Nathan Trushell, VicForests, Melbourne
The Age (letter), 8 October 2010
Contrary to Jill Sanguinetti's letter (7/10),VicForests harvests 5500 hectares of forest in total across Victoria each year. This equates to less than 0.1 of a percentage point of our state's 7.8 million hectares of native forest.
VicForests then re-sows every hectare with seeds from the local region to maintain diversity.
Rather than creating a monoculture, this process ensures the same mix of species present in each area grows back following harvesting.
The area permitted to be harvested in Victoria each year has reduced by more than 30 per cent over the past decade, further helping to ensure the sustainability of our forests.
08 October, 2010
07 October, 2010
For the chop
Jill Sanguinetti, Narbethong
The Age (letter), 7 October 2010
When will people understand that scouring our native forests and turning them into virtual silvicultural plantations through monocultural seeding amounts to permanent loss of habitat?
The .05 to 1 per cent of forests logged in any one year (Letters, 6/10) refers to all forested areas in Victoria - including privately owned land, degraded remnant forests, national parks and dry, open woodlands in the west of no interest to the timber industry.
It is small pockets of mature, biodiverse, wet forests where the endangered species actually live that are disappearing at an alarming rate.
VicForests focuses on mature mountain ash forests in the Central Highlands. It says that 66,000 hectares are available for logging there - and that it plans to clear-fell 5500 hectares of that next year. At this rate, it will all be gone in 11 years. How sustainable is that?
The Age (letter), 7 October 2010
When will people understand that scouring our native forests and turning them into virtual silvicultural plantations through monocultural seeding amounts to permanent loss of habitat?
The .05 to 1 per cent of forests logged in any one year (Letters, 6/10) refers to all forested areas in Victoria - including privately owned land, degraded remnant forests, national parks and dry, open woodlands in the west of no interest to the timber industry.
It is small pockets of mature, biodiverse, wet forests where the endangered species actually live that are disappearing at an alarming rate.
VicForests focuses on mature mountain ash forests in the Central Highlands. It says that 66,000 hectares are available for logging there - and that it plans to clear-fell 5500 hectares of that next year. At this rate, it will all be gone in 11 years. How sustainable is that?
PNG rainforests reveal 200 new species
Emily Beament, London
The Age, October 7, 2010
A TINY, two-centimetre frog, a mouse with a white-tipped tail and a white-flowered rhododendron are among more than 200 new species discovered in remote mountain rainforests of Papua New Guinea.
The new species of animals and plants were found during two months of surveying in the rugged and little-explored Nakanai and Muller mountain ranges last year, Conservation International announced
yesterday.
The findings included two new mammals, 24 species of frog, nine new plants, nearly 100 new insects and about 100 spiders.
The mouse with the white-tipped tail, at least one ant and several crickets, or katydids, are so different from other known species they each represent an entirely new genus, the scientists said.
Two scientific teams — co-ordinated by Conservation International's rapid assessment program, in partnership with Papua New Guinea's Institute for Biological Research and the conservation organisation A Rocha International — explored different altitudes of the forest-cloaked Nakanai mountains, which host cave systems and some of the world's largest underground rivers, and the Muller range.
In the Nakanai surveys, scientists discovered a yellow-spotted frog, found only high up in the mountains in the wet rainforests, the mouse, and the tiny ceratobatrachid frog, which is just two centimetres long and calls for a mate in the late afternoon — unlike most frogs in the area which call at night.
In the Muller range, researchers found what they described as a "spectacular variety" of insects, spiders and frogs.
The scientists hope the discoveries will help secure World Heritage status for the two areas, in the face of pressure on PNG's forests from subsistence agriculture, logging and oil palm production.
Conservation International has been working with the provincial government and local communities in the Nakanai range to protect a large tract of rainforest from logging.
PA
The Age, October 7, 2010
A TINY, two-centimetre frog, a mouse with a white-tipped tail and a white-flowered rhododendron are among more than 200 new species discovered in remote mountain rainforests of Papua New Guinea.
The new species of animals and plants were found during two months of surveying in the rugged and little-explored Nakanai and Muller mountain ranges last year, Conservation International announced
yesterday.
A newly discovered katydid in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Piotr Naskrecki/iLCP
The findings included two new mammals, 24 species of frog, nine new plants, nearly 100 new insects and about 100 spiders.
The mouse with the white-tipped tail, at least one ant and several crickets, or katydids, are so different from other known species they each represent an entirely new genus, the scientists said.
Two scientific teams — co-ordinated by Conservation International's rapid assessment program, in partnership with Papua New Guinea's Institute for Biological Research and the conservation organisation A Rocha International — explored different altitudes of the forest-cloaked Nakanai mountains, which host cave systems and some of the world's largest underground rivers, and the Muller range.
In the Nakanai surveys, scientists discovered a yellow-spotted frog, found only high up in the mountains in the wet rainforests, the mouse, and the tiny ceratobatrachid frog, which is just two centimetres long and calls for a mate in the late afternoon — unlike most frogs in the area which call at night.
In the Muller range, researchers found what they described as a "spectacular variety" of insects, spiders and frogs.
The scientists hope the discoveries will help secure World Heritage status for the two areas, in the face of pressure on PNG's forests from subsistence agriculture, logging and oil palm production.
Conservation International has been working with the provincial government and local communities in the Nakanai range to protect a large tract of rainforest from logging.
PA
06 October, 2010
Smoke and mirrors
Timothy Cleary, Werribee
The Age (letter), 6 October 2010
I agree with Jill Redwood (Letters, 5/10) and her concern for our forests and their wildlife, but I disagree with the impact that she attributes to logging.
In the past seven years, about a third of Victoria's forests have gone up in smoke due to wildfire. In the same period, less than 0.5 of 1 per cent has been logged. Minister Gavan Jennings may be making more national parks to ''save'' our forests (and marginal Labor seats in inner Melbourne), but this is not the same as fireproofing them.
The Age (letter), 6 October 2010
I agree with Jill Redwood (Letters, 5/10) and her concern for our forests and their wildlife, but I disagree with the impact that she attributes to logging.
In the past seven years, about a third of Victoria's forests have gone up in smoke due to wildfire. In the same period, less than 0.5 of 1 per cent has been logged. Minister Gavan Jennings may be making more national parks to ''save'' our forests (and marginal Labor seats in inner Melbourne), but this is not the same as fireproofing them.
05 October, 2010
Criminal behaviour
Jill Redwood, co-ordinator, Environment East Gippsland, Goongerah
The Age (letter), 5 October 2010
THE Central Highlands forests and endangered wildlife are being hammered by the same ruthless management that is destroying East Gippsland's forests (''Hello, possum - you're an emblem of extinction'', The Age, 2/10). This story shows how close to extinction these small possums have become under our government's close watch, with expert advice. It shows what a stranglehold the logging industry has on the Brumby government.
We're supposed to believe VicForests searches for hollows before logging starts. What an insult to the public's intelligence. This industry and its pimps in government need to be hauled up before an environmental crimes commission.
Parks with pleasure
John Fraser, Downer, ACT
The Age (letter), 5 October 2010
Last Friday the state government declared a set of national park extensions in East Gippsland. The inclusion of Goolengook is particularly welcome after a 15-year campaign for its protection that included a five-year forest blockade.
Also welcome is the inclusion of a link between the Errinundra and Snowy River national parks. It's a relief to see a national park created with the aim of linking areas, rather than another set of tiny islands of protected forest that won't survive long term.
Credit is also due to the main groups that provided support to this campaign, namely the Goongerah Environment Centre, Friends of the Earth Forest Network and its successors, and the Victorian Rainforest Network.
As always, not everything we hoped for was included. Like many, I grieve for the huge areas on the Errinundra Plateau that have already been logged, and the parts of Goolengook logged in 1997 and 2002. But given the impossibility of changing the past, Gavin Jennings has made a wise decision. I thank him for it.
Leadbeaters Possum needs protection
Barry Jackson, Clifton Creek
The Age (letter), 5 October 2010
The Leadbeaters Possum and Victoria’s other amazing wildlife have been evolving on this small patch of the Earth for millions of years. The lifespan of a logging industry or government is a blink in comparison. How sad Mr Brumby seems happy to let our state emblem become extinct. What hope for the rest of Victoria’s rare and threatened wildlife?
