The social concern for the environment and protection of native forests that had burgeoned in the late 1960s and 1970s then moved into mainstream political discourse by the 1980s.
Issues and confrontations erupted on many fronts over the protection of flora and fauna, leadbeater's possum, landscape, temperate rainforest, water catchments, old growth and fuel reduction burning.
Questions were also being raised over sawmill licensing levels, sustainable yield calculations, forest growth rates (MAI), wood chips and providing certainty to the timber industry as wells as contentious silvicultural techniques such as clearfelling and softwood plantation expansion dominated much of the often polarised forestry debate.
To some degree the forestry profession became marginalised in the debate with the common understanding of forestry being eroded to simply mean timber harvesting and sawmilling and not broader forest management or conservation.
It was suggested by many that forestry had lost its social licence.

The conflicts became increasingly marked, when in 1983, the Australian Conservation Foundation declared its policy that ‘wood production should be transferred from native forests to plantations established outside the current forest estate’.
 Meanwhile, buoyed by their success in the Franklin Dam dispute in Tasmania in the early 1980s, groups of environmental activists later took matters into their own hands, particularly in far east Gippsland, to confront timber harvesting and mount a prolonged protest campaign and forest blockades.


Meanwhile, the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick continued to be administered by the Forests Commission until 1980 when it amalgamated with the University of Melbourne.
1980 also saw the graduation of the last group of its three-year diplomates funded by Forests Commission scholarships, bringing the total since the schools inception in 1910 to 522 students.
This also marked the end of a steady stream of graduates entering the Commission which was to have significant staffing consequences over the next few decades.
The social concern for the environment and protection of native forests that had burgeoned in the late 1960s and 1970s then moved into mainstream political discourse by the 1980s. Issues and confrontations erupted on many fronts over the protection of flora and fauna, leadbeater's possum, landscape, temperate rainforest, water catchments, old growth and fuel reduction burning. Questions were also being raised over sawmill licensing levels, sustainable yield calculations, forest growth rates (MAI), wood chips and providing certainty to the timber industry as wells as contentious silvicultural techniques such as clearfelling and softwood plantation expansion dominated much of the often polarised forestry debate. To some degree the forestry profession became marginalised in the debate with the common understanding of forestry being eroded to simply mean timber harvesting and sawmilling and not broader forest management or conservation. It was suggested by many that forestry had lost its social licence.
The conflicts became increasingly marked, when in 1983, the Australian Conservation Foundation declared its policy that ‘wood production should be transferred from native forests to plantations established outside the current forest estate’.  Meanwhile, buoyed by their success in the Franklin Dam dispute in Tasmania in the early 1980s, groups of environmental activists later took matters into their own hands, particularly in far east Gippsland, to confront timber harvesting and mount a prolonged protest campaign and forest blockades.

Meanwhile, the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick continued to be administered by the Forests Commission until 1980 when it amalgamated with the University of Melbourne. 1980 also saw the graduation of the last group of its three-year diplomates funded by Forests Commission scholarships, bringing the total since the schools inception in 1910 to 522 students. This also marked the end of a steady stream of graduates entering the Commission which was to have significant staffing consequences over the next few decades.
Forests Commission Victoria