Attitudes of Landholders to Farm Forestry in Tropical Eastern Australia (Survey‪)‬

Introduction The use of north Queensland rainforests for timber production became a controversial environmental issue from the early 1960s, with calls for conservation of particular areas becoming ever more frequent in the 1970s (Winter 1991; Carron 1993; Adam 1994). After heated public debate over the logging of tropical rainforests in the early 1980s, the Commonwealth Government unilaterally nominated these forests for World Heritage Listing in December 1987. This was despite vehement opposition from the Queensland State Government and local government authorities. World Heritage Listing in 1988 resulted in a complete cessation of logging activities in all public rainforest areas in the Wet Tropics, with a dramatic decrease in the availability of rainforest cabinet timbers from Crown land. Rainforest cabinet timbers are now obtained almost exclusively from those freehold rainforest areas that were not included within the listed area.