The Leadbeaters Possum and Victoria’s other amazing wildlife have been evolving on this small patch of the Earth for millions of years. The lifespan of a logging industry or government is a blink in comparison. How sad Mr Brumby seems happy to let our state emblem become extinct. What hope for the rest of Victoria’s rare and threatened wildlife?
04 October, 2010
Easy to miss
John Hayward, Weegena, Tas
The Age (letter), 4 October 2010
As dismaying as the critically endangered status of Leadbeater's possum is the fact that VicForests has been entrusted with its protection.
Like many extraction industries, forestry has been successful in cultivating its regulatory bodies, as well as politicians, even to the disastrous extent of gaining formal self-regulation in Tasmania. To loggers, the avoidance of threatened species habitat is a costly nuisance.
A nocturnal animal as discreet as this possum is easy to miss, particularly by those who don't really want to find it.
The Age (letter), 4 October 2010
As dismaying as the critically endangered status of Leadbeater's possum is the fact that VicForests has been entrusted with its protection.
Like many extraction industries, forestry has been successful in cultivating its regulatory bodies, as well as politicians, even to the disastrous extent of gaining formal self-regulation in Tasmania. To loggers, the avoidance of threatened species habitat is a costly nuisance.
A nocturnal animal as discreet as this possum is easy to miss, particularly by those who don't really want to find it.
Management helps our state icon
Max Rheese, Victorian Lands Alliance, Benalla
The Age (letter), 4 October 2010
HIS zeal for an end to sustainable catchment timber harvesting obscures the facts for David Lindenmayer (''Hello possum, you're an emblem of extinction'', The Age, 2/10), who states ''forestry is the key threatening process'' endangering habitat for Leadbeater's possum.
As the article states, Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1961, in Central Highlands forests ravaged by fires in 1939, recovering to a population of 8000 despite 150 years of timber harvesting.
Lindenmayer and many others have previously identified fire as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Victoria, while arguing for an end to timber harvesting in native forests. They have thus identified a supposed solution that will have no effect on fire as the primary cause of habitat change.
In his book On Borrowed Time, Lindenmayer argues for improved fire management to protect our forests, a commonsense argument recently accepted by the Victorian government.
Leadbeater's possum and other forest species will benefit enormously if their habitat is managed for the primary risk potentially affecting tens of thousands of hectares of habitat on a single day, as we saw on Black Saturday, rather than campaigns against socially beneficial timber production spread over a few hundred hectares in an entire year.
The Age (letter), 4 October 2010
HIS zeal for an end to sustainable catchment timber harvesting obscures the facts for David Lindenmayer (''Hello possum, you're an emblem of extinction'', The Age, 2/10), who states ''forestry is the key threatening process'' endangering habitat for Leadbeater's possum.
As the article states, Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1961, in Central Highlands forests ravaged by fires in 1939, recovering to a population of 8000 despite 150 years of timber harvesting.
Lindenmayer and many others have previously identified fire as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Victoria, while arguing for an end to timber harvesting in native forests. They have thus identified a supposed solution that will have no effect on fire as the primary cause of habitat change.
In his book On Borrowed Time, Lindenmayer argues for improved fire management to protect our forests, a commonsense argument recently accepted by the Victorian government.
Leadbeater's possum and other forest species will benefit enormously if their habitat is managed for the primary risk potentially affecting tens of thousands of hectares of habitat on a single day, as we saw on Black Saturday, rather than campaigns against socially beneficial timber production spread over a few hundred hectares in an entire year.
03 October, 2010
Uneasy truce carved from log wars
Maris Beck
The Age, (article), October 3, 2010
Tama Green, a protester in the Goolengook logging dispute, admires a mighty eucalypt. Photo: Ken Irwin (right)
AT 5am the loggers would roll in. The activists were ready: locked to bulldozers, lying on platforms in the giant trees, waiting for the headlights, deep in the Goolengook forest in East Gippsland.
"The adrenalin!'' recalled protest leader Stuart Paton, who lived in the forest for five long years. "It was kind of like a war mentality.''
Another activist, Tama Green, said that offsetting the hardships were the sunny days, good friends and small wins that kept them going. Ms Green remembers mornings waking up: ''It's all crisp and clear and the birds are singing … and you're like, 'Yep, they can't log this.' ''
The decades-long struggle over the Goolengook, which raged between environmentalists, the state government and loggers, culminated on Friday in a kind of coming together.
On one of those dazzlingly crisp days, Environment Minister Gavin Jennings, surrounded by former protesters and traditional owners - but no loggers - officially launched the new East Gippsland National Park.
The park covers 45,000 hectares, including the contested Goolengook that is home to 400-year-old trees and rare and threatened species such as the long-footed potoroo, spot-tailed quoll, powerful owl and slender tree fern.
Traditional owner Aunty Rachel Mullett thought the park declaration would never happen.
''You talk about it and think about it and it never happens,'' she said. "Today has blown us away a little bit.''
Mr Jennings said the government had threaded "the eye of a needle" in balancing the interests of loggers and environmentalists.
But, of course, compromise also means everyone is left a little unhappy. The government estimates 63 per cent of the new park is old-growth forest; the Wilderness Society claims it is only 33 per cent.
Forest campaigner Luke Chamberlain of the Wilderness Society said the park was "a very good step in the right direction". But many areas included in the park had already been logged, other areas were already protected from logging as "special protection zones", and the reserved land included a cow paddock.
Mr Jennings said the so-called paddock was ''a meadow of rare and endangered vegetation that has high conservation value''.
He also said national park status was more permanent than special protection zones and suggested that activists were remaining critical as a tactic so that they could lobby for more areas to be protected.
The government has promised the logging industry that the East Gippsland park will not mean a loss of timber resources or jobs, with Mr Jennings claiming the area is "not necessarily that great for logging" - but loggers beg to differ.
Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Philip Dalidakis said it was "environmental hypocrisy" that society demanded parks but was not willing to cut its consumption of paper and wood.
He said that as the timber industry was pushed out of Victoria, it went overseas to countries with far fewer regulatory controls.
"I'm not sure that jumping up and down celebrating a reserve in Victoria benefits the orang-utans in Indonesia."
A co-ordinator at Timber Communities Australia, Trevor Brown, was sceptical about the promise of no job losses. He said the park area was valuable for saw logs and pulpwood, "the eye fillet and the mince meat" of the timber business. "It is just another kick in the guts for the industry."
Mr Brown said the Gippsland activists had endangered loggers' lives for years and stopped them from earning a lawful living.
But that was all history now. "I think you can only look forward to the future and hope there is one," he said.
On that point, the environmentalists and loggers agree.
The Age, (article), October 3, 2010
 |
| East Gippsland Tree and Tama Green |
AT 5am the loggers would roll in. The activists were ready: locked to bulldozers, lying on platforms in the giant trees, waiting for the headlights, deep in the Goolengook forest in East Gippsland.
"The adrenalin!'' recalled protest leader Stuart Paton, who lived in the forest for five long years. "It was kind of like a war mentality.''
Another activist, Tama Green, said that offsetting the hardships were the sunny days, good friends and small wins that kept them going. Ms Green remembers mornings waking up: ''It's all crisp and clear and the birds are singing … and you're like, 'Yep, they can't log this.' ''
The decades-long struggle over the Goolengook, which raged between environmentalists, the state government and loggers, culminated on Friday in a kind of coming together.
On one of those dazzlingly crisp days, Environment Minister Gavin Jennings, surrounded by former protesters and traditional owners - but no loggers - officially launched the new East Gippsland National Park.
The park covers 45,000 hectares, including the contested Goolengook that is home to 400-year-old trees and rare and threatened species such as the long-footed potoroo, spot-tailed quoll, powerful owl and slender tree fern.
Traditional owner Aunty Rachel Mullett thought the park declaration would never happen.
''You talk about it and think about it and it never happens,'' she said. "Today has blown us away a little bit.''
Mr Jennings said the government had threaded "the eye of a needle" in balancing the interests of loggers and environmentalists.
