The cost of re-establishment due to pest attack is significant and can be as high as $300-$400 per hectare.

Weeds in plantations compete for water, nutrients and space, and effective weed control has been shown to improve growth rates by 120 percent.

Pest insects and mammal browsing defoliate or can remove entire trees or seedlings. When defoliation reaches 66 percent in eucalypt seedlings, for example, a loss of growth is noticeable.

Currently, 1.2 million hectares of forest are certified under the Forest Stewardship Council® certification in Australia.

These certification bodies require that forest managers protect forests from damaging pests while simultaneously producing wood economically – and reducing the use and exposure to highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).

Of the total pesticide use in Australia, plantation forestry comprises a minor component at ~0.7 percent with an estimated expenditure for 2003-2004 equating to about $16.2-$20.9M of the total $2.4B Australian spent at that time.

This low percentage reflects the limited use of pesticides available for plantation forestry pest and disease management compared with that for agricultural crops and other uses.

About 99 percent of the plantation forestry pesticide spend is on herbicides with only about 1 percent on insecticides and other products, highlighting the comparatively limited options available to forest managers to control damaging insect populations and diseases.

The Forest Pest Management (FPM) Research Consortium strives to maintain and increase the productive capacity of the Australian forest industry by reducing the reliance on HHPs, instead shifting usage to biological products and target-specific pesticides over non-selective products.

The consortium is a membership-based cooperative research effort, including 19 forest plantation growers and pesticide manufacturers, that ensures the continued availability of effective, and environmentally and socially acceptable pesticide control options for weeds, pests, and diseases.

The project supports ~90 percent of the forest plantation industry by finding new or alternative pest, weed and disease control options.

The consortium has conducted 37 trials since 2018 and tested approximately 800 pesticide treatments in different research settings. From screening trials to the point of product registration, the Consortium ads value for money in terms of:

• Management of certification (specifically Forest Stewardship Council® certification) requirements for forest plantation industry member companies.
• Sustained access and diversified pest and disease control options to increase seedling survival rates by 10-30 percent depending on the pest attack and plantation species.
• Collaborative delivery of outcomes which would be disproportionately more expensive for each individual company to achieve.

Several pesticides of interest to the plantation forestry industry have not been made available through registration by the regulator (Australian Pesticide and Veterinary Medicine Authority) due to prohibitively large buffers or protective downwind no-spray zones being imposed (>50 m) on the labels which would make use of the registered product either impossible or impractical.

The FPM Research Consortium works with the regulator, the forest industry and pesticide manufacturers on identifying drift-reducing technologies to reduce buffer distances and adapt safe operating principles in relation to spray drift.

A reduction of spray drift relating to pesticide application increases human and environmental safety associated with spray application and increases access to pesticides by reducing buffer zones. Spray drift-related research conducted by the FPM Research Consortium ads value for money in terms of:

• Granting of new pesticide permits for use/application in Australian forests that benefit all member companies.
• Management of regulatory administrative requirements for new product label registrations and variations to existing labels as a result of years of collaboration with pesticide manufacturers and the regulator.

The FPM Research Consortium delivers whole-of-industry outcomes for considerable overall value at a fraction of the cost that individual enterprises would otherwise be required to expend.