted. If you are interested in attending you can contact Trish at projects(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)zneturalla.org.au
Sustainable Firewood suppliers