But, of course, compromise also means everyone is left a little unhappy. The government estimates 63 per cent of the new park is old-growth forest; the Wilderness Society claims it is only 33 per cent.
Forest campaigner Luke Chamberlain of the Wilderness Society said the park was "a very good step in the right direction". But many areas included in the park had already been logged, other areas were already protected from logging as "special protection zones", and the reserved land included a cow paddock.
Mr Jennings said the so-called paddock was ''a meadow of rare and endangered vegetation that has high conservation value''.
He also said national park status was more permanent than special protection zones and suggested that activists were remaining critical as a tactic so that they could lobby for more areas to be protected.
The government has promised the logging industry that the East Gippsland park will not mean a loss of timber resources or jobs, with Mr Jennings claiming the area is "not necessarily that great for logging" - but loggers beg to differ.
Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Philip Dalidakis said it was "environmental hypocrisy" that society demanded parks but was not willing to cut its consumption of paper and wood.
He said that as the timber industry was pushed out of Victoria, it went overseas to countries with far fewer regulatory controls.
"I'm not sure that jumping up and down celebrating a reserve in Victoria benefits the orang-utans in Indonesia."
A co-ordinator at Timber Communities Australia, Trevor Brown, was sceptical about the promise of no job losses. He said the park area was valuable for saw logs and pulpwood, "the eye fillet and the mince meat" of the timber business. "It is just another kick in the guts for the industry."
Mr Brown said the Gippsland activists had endangered loggers' lives for years and stopped them from earning a lawful living.
But that was all history now. "I think you can only look forward to the future and hope there is one," he said.
On that point, the environmentalists and loggers agree.
02 October, 2010
Hello possum, you're an emblem of extinction
Adam Morton
The Age, October 2, 2010
IT IS not every day you get a chance to make an animal extinct twice. According to scientists, Victoria is steadily working on it.
Leadbeater's possum, a marsupial endemic to native forest on Melbourne's fringe, was declared extinct in the 1950s, apparently wiped out by agricultural land-clearing around the Bass River in South Gippsland.
It was rediscovered near Marysville in 1961 - an event considered so momentous it was chosen as one of the state's two faunal emblems.
Its population peaked at about 8000 in the 1980s, but the last possum in captivity in Victoria died in 2006, and last year's Black Saturday bushfires devastated its main home in the central highlands, burning 42 per cent of the permanent reserve system in which it lives.
Leading scientists say its survival is now at risk from the state's forestry industry, particularly the ongoing "salvage logging" operation aimed at maximising timber yields from blackened areas.
Six weeks after Black Saturday, in a report seen by The Age, a US Burned Area Emergency Response team and Victorian bureaucrats advised the Brumby government that extreme care was needed during the salvage logging of large hollow-bearing trees that give the possum its home.
It said: ''It is recommended that none be removed from fire-affected areas known to contain Leadbeater's possum, powerful and sooty owls, and within Leadbeater's possum reserves.''
Scientists working in the central highlands claim this advice has not been followed. David Lindenmayer, an Australian National University ecologist who has spent 25 years studying the possum, says that trees are regularly felled in areas important to the survival of Leadbeater's possum and other threatened species of possum, glider and bird.
While fire can be an effective way of creating the old-tree hollows that the possum thrives in, Professor Lindenmayer says some have been removed - at times through breaches of the Central Highlands Forestry Management Plan, which prohibits logging of pre-1900 trees.
He says the animal is being pushed ''incredibly close to extinction'' by the removal of its habitat through a combination of fire and salvage logging, and 40 years of clear-felling of unburnt forest.
''Forestry is the key threatening process,'' he says. ''Basically you have a part of the landscape that is non-functional for an animal, and then you add another one and another one. You may reach a stage where the entire landscape is essentially non-functional for animals to live in.
''I really think we need to revisit clear-fell logging of green forest in the central highlands, because after the fire its impact on the possum is being magnified.''
Professor Lindenmayer's concern is shared by Melbourne Zoo threatened species biologist Dan Harley, who earned a PhD studying a relic population of possums in Yellingbo Conservation Nature Reserve. "Tree hollows suitable for Leadbeater's take more than 200 years to form," Dr Harley says.
These claims are vigorously contested by VicForests, the state government forestry agency. It has rejected a claim by environmentalists, formalised in a complaint to the state Ombudsman, that it has illegally logged pre-1900 mountain ash, putting the possum at risk.
Michael Ryan, a VicForests forest scientist, says field surveys are carried out to check for potential Leadbeater's possum habitat before logging, and an exclusion zone created where necessary. He says there is also ''an extensive conservation reserve system'' designed to protect the possum.
VicForests is required by law to leave untouched any three-hectare area with more than 12 hollow trees, and retain four to five trees a hectare in all logged areas. Mr Ryan says clear-felling is used to replicate the natural regeneration process only.
The debate over the impact of salvage logging comes amid a bigger argument about the future of the native forest industry - and whether an impending decision on Tasmania's forests could put pressure on the Victorian government to consider a similar commitment.
Dr Harley estimates the population of Leadbeater's possum outside the central highlands would total fewer than 100, restricted to tiny pockets at risk from the next major bushfire.
''We've got a second chance, but the possum's entire distribution is confined to a 70 by 80 kilometre area. We don't have much margin for error.''
The Age, October 2, 2010
IT IS not every day you get a chance to make an animal extinct twice. According to scientists, Victoria is steadily working on it.
Leadbeater's possum, a marsupial endemic to native forest on Melbourne's fringe, was declared extinct in the 1950s, apparently wiped out by agricultural land-clearing around the Bass River in South Gippsland.
It was rediscovered near Marysville in 1961 - an event considered so momentous it was chosen as one of the state's two faunal emblems.
Its population peaked at about 8000 in the 1980s, but the last possum in captivity in Victoria died in 2006, and last year's Black Saturday bushfires devastated its main home in the central highlands, burning 42 per cent of the permanent reserve system in which it lives.
Leading scientists say its survival is now at risk from the state's forestry industry, particularly the ongoing "salvage logging" operation aimed at maximising timber yields from blackened areas.
Six weeks after Black Saturday, in a report seen by The Age, a US Burned Area Emergency Response team and Victorian bureaucrats advised the Brumby government that extreme care was needed during the salvage logging of large hollow-bearing trees that give the possum its home.
It said: ''It is recommended that none be removed from fire-affected areas known to contain Leadbeater's possum, powerful and sooty owls, and within Leadbeater's possum reserves.''
Scientists working in the central highlands claim this advice has not been followed. David Lindenmayer, an Australian National University ecologist who has spent 25 years studying the possum, says that trees are regularly felled in areas important to the survival of Leadbeater's possum and other threatened species of possum, glider and bird.
While fire can be an effective way of creating the old-tree hollows that the possum thrives in, Professor Lindenmayer says some have been removed - at times through breaches of the Central Highlands Forestry Management Plan, which prohibits logging of pre-1900 trees.
He says the animal is being pushed ''incredibly close to extinction'' by the removal of its habitat through a combination of fire and salvage logging, and 40 years of clear-felling of unburnt forest.
''Forestry is the key threatening process,'' he says. ''Basically you have a part of the landscape that is non-functional for an animal, and then you add another one and another one. You may reach a stage where the entire landscape is essentially non-functional for animals to live in.
''I really think we need to revisit clear-fell logging of green forest in the central highlands, because after the fire its impact on the possum is being magnified.''
Professor Lindenmayer's concern is shared by Melbourne Zoo threatened species biologist Dan Harley, who earned a PhD studying a relic population of possums in Yellingbo Conservation Nature Reserve. "Tree hollows suitable for Leadbeater's take more than 200 years to form," Dr Harley says.
These claims are vigorously contested by VicForests, the state government forestry agency. It has rejected a claim by environmentalists, formalised in a complaint to the state Ombudsman, that it has illegally logged pre-1900 mountain ash, putting the possum at risk.
Michael Ryan, a VicForests forest scientist, says field surveys are carried out to check for potential Leadbeater's possum habitat before logging, and an exclusion zone created where necessary. He says there is also ''an extensive conservation reserve system'' designed to protect the possum.
VicForests is required by law to leave untouched any three-hectare area with more than 12 hollow trees, and retain four to five trees a hectare in all logged areas. Mr Ryan says clear-felling is used to replicate the natural regeneration process only.
The debate over the impact of salvage logging comes amid a bigger argument about the future of the native forest industry - and whether an impending decision on Tasmania's forests could put pressure on the Victorian government to consider a similar commitment.
Dr Harley estimates the population of Leadbeater's possum outside the central highlands would total fewer than 100, restricted to tiny pockets at risk from the next major bushfire.
''We've got a second chance, but the possum's entire distribution is confined to a 70 by 80 kilometre area. We don't have much margin for error.''
01 October, 2010
Government recycles announcements and logged forest
Jill Redwood, Environment East Gippsland
Media release, Friday 1st October 2010
For at least the third time, the Government today announced the new additions to the reserve system in East Gippsland. The ALP’s 2006 election promise was to protect ‘the last significant stands of old growth planned for logging’.
But environment groups say that most of what has been protected was either in existing protection zones, had already been logged or was degraded forest unwanted for logs or woodchips anyway.
“We’re pleased some areas of old growth have been put into National Park, but they account for only about one quarter to a third of what the state government is claiming has been saved from logging”, said Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland.
“The government is to be praised on its clever recycling of protected zones back into protected zones, and logged forest into National Park. It’s mostly been a creative game of swaps.”
“However the protection of Yalmy’s forests and Goolengook’s magnificent old growth and rainforest is very welcome, despite Goolengook’s heart having been logged out.”
“The areas have taken four years to be finalised, while DSE accommodated the logging industry’s demands over this election promise. Meanwhile thousands of hectares of old growth and mature forests were clearfelled in the interim. Like an extinct species, they will never return.”
“This includes forests at Brown Mountain, which had recognised old growth values and supported endangered wildlife. If the government didn’t consider Brown Mountain ‘significant old growth’ it shows how many other equally magnificent forests have been condemned to clearfelling.”
“The new parks announcement today is at least a start.
For comment: Jill Redwood 03 5154 0145
Jill Redwood
Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland Inc
(6800 Bonang Rd Goongerah)
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888
Ph (03) 5154 0145
www.eastgippsland.net.au
Media release, Friday 1st October 2010
For at least the third time, the Government today announced the new additions to the reserve system in East Gippsland. The ALP’s 2006 election promise was to protect ‘the last significant stands of old growth planned for logging’.
But environment groups say that most of what has been protected was either in existing protection zones, had already been logged or was degraded forest unwanted for logs or woodchips anyway.
“We’re pleased some areas of old growth have been put into National Park, but they account for only about one quarter to a third of what the state government is claiming has been saved from logging”, said Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland.
“The government is to be praised on its clever recycling of protected zones back into protected zones, and logged forest into National Park. It’s mostly been a creative game of swaps.”
“However the protection of Yalmy’s forests and Goolengook’s magnificent old growth and rainforest is very welcome, despite Goolengook’s heart having been logged out.”
“The areas have taken four years to be finalised, while DSE accommodated the logging industry’s demands over this election promise. Meanwhile thousands of hectares of old growth and mature forests were clearfelled in the interim. Like an extinct species, they will never return.”
“This includes forests at Brown Mountain, which had recognised old growth values and supported endangered wildlife. If the government didn’t consider Brown Mountain ‘significant old growth’ it shows how many other equally magnificent forests have been condemned to clearfelling.”
“The new parks announcement today is at least a start.
For comment: Jill Redwood 03 5154 0145
Jill Redwood
Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland Inc
(6800 Bonang Rd Goongerah)
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888
Ph (03) 5154 0145
www.eastgippsland.net.au
18 September, 2010
Reclaiming the old rhetoric on Oregon's forests
David Moskowitz
Oregonlive, September 17, 2010, 7:00 AM
Ben Shelton's tired rallying cry for the wood products industry to take back "what is ours" fails to acknowledge what has transpired in the industry and on the forest landscape since the 1980s.
The forest industry and forest communities barely survived Oregon's recession in the 1980s, while rampant over-harvesting of federal forests was institutionalized through congressional riders. The subsequent realization that only about 5 percent of federally managed old-growth remained, and that less than 1 percent of old-growth remained on state forests was startling to people across the country. This led to a sea change in public opinion about the value of old-growth forests from what precious little remained. Scientific understanding about the affects of timber harvest on watershed health came of age at the same time. These two forces were joined by the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan, which finally did what Teddy Roosevelt had tried to do – and what The Oregonian predicted in 1907 – protect the nation's forest from ultimate annihilation.
At the same time, the timber industry was undergoing major changes through corporate mergers and acquisitions, a changing tax structure that led to corporate restructuring, mill closures and mill "make-overs" for the switch from the nearly extinct big logs to today's even-aged 40- and 50-year-old logs. Ben Shelton pines for the days of yore that were actually more like Hollywood-created facades of prosperity propped up by unsustainable logging levels and favorable corporate tax structures. The days of the locally headquartered and vertically integrated timber industry around which entire communities relied are over and they "ain't coming back."
No single factor is to blame for these changes, and no single factor will solve forest health issues, rural community stability and the need for cross-boundary management decisions (something former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber has championed). The future that Shelton desires will not be delivered by sounding a battle cry. Oregon's forests can, will and do provide multiple benefits and values to communities and individuals across Oregon and the nation in the form of clean water, carbon storage, recreational opportunity, native plants, a place for solace, a hedge against the uncertain effects of climate change and, yes, even wood products. All of these forest resources – whether from federal, state or private forestland – can be produced by collaborative management, by understanding and using the best available scientific information and by complying with existing environmental regulations. And if all of these products from "our" forests (in the broadest national sense) are properly valued, they will produce benefits for "our" communities (in the Oregon sense).
This can, and is happening without the meaningless hue and cry to "reclaim our forests and manage what is ours." That's what happened in the early 1990s when citizens across the nation demanded that the forest service stop over-harvesting a national treasure – Oregon's old-growth forests.
David A. Moskowitz of Northeast Portland is director of development for WaterWatch of Oregon.
Source
Oregonlive, September 17, 2010, 7:00 AM
Ben Shelton's tired rallying cry for the wood products industry to take back "what is ours" fails to acknowledge what has transpired in the industry and on the forest landscape since the 1980s.
The forest industry and forest communities barely survived Oregon's recession in the 1980s, while rampant over-harvesting of federal forests was institutionalized through congressional riders. The subsequent realization that only about 5 percent of federally managed old-growth remained, and that less than 1 percent of old-growth remained on state forests was startling to people across the country. This led to a sea change in public opinion about the value of old-growth forests from what precious little remained. Scientific understanding about the affects of timber harvest on watershed health came of age at the same time. These two forces were joined by the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan, which finally did what Teddy Roosevelt had tried to do – and what The Oregonian predicted in 1907 – protect the nation's forest from ultimate annihilation.
At the same time, the timber industry was undergoing major changes through corporate mergers and acquisitions, a changing tax structure that led to corporate restructuring, mill closures and mill "make-overs" for the switch from the nearly extinct big logs to today's even-aged 40- and 50-year-old logs. Ben Shelton pines for the days of yore that were actually more like Hollywood-created facades of prosperity propped up by unsustainable logging levels and favorable corporate tax structures. The days of the locally headquartered and vertically integrated timber industry around which entire communities relied are over and they "ain't coming back."
No single factor is to blame for these changes, and no single factor will solve forest health issues, rural community stability and the need for cross-boundary management decisions (something former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber has championed). The future that Shelton desires will not be delivered by sounding a battle cry. Oregon's forests can, will and do provide multiple benefits and values to communities and individuals across Oregon and the nation in the form of clean water, carbon storage, recreational opportunity, native plants, a place for solace, a hedge against the uncertain effects of climate change and, yes, even wood products. All of these forest resources – whether from federal, state or private forestland – can be produced by collaborative management, by understanding and using the best available scientific information and by complying with existing environmental regulations. And if all of these products from "our" forests (in the broadest national sense) are properly valued, they will produce benefits for "our" communities (in the Oregon sense).
This can, and is happening without the meaningless hue and cry to "reclaim our forests and manage what is ours." That's what happened in the early 1990s when citizens across the nation demanded that the forest service stop over-harvesting a national treasure – Oregon's old-growth forests.
David A. Moskowitz of Northeast Portland is director of development for WaterWatch of Oregon.
Source
16 September, 2010
Trees die, life stays
Chris Owens, Lysterfield South
The Age (letter), 16 November 2010
MAX Rheese's assertion (Letters, 14/9) that species could be pushed to the edge of extinction by current logging policies is ''drawing a long bow'', noting Leadbeater's possum was discovered in regrowth forest burnt in the 1939 bushfires.
Abundant research exists on this possum that reveals it requires hollows for shelter and nesting and, while the 1939 bushfire may have killed the trees, the stumps remained with their hollows to provide a habitat for this and associated hollow-dependent fauna.
Hollows have been proven to take between 100 and 200 years to develop. Current logging practice revolves around clearfell of coups that are logged on 30-to-40-years rotations and therefore hollow-dependent fauna are essentially permanently excluded from these areas.
After 150 years of logging, the remaining old growth and high-conservation-value forests are the last of the last where species such as Leadbeater's possum, sooty owl and spot-tailed quoll cling to existence. Given that this logging of a public asset occurs at a loss to the taxpayer and against the wishes of 80 per cent of the population and sufficient plantation resources exist, why do we not follow the precautionary principle and protect these areas?
MAX Rheese's assertion (Letters, 14/9) that species could be pushed to the edge of extinction by current logging policies is ''drawing a long bow'', noting Leadbeater's possum was discovered in regrowth forest burnt in the 1939 bushfires.
Abundant research exists on this possum that reveals it requires hollows for shelter and nesting and, while the 1939 bushfire may have killed the trees, the stumps remained with their hollows to provide a habitat for this and associated hollow-dependent fauna.
Hollows have been proven to take between 100 and 200 years to develop. Current logging practice revolves around clearfell of coups that are logged on 30-to-40-years rotations and therefore hollow-dependent fauna are essentially permanently excluded from these areas.
After 150 years of logging, the remaining old growth and high-conservation-value forests are the last of the last where species such as Leadbeater's possum, sooty owl and spot-tailed quoll cling to existence. Given that this logging of a public asset occurs at a loss to the taxpayer and against the wishes of 80 per cent of the population and sufficient plantation resources exist, why do we not follow the precautionary principle and protect these areas?
15 September, 2010
Brown Mountain - final court orders
Jill Redwood, Coordinator Environment East Gippsland Inc
Media Release 15 September 2010
Environment East Gippsland has welcomed the final orders in the Brown Mountain landmark trial handed down in the Supreme Court on the 14th September.
“VicForests must pay 90% of our costs, as well as all their own costs, for this very long and expensive trial.
"DSE will need to undertake a series of surveys for two species of frogs and the spot tailed quoll in the coupes, there must be a review of protection areas for Sooty and Powerful owls and special conservation zones must be created for two species of gliders and the potoroo.
The Court has ordered that EEG receive copies of all these surveys and conservation measures once they are completed. Only once all this is done to the satisfaction of DSE, can VicForests even contemplate logging in the coupes. It remains to be seen if all this is undertaken in good faith by DSE, whether any areas will remain available for logging.
“In a victory for an open and transparent conservation process quite unlike what has occurred in the past, the Court has ordered that all these surveys, maps of new protection zones and conservation measures be notified to EEG.
That way we and the public of Victoria we can see whether his Honour’s orders have been carried out.”
“It really is a very strong judgment for us. We have been vindicated in taking on the big boys of logging.”
“If we had not risked everything in defence of our forests, VicForests would have logged Brown Mountain’s old growth forests by now. The logging would have been illegal, and it would have killed a range of protected wildlife that they denied was there.”
Jill Redwood
Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland Inc
(6800 Bonang Rd Goongerah)
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888
Ph (03) 5154 0145
www.eastgippsland.net.au
14 September, 2010
Hardly a danger
Max Rheese, Victorian Lands Alliance, Benalla
The Age (letter), 14 September 2010
Sarah Rees and Jill Redwood (Letters, 11/9) ignore that native timber harvesting occurs on less than one tenth of 1 per cent of public forest in Victoria by claiming this contributes to the decline of species such as Leadbeater's possum. Get real.
Asserting any species is in danger from such a minuscule activity, thinly dispersed over thousands of square kilometres of bush, is really drawing a long bow, particularly when the once-thought-extinct Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1966 in regrowth forest from the 1939 fires.
The small area of timber harvesting occurring in Victoria does not result in any net loss of forest, as all areas harvested are required to be regenerated. Rees and Redwood cannot see the forest for the trees as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Australia is bushfire, not timber harvesting.
The Age (letter), 14 September 2010
Sarah Rees and Jill Redwood (Letters, 11/9) ignore that native timber harvesting occurs on less than one tenth of 1 per cent of public forest in Victoria by claiming this contributes to the decline of species such as Leadbeater's possum. Get real.
Asserting any species is in danger from such a minuscule activity, thinly dispersed over thousands of square kilometres of bush, is really drawing a long bow, particularly when the once-thought-extinct Leadbeater's possum was rediscovered in 1966 in regrowth forest from the 1939 fires.
The small area of timber harvesting occurring in Victoria does not result in any net loss of forest, as all areas harvested are required to be regenerated. Rees and Redwood cannot see the forest for the trees as the ultimate determinant of forest structure in Australia is bushfire, not timber harvesting.
Industry shortfall
Gordon Bradbury, forester, Hobart
The Age (letter), 14 September 2010
The Victorian native-forest-based industry may like to think it is a sawlog-driven industry (The Age, 12/9), but VicForests' own reports show that this is not accurate.
VicForests is clearly reluctant to show this, as the relevant numbers are spread around many reports. The 2009 Annual Report (page 40) shows that for the past two years pulpwood sales have comprised 58 per cent of total revenue, while the 2009 Sustainability Report (page 24) shows for the same period pulpwood comprised 70 per cent of total wood volume sold.
This tells us two things: the average price paid by the forest industry for native forest sawlogs is little more than the price paid for pulpwood (based on prices, there is little difference in quality between hardwood sawlog and hardwood pulpwood); and without pulpwood harvesting, VicForests and the hardwood sawlog forest industry would not exist.
Based on these figures, the Victorian hardwood sawmilling industry doesn't seem to have a very commercial, profitable future without continuing government support and subsidy.
The Age (letter), 14 September 2010
The Victorian native-forest-based industry may like to think it is a sawlog-driven industry (The Age, 12/9), but VicForests' own reports show that this is not accurate.
VicForests is clearly reluctant to show this, as the relevant numbers are spread around many reports. The 2009 Annual Report (page 40) shows that for the past two years pulpwood sales have comprised 58 per cent of total revenue, while the 2009 Sustainability Report (page 24) shows for the same period pulpwood comprised 70 per cent of total wood volume sold.
This tells us two things: the average price paid by the forest industry for native forest sawlogs is little more than the price paid for pulpwood (based on prices, there is little difference in quality between hardwood sawlog and hardwood pulpwood); and without pulpwood harvesting, VicForests and the hardwood sawlog forest industry would not exist.
Based on these figures, the Victorian hardwood sawmilling industry doesn't seem to have a very commercial, profitable future without continuing government support and subsidy.
13 September, 2010
Gunns announcement turns activists to Eden
ABC Online, Monday 13 September 2010
Environmentalists say a recent announcement by the Tasmanian company Gunns shows the days are numbered for a chipmill in South East New South Wales.
The timber giant says the forest industry has lost the debate on native logging, and the company plans to become a solely plantation-based business.
The anti-logging group Chip Busters says environmental activists will now shift their focus to other operations, starting with South East Fibre Exports at Eden.
The group's spokesman, Noel Plumb, says local MPs should assist the transition to plantations.
"It's critical that our local MPs step up here, and demand a share of the $20m currently available for industry restructuring," he said.
"Because there will be contractors who will now realise that the writing is on the wall."
Mr Plumb says the operation at Twofold Bay will be hit next.
"Native forest logging and woodchipping is not sustainable, and the future is in a plantation-based industry," he said.
"The pressure and the focus on woodchipping around the country will now move to other operations such as the Eden woodchip mill."
Source
Mumbulla State Forest logging site, north of Eden. (News Online: Thomas Oriti)
Environmentalists say a recent announcement by the Tasmanian company Gunns shows the days are numbered for a chipmill in South East New South Wales.
The timber giant says the forest industry has lost the debate on native logging, and the company plans to become a solely plantation-based business.
The anti-logging group Chip Busters says environmental activists will now shift their focus to other operations, starting with South East Fibre Exports at Eden.
The group's spokesman, Noel Plumb, says local MPs should assist the transition to plantations.
"It's critical that our local MPs step up here, and demand a share of the $20m currently available for industry restructuring," he said.
"Because there will be contractors who will now realise that the writing is on the wall."
Mr Plumb says the operation at Twofold Bay will be hit next.
"Native forest logging and woodchipping is not sustainable, and the future is in a plantation-based industry," he said.
"The pressure and the focus on woodchipping around the country will now move to other operations such as the Eden woodchip mill."
Source
12 September, 2010
Victoria no longer in Gunns' sights
Melissa Fyfe
The Age (article), September 12, 2010
Timber giant Gunns, a major player in Victoria's $3billion native forest industry, has confirmed it will move out of logging operations in state-owned forests.
Gunns chief executive officer Greg L'Estrange - responsible for 40 per cent of Victoria's native forest industry - told The Sunday Age that while moving out of Tasmania's native forests was the priority, the principle also applied long-term to Victoria.
The Victorian Greens have seized on the move and called on the Brumby Government to immediately end native forest logging and transfer the industry into plantations. The party will be campaigning on the issue in the lead-up to November's state poll. ''It should have stopped ages ago,'' said Greens candidate for Melbourne Brian Walters. ''There's no reason it can't stop immediately.''
But the Victorian Association of Forest Industries vowed to fight the Greens on native forest logging, making the issue a key battleground in the lead-up to November. Executive director Philip Dalidakis conceded that the Gunns decision had ''the potential to establish a precedent in the public mind''.
But he said the company was pursuing its own corporate strategy, which had little to do with a broader industry strategy, appropriate government policy or responsible forest management.
Shutting down Victoria's native forest logging would increase imports of timber products harvested under irresponsible environmental regimes, he said. ''This is environmental hypocrisy at its worst. The Greens have argued against native forestry and recently against plantation development, which makes me wonder which magic potion will appear to produce the wood and paper products consumers demand,'' said Mr Dalidakis.
The Sunday Age understands the Brumby Government is keen to bolster its environmental credentials before the state election by announcing a small reduction in native forest logging. Party strategists are believed to be currently looking at some of the controversial logging operations in Melbourne's water catchments.
Both Labor and the Coalition back Victoria's native forest industry, which is managed, on behalf of the taxpayer, by VicForests and provides one third of the state's timber. Government spokeswoman Emma Tyner said yesterday that any bans on the industry would mean unsustainable options such as ''steel, aluminium or illegal timber from overseas'' and that was ''unacceptable''.
Opposition environment spokeswoman Mary Wooldridge said the Coalition supported a vibrant logging industry. She said the party believed it was not possible for native forest logging operations to move entirely into plantations because there were simply not enough plantations to support the industry.
In the past few years, Tasmanian-based Gunns has built up its stake in Victoria's logging industry, with large sawmilling assets at Heyfield and Alexandra. Mr L'Estrange said it was difficult in Victoria to transfer to plantations because the plantation trees are mostly in the state's south-west, far from its sawmills.
Nevertheless, the company had taken on a broad policy of removing itself from native forests. ''There are no immediate plans for Victoria, but what we are saying is that we are progressively moving out of native forest logging. The first thing on the agenda, however, is to deal with what is happening in Tasmania,'' he said.
Mr L'Estrange stressed that no decision had been taken on Gunns' Victorian assets, and the broader fate of native forest logging would remain in the hands of the community and the government. Mr L'Estrange shocked the Australian logging industry last week when he announced that ''native forest is not part of our future''.
The new-look Gunns, following the departure of controversial leader John Gay, is keen to reduce the conflict around its operations in Tasmania to satisfy overseas investors and customers and to ensure its controversial pulp mill goes ahead.
The environment movement have long argued that woodchips for paper - and not the high-quality sawlog products - drive the Victorian industry. The industry says that while woodchips make up 65 per cent of products from the state's forests, sawlogs drive the industry and woodchips are largely a by-product.
Plantations in Victoria are growing every year, but the industry says there are not enough sawlog plantations - as opposed to woodchip plantations for paper production - to allow the move out of native forests into plantations. According to the government's timber strategy, about 730,000 hectares in eastern Victoria, or 9 per cent of the public native forests estate, is available for timber production.
There are 229,000 hectares of hardwood plantations in Victoria for short-rotation, high-quality woodchips and 222,000 hectares of plantation for sawlogs and woodchips.
Source.
External links
The Age (article), September 12, 2010
Timber giant Gunns, a major player in Victoria's $3billion native forest industry, has confirmed it will move out of logging operations in state-owned forests.
Gunns chief executive officer Greg L'Estrange - responsible for 40 per cent of Victoria's native forest industry - told The Sunday Age that while moving out of Tasmania's native forests was the priority, the principle also applied long-term to Victoria.
The Victorian Greens have seized on the move and called on the Brumby Government to immediately end native forest logging and transfer the industry into plantations. The party will be campaigning on the issue in the lead-up to November's state poll. ''It should have stopped ages ago,'' said Greens candidate for Melbourne Brian Walters. ''There's no reason it can't stop immediately.''
But the Victorian Association of Forest Industries vowed to fight the Greens on native forest logging, making the issue a key battleground in the lead-up to November. Executive director Philip Dalidakis conceded that the Gunns decision had ''the potential to establish a precedent in the public mind''.
But he said the company was pursuing its own corporate strategy, which had little to do with a broader industry strategy, appropriate government policy or responsible forest management.
Shutting down Victoria's native forest logging would increase imports of timber products harvested under irresponsible environmental regimes, he said. ''This is environmental hypocrisy at its worst. The Greens have argued against native forestry and recently against plantation development, which makes me wonder which magic potion will appear to produce the wood and paper products consumers demand,'' said Mr Dalidakis.
The Sunday Age understands the Brumby Government is keen to bolster its environmental credentials before the state election by announcing a small reduction in native forest logging. Party strategists are believed to be currently looking at some of the controversial logging operations in Melbourne's water catchments.
Both Labor and the Coalition back Victoria's native forest industry, which is managed, on behalf of the taxpayer, by VicForests and provides one third of the state's timber. Government spokeswoman Emma Tyner said yesterday that any bans on the industry would mean unsustainable options such as ''steel, aluminium or illegal timber from overseas'' and that was ''unacceptable''.
Opposition environment spokeswoman Mary Wooldridge said the Coalition supported a vibrant logging industry. She said the party believed it was not possible for native forest logging operations to move entirely into plantations because there were simply not enough plantations to support the industry.
In the past few years, Tasmanian-based Gunns has built up its stake in Victoria's logging industry, with large sawmilling assets at Heyfield and Alexandra. Mr L'Estrange said it was difficult in Victoria to transfer to plantations because the plantation trees are mostly in the state's south-west, far from its sawmills.
Nevertheless, the company had taken on a broad policy of removing itself from native forests. ''There are no immediate plans for Victoria, but what we are saying is that we are progressively moving out of native forest logging. The first thing on the agenda, however, is to deal with what is happening in Tasmania,'' he said.
Mr L'Estrange stressed that no decision had been taken on Gunns' Victorian assets, and the broader fate of native forest logging would remain in the hands of the community and the government. Mr L'Estrange shocked the Australian logging industry last week when he announced that ''native forest is not part of our future''.
The new-look Gunns, following the departure of controversial leader John Gay, is keen to reduce the conflict around its operations in Tasmania to satisfy overseas investors and customers and to ensure its controversial pulp mill goes ahead.
