Silvicultural practices in Australian native State forests—An introduction

Summary Silviculture is the manipulation of forest stand structure and dynamics to achieve specific forest management objectives. In this paper the proceeding contributions from four State forest services about their silvicultural practices in native forests are introduced and reflected upon in the light of likely future directions in Australian forest management. Increasing ecological knowledge and changing social and economic demands on forests necessitate the continuous development and improvement of silvicultural practices. The role of silviculture in delivering sustainable forest management is discussed and some future challenges in native forest silviculture in a post-Regional Forest Agreement environment are presented. Reconciling management of native forests for biodiversity and for production of timber and non-timber products will be a major task, which may only be achieved through silvicultural planning at the landscape level. Further development and refinement of sustainability indicators will be required to quantify silvicultural objectives and monitor the application of various silvicultural systems.