A WA timber company has called for the state government to do more to protect plantation land from fire, amid concerns it could cost about a million dollars to replant hundreds of hectares of timber impacted by fires in WA's South West.
The fire in the Preston National Park burnt at emergency-level for 24 hours and tore through five and a half thousand hectares of native forest, timber plantation and farm-land east of Donnybrook.
It's unclear how many timber trees have been lost but the ABC understands two plantations have been damaged and hundreds of hectares of trees have been impacted.
One of the plantations in the Noggerup area is run by the state government's Forest Product Commission.
WA Forestry Minister Jackie Jarvis said it was likely some of the trees would be OK.
"My understanding is that there's been about 130 hectares of mature pines impacted," she said.
"Initial reports are that those will still be able to be harvested and used."
"That pine plantation is really important for our housing construction businesses."
"I understand there's about 140 hectares of two and three-year-old pine plantations that will need to be replanted."
Million-dollar bill for exporter
The other plantation is owned by WA Plantation Resources and is made up of about 500 hectares of pine and bluegum estate.
WAPRES CEO Ian Telfer said he expected about half of the plantation may not be able to be salvaged
"We've got about 500 hectares of both pine and bluegum as well as native forest areas," Mr Telfer said
"We're planting up and preparing areas to plant more pines.
"The area affected is a 2020 planting, so two years old, that will need to be re-planted [and] the bluegum areas that we have traditionally range from 12 years or more down to some more recent plantings.
"We'll look to have to harvest them in due course and recover what we can."
"The cost of reforesting those areas and replanting will be in excess of a million dollars."
A full assessment of the area will be carried out once the fire has been put out.
Fires 'key concern' ahead of ban
The loss comes ahead of the WA government's looming ban on native timber logging and its multi-million-dollar plan to grow softwood plantations across the state.
Mr Telfer said the fire highlighted the need for the State to think about how to protect timber plantations going forward.
"There's a discussion we need to have with government about managing fuel loads in adjoining native forests," he said.
"Preston National Park is a beautiful forest but it has got significant high fuel loads.
"[It needs] prescribed burning or some sort of mechanical treatment to reduce fuel loads, I guess in hindsight if that had been occurring the impacts would have been minimised.
"That's a key concern for me… now they're phasing out native logging."
Area earmarked for burn
The state government said while surrounding areas of the national park and south of Noggerup had been burnt in recent years, the place where the fire started was earmarked to be burnt sometime in coming years.
"The Noggerup bushfire ran into the area burnt in 2016 with lower fuel loads, helping responding ground crews and aircraft," a state government spokeswoman said.
"The area where lightning ignited the bushfire was identified on DBCA's three-year burn options program, with a prescribed burn proposed to be carried out within the next three years."
Twenty-two bushfires were started on state land as a result of more than 300,000 lightning strikes earlier in the week.
The spokeswoman said it was clear prescribed burning had made a difference in other plantation areas.
"Another bushfire caused by lightning on the same day in Wilga State Forest, approximately 12 kilometres south of the Noggerup bushfire, was contained to an area approximately 60 hectares due to reduced fuel loads from a prescribed burn undertaken two years ago," she said.
"This prescribed burn was essential in protecting the adjoining Grimwade pine plantation."