The environment movement have long argued that woodchips for paper - and not the high-quality sawlog products - drive the Victorian industry. The industry says that while woodchips make up 65 per cent of products from the state's forests, sawlogs drive the industry and woodchips are largely a by-product.
Plantations in Victoria are growing every year, but the industry says there are not enough sawlog plantations - as opposed to woodchip plantations for paper production - to allow the move out of native forests into plantations. According to the government's timber strategy, about 730,000 hectares in eastern Victoria, or 9 per cent of the public native forests estate, is available for timber production.
There are 229,000 hectares of hardwood plantations in Victoria for short-rotation, high-quality woodchips and 222,000 hectares of plantation for sawlogs and woodchips.
Source.
External links
- Time for loggers to leave Victoria's forests, Brian Walters
11 September, 2010
Loggers' assault a 'rampage'
Andrew Darby
The Age, September 11, 2010
THREE forest workers have been convicted of a violent assault that marked a low point in Tasmania's old growth logging dispute.
The assault on blockaders in the contentious Upper Florentine Valley made global internet viewing when it was captured by a hidden camera. A Hobart magistrate yesterday described the assault, using a sledgehammer and steel-capped boots, as akin to a rampage.
Peter Barker, counsel for logging contractor Rodney Howells, 51, said Howells ''lost it'' when he found a disabled car blockading the road into a Florentine Valley logging coupe, with two protesters inside.
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A video of the incident, shot from a concealed position by another protester, was described by magistrate Olivia McTaggart as confronting in its violence.
Howells beat the car with a sledgehammer, smashing its windows, as he demanded the protesters inside get out of his way. When Nishant Datt, 22, and Miranda Gibson, 27, got out of the car Jeremy Eizell, 36, grabbed Datt and threw him to the ground, and Terrence Pearce, 34, kicked him to the head. Both men worked for Howells.
Ms McTaggart said the protest was carefully staged to stop workers proceeding with their legitimate activities, and she accepted that Howells was very remorseful.
But she said they were not entitled to deliver their remedy, which was a frightening experience for the protesters. Convictions were recorded on assault charges for all three, and each was ordered to carry out 70 hours of community service.
The court heard that Howells was the victim of an unsolved 2002 sabotage, when five of his machines, worth up to $3 million, were wrecked and burnt in a logging coupe.
Mr Barker said Howells and his work crew had been repeatedly prevented by environmentalists from carrying out their job under contract to timber company Gunns before the October 21, 2008, assault.
''He and other contractors have become pawns in a dispute between environmentalists and the timber industry,'' he said.
A spokeswoman for the protest group, Still Wild Still Threatened, Ula Majewski, said it was time to move on from the case.
''This was really symptomatic of the conflict that has dogged Tasmanian forests for decades,'' Ms Majewski said. ''We are now on the threshold of agreement on a sustainable industry that preserves our truly beautiful wild forests.''
The court decision came just a day after Gunns's chief executive, Greg L'Estrange, declared loggers had lost the public battle for the right to log native forests.
''We will find joint solutions to age-old conflicts and move beyond [to] a real, sustainable forest industry,'' Mr L'Estrange told a trade conference in Melbourne.
Source
The Age, September 11, 2010
THREE forest workers have been convicted of a violent assault that marked a low point in Tasmania's old growth logging dispute.
The assault on blockaders in the contentious Upper Florentine Valley made global internet viewing when it was captured by a hidden camera. A Hobart magistrate yesterday described the assault, using a sledgehammer and steel-capped boots, as akin to a rampage.
Peter Barker, counsel for logging contractor Rodney Howells, 51, said Howells ''lost it'' when he found a disabled car blockading the road into a Florentine Valley logging coupe, with two protesters inside.
Advertisement: Story continues below
A video of the incident, shot from a concealed position by another protester, was described by magistrate Olivia McTaggart as confronting in its violence.
Howells beat the car with a sledgehammer, smashing its windows, as he demanded the protesters inside get out of his way. When Nishant Datt, 22, and Miranda Gibson, 27, got out of the car Jeremy Eizell, 36, grabbed Datt and threw him to the ground, and Terrence Pearce, 34, kicked him to the head. Both men worked for Howells.
Ms McTaggart said the protest was carefully staged to stop workers proceeding with their legitimate activities, and she accepted that Howells was very remorseful.
But she said they were not entitled to deliver their remedy, which was a frightening experience for the protesters. Convictions were recorded on assault charges for all three, and each was ordered to carry out 70 hours of community service.
The court heard that Howells was the victim of an unsolved 2002 sabotage, when five of his machines, worth up to $3 million, were wrecked and burnt in a logging coupe.
Mr Barker said Howells and his work crew had been repeatedly prevented by environmentalists from carrying out their job under contract to timber company Gunns before the October 21, 2008, assault.
''He and other contractors have become pawns in a dispute between environmentalists and the timber industry,'' he said.
A spokeswoman for the protest group, Still Wild Still Threatened, Ula Majewski, said it was time to move on from the case.
''This was really symptomatic of the conflict that has dogged Tasmanian forests for decades,'' Ms Majewski said. ''We are now on the threshold of agreement on a sustainable industry that preserves our truly beautiful wild forests.''
The court decision came just a day after Gunns's chief executive, Greg L'Estrange, declared loggers had lost the public battle for the right to log native forests.
''We will find joint solutions to age-old conflicts and move beyond [to] a real, sustainable forest industry,'' Mr L'Estrange told a trade conference in Melbourne.
Source
Time of reckoning
Jill Redwood, co-ordinator, Environment East Gippsland Inc, Goongerah
The Age (Letter), 11 September 2010
WHY have governments fought so hard against public opinion on logging and woodchipping native forests? Gunns has finally succumbed to the moral argument and the demands of the market, but will Mr Brumby also move into the security of plantations and into the 21st century? He will look terribly backward if his government resists.
To continue to support forest destruction at a time of extreme climate conditions and carbon constraint is backward.
In the Supreme Court last month, logging was shown to be a threat to Victoria's endangered wildlife. It has also been shown to dry out water catchments, require subsidies, be unpopular and account for 20 per cent of our annual greenhouse pollution. Now that the logging union and Gunns are happy to move out of native forests, will our Labor government stop supporting the conflict and do what 80 per cent of the voters want - get out of native forests.
The Age (Letter), 11 September 2010
WHY have governments fought so hard against public opinion on logging and woodchipping native forests? Gunns has finally succumbed to the moral argument and the demands of the market, but will Mr Brumby also move into the security of plantations and into the 21st century? He will look terribly backward if his government resists.
To continue to support forest destruction at a time of extreme climate conditions and carbon constraint is backward.
In the Supreme Court last month, logging was shown to be a threat to Victoria's endangered wildlife. It has also been shown to dry out water catchments, require subsidies, be unpopular and account for 20 per cent of our annual greenhouse pollution. Now that the logging union and Gunns are happy to move out of native forests, will our Labor government stop supporting the conflict and do what 80 per cent of the voters want - get out of native forests.
No hollows and no food left for wildlife
Sarah Rees, MyEnvironment Inc, Healesville
The Age (Letter), 11 September 2010
AS SPECIES reach extinction point in the fire-affected forests of the Central Highlands, 80 kilometres from Melbourne, timber giant Gunns has conceded it's finally over (''Timber giant concedes defeat in decades-old logging war'', The Age, 10/9).
Gunns will rebuild its brand with new ventures in plantations but for the species whose future they robbed, surviving in post-fire, salvage-logged landscapes, the trajectory is not so positive. No hollows, no homes, no food.
The logging has scraped the last of the Leadbeater's possum's fragmented habitat into piles of poor sawlog and pulp logs that has, with gross subsidy, won a profit for the state's loggers, VicForests.
Well done, Gunns, for exiting, but now the real work begins for John Brumby, as it has been under his policy that Victoria's faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, has been committed to likely extinction.
The Age (Letter), 11 September 2010
AS SPECIES reach extinction point in the fire-affected forests of the Central Highlands, 80 kilometres from Melbourne, timber giant Gunns has conceded it's finally over (''Timber giant concedes defeat in decades-old logging war'', The Age, 10/9).
