Hi Dave you were really lucky to see living manferns, I have just visited the 4th coupe in my area that Gunns have logged this year and are in the process of converting to plantation. Unfortunately the only rows of manferns there are in the windrows ready for burning, there must be hundreds of them piled up.
If you or I went and took one the FPA would be able to fine us $5000 each but somehow the Overlords can burn thousands every year and nothing is done.
Gunns claim to have stopped conversion of native forest to plantation on the 1st of June 2007, obviously their looseness with the truth extends to not knowing what year it is also.

High intensity burns after clearfelling seem so destructive; now we have the science.

Science Daily Oct 16 2008
Wildfire and soils
For decades, scientists and resource managers have known that wildfires affect forest soils, evidenced, in part, by the erosion that often occurs after a fire kills vegetation and disrupts soil structure.
But, the lack of detailed knowledge of forest soils before they are burned by wildfire has hampered efforts to understand fire’s effects on soil fertility and forest ecology.
A new study led by the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station addresses this critical information gap and represents the first direct evidence of the toll wildfire can take on forest soil layers.
Bernard Bormann, a research forest ecologist with PNW Research Station - along with Western Washington University professor Peter Homann and colleagues from the PNW Research Station and Oregon State University - conducted chemical analyses on soil samples collected before and after a fire.
They found that the combustion of the organic layer at the soil’s surface, including woody debris, caused intense, 1,300 °F-plus temperatures, which, in turn, displaced considerable amounts of carbon and nitrogen from the underlying mineral soil layer and left mostly ash behind.
What was more surprising to the researchers was how these organic materials may have been lost.
Some carbon and nitrogen were lost as gases—consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and water vapor—and some in an inch of fine mineral-soil particles, which disappeared and left behind a crust of rocks.
“Altogether, we documented losses of more than 10 tons per acre of carbon and between 450 to 620 pounds per acre of nitrogen,” Bormann said. “The loss of topsoil and combustion of organic materials together led to losses that are higher than most previous estimates.”

However, in response to the above:
Tassie forest harvesters and ecosystem converters love the hot, exposed war in our wet forests, as otherwise the Eucalypts would be replaced by rainforest over tim:
Found in
ScienceDirect
Forest Ecology and Management
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco

‘An examination of stocking and early growth in the Warra silvicultural
systems trial confirms the importance of a burnt seedbed for vigorous
regeneration in Eucalyptus obliqua forest”
Mark Neyland a,*, John Hickey a, Chris Beadle b, Juergen Bauhus c, Neil Davidson d, Leigh Edwards a

A B S T R A C T
Clearfelling of wet eucalypt forest followed by high intensity burning and aerial sowing, a silvicultural
system designed to mimic the natural dynamic of sporadic regeneration following cataclysmic
disturbance, has attracted criticism for not maintaining the structural diversity that is associated with
natural disturbance. A silvicultural systems trial was established at the Warra Long-Term Ecological
Research site in southern Tasmania to explore alternatives to clearfelling in tall wet eucalypt forest.
Stocking, density and growth of the seedling regeneration were monitored for up to 3 years after
harvesting and regeneration treatments were applied from 1998 to 2007. The treatments were clearfell
with understorey islands, a patchfell, stripfell, dispersed retention, aggregated retention, and single-tree/
small-group selection. High intensity burning, low intensity burning and no burning were variously
applied as part of these treatments.
The nature of the seedbed in each coupe was related to the harvesting and regeneration treatment.
Where high intensity burns were applied there was a higher proportion of burnt seedbed available than
in coupes where low intensity burns were applied. The highest seedling densities and fastest early
seedling growth rates occurred on the hottest burnt seedbeds. The lowest seedling densities occurred on
unburnt and undisturbed seedbeds and the slowest early growth rates occurred on unburnt and
compacted seedbeds. Treatments that created the most burnt seedbed had the highest seedling densities
and the fastest seedling growth.
Aggregated retention is considered the most promising alternative to clearfelling. Because high
intensity burns as applied to clearfell burn and sow coupes cannot be conducted in aggregated retention
coupes as they would probably burn the aggregates, the lower proportion of burnt seedbed will, on
average, result in lower seedling density and growth, and may compromise longer term productivity
compared to clearfelled and high intensity-burnt coupes. If aggregated retention is to be successfully
applied, as measured by the density and height growth of the regeneration, finding ways of successfully
and consistently burning such coupes post-harvesting will be essential.

A R T I C L E I N F O
Article history:
Received 9 May 2008
Received in revised form 20 October 2008
Accepted 31 October 2008
Keywords:
Australia
Eucalyptus obliqua
Regeneration
Silvicultural systems
Variable retention

“Stocking, density and growth of the seedling regeneration were monitored for up to 3 years after harvesting and regeneration treatments were applied from 1998 to 2007.”

Gee, that sure is a long term piece of scientific research in the life cycle of a forest!

The problem with the stats provided by ‘factfinder’ is that they are only concerned with methods of commercialising our old growth forests. What is the highest and quickest yield we can get at the least possible cost, regardless of the long term damage to the soil, ecosystem and the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the operation. Left to itself, the forest will regenerate after a forest fire back into a variety of native species and the original ecosystem will return. This is not so with artificially inseminated plantations, although the profit margin might be higher.

Perhaps this was the prescribed objective of the trials in the first place?