Gunns will rebuild its brand with new ventures in plantations but for the species whose future they robbed, surviving in post-fire, salvage-logged landscapes, the trajectory is not so positive. No hollows, no homes, no food.
The logging has scraped the last of the Leadbeater's possum's fragmented habitat into piles of poor sawlog and pulp logs that has, with gross subsidy, won a profit for the state's loggers, VicForests.
Well done, Gunns, for exiting, but now the real work begins for John Brumby, as it has been under his policy that Victoria's faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, has been committed to likely extinction.
10 September, 2010
Gunns exits native forests, they should now be protected in Tasmania, NSW and Victoria
Peter Campbell
Letter submitted to The Age, 10 September 2010
Gunns has exited from logging native forests in Tasmania, and have stated that "native forest is not part of our future" and that they are moving to a plantation-based business.
Gunns acknowledged that the vast majority of Australians want their native forests protected.
However, Tasmanian native forests, and native forests in Victoria and New South Wales, are not protected from logging as a result of this.
The Victorian Labor government promised in 2006 to "immediately protect remaining significant stands of old growth forest currently available for timber harvesting" but they have not yet done so.
The 40,000 hectares of "forest" they did commit to protect included low quality regrowth forest and even some cow paddocks. They did not protect other designated old growth forests such as Brown Mountain.
Following legal action by Environment East Gippsland, the Victorian Supreme Court ruled that Brown Mountain forest must be protected due to the presence of endangered species and the requirements of the law, and found the Victorian Government and Vicforests to be at fault.
It is now up to state and federal governments to recognised the will of the people and ensure that remaining native forests are protected and that the logging and woodchip industries fully transition to plantation resources.
The very significant benefits in protecting our remaining native forests include preserving their biodiversity, safeguarding the carbon they store and the water they produce, and providing an excellent resource for local and international eco-tourism.
Links
Timber giant concedes defeat in decades-old logging war
Paddy Manning and Andrew Darby
The Age (article), September 10, 2010
TIMBER giant Gunns has broken ranks with Tasmania's forest industry and confirmed it will pull out of native forest logging altogether.
In a massive win for the environmental movement, Gunns revealed it would quit the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, which was arguing for a continuation of native forest logging in the state.
Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange told The Age the company's future lay in plantation hardwoods and softwoods and processing of forest products.
"Native forest is not part of our future," he said. "We see that the conflict largely has to end. Our employees and the communities we operate in have been collateral damage to this process. We want to move our business to a plantation-based business."
Mr L'Estrange said Gunns wanted a constructive outcome to the forestry negotiations and the company would take in ideas from "all parties". "A lot of good ideas can come from the people we used to throw rocks and brickbats at," he said.
The announcement was made at a conference in Melbourne yesterday, where Mr L'Estrange effectively conceded defeat in the decades-old war over Tasmania's native forests.
"The vast support of the Australian population is with the environmental non-government organisations," he said.
Gunns and Tasmania's environment movement have been long-time foes, culminating in a bitter five-year lawsuit brought by the company against 20 conservationists, including Greens leader Bob Brown. The case was finally settled early this year.
Mr L'Estrange has been repositioning Gunns since taking over from predecessor John Gay. Mr Gay was ousted earlier this year after he lost investor confidence when he sold $2 million worth of Gunns shares just weeks before unveiling a 98 per cent drop in profit in the six months to December 2009. Mr Gay has since resigned from the company's board and has also ceased his involvement with Gunns's controversial $2 billion Bell Bay pulp mill.
To finance the proposed mill, Gunns needs to attract foreign investment and has partnered with Swedish forest company Sodra, which is insisting the mill meet world's best practice environmental standards and rely on plantation timber. The mill, which requires federal approval, is still opposed in Tasmania on environmental grounds.
Australian Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said Gunns should receive compensation if it pulled out of wood supply deals with state agency Forestry Tasmania. "If Gunns pulls out there is potential to save a huge amount of forest," she said. "We want that forest protected, not on-sold."
Senator Milne said Gunns's move left Forestry Tasmania and the rest of the native forest logging industry "far behind".
Source
TIMBER giant Gunns has broken ranks with Tasmania's forest industry and confirmed it will pull out of native forest logging altogether.
In a massive win for the environmental movement, Gunns revealed it would quit the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, which was arguing for a continuation of native forest logging in the state.
Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange told The Age the company's future lay in plantation hardwoods and softwoods and processing of forest products.
"Native forest is not part of our future," he said. "We see that the conflict largely has to end. Our employees and the communities we operate in have been collateral damage to this process. We want to move our business to a plantation-based business."
Mr L'Estrange said Gunns wanted a constructive outcome to the forestry negotiations and the company would take in ideas from "all parties". "A lot of good ideas can come from the people we used to throw rocks and brickbats at," he said.
The announcement was made at a conference in Melbourne yesterday, where Mr L'Estrange effectively conceded defeat in the decades-old war over Tasmania's native forests.
"The vast support of the Australian population is with the environmental non-government organisations," he said.
Gunns and Tasmania's environment movement have been long-time foes, culminating in a bitter five-year lawsuit brought by the company against 20 conservationists, including Greens leader Bob Brown. The case was finally settled early this year.
Mr L'Estrange has been repositioning Gunns since taking over from predecessor John Gay. Mr Gay was ousted earlier this year after he lost investor confidence when he sold $2 million worth of Gunns shares just weeks before unveiling a 98 per cent drop in profit in the six months to December 2009. Mr Gay has since resigned from the company's board and has also ceased his involvement with Gunns's controversial $2 billion Bell Bay pulp mill.
To finance the proposed mill, Gunns needs to attract foreign investment and has partnered with Swedish forest company Sodra, which is insisting the mill meet world's best practice environmental standards and rely on plantation timber. The mill, which requires federal approval, is still opposed in Tasmania on environmental grounds.
Australian Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said Gunns should receive compensation if it pulled out of wood supply deals with state agency Forestry Tasmania. "If Gunns pulls out there is potential to save a huge amount of forest," she said. "We want that forest protected, not on-sold."
Senator Milne said Gunns's move left Forestry Tasmania and the rest of the native forest logging industry "far behind".
Source
09 September, 2010
Gunns breaks silence on FIAT split
9 September 2010, ABC online
The head of timber giant Gunns Limited has spoken publicly about why the company is severing its ties with the state's most influential forest industry lobby group.
It has been revealed Gunns is quitting the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania.
The company's departure undermines the association's finances and powerbase, as forestry peace talks continue with environmentalists.
Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange was asked about the spilt at a forest industry conference in Melbourne today.
"It's one of those things you normally do quietly and have those conversations with the industry," he said.
"As you would have heard today we have a certain path that we are taking our organisation on and we've made those decisions taking all of those things into account."
Mr L'Estrange says the forest industry has lost the public debate on logging.
He has called for an end to the so-called war between the industry and environmentalists.
He said there had been a decline in the public demand for wood products and he reiterated Gunns' intention to become a plantation only business, urging others to follow suit.
He told the conference that most Australians now support the environmental lobby.
"The vast support of the Australian population is with the environmental non-government organisations," he said.
"This commands them to work with them to create a future without this conflict that moves them from being in opposition for our products and processes, to being supportive.
"This may well mean transitioning to plantation but move we must.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/09/3007304.htm
The head of timber giant Gunns Limited has spoken publicly about why the company is severing its ties with the state's most influential forest industry lobby group.
It has been revealed Gunns is quitting the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania.
The company's departure undermines the association's finances and powerbase, as forestry peace talks continue with environmentalists.
Gunns chief executive Greg L'Estrange was asked about the spilt at a forest industry conference in Melbourne today.
"It's one of those things you normally do quietly and have those conversations with the industry," he said.
"As you would have heard today we have a certain path that we are taking our organisation on and we've made those decisions taking all of those things into account."
Mr L'Estrange says the forest industry has lost the public debate on logging.
He has called for an end to the so-called war between the industry and environmentalists.
He said there had been a decline in the public demand for wood products and he reiterated Gunns' intention to become a plantation only business, urging others to follow suit.
He told the conference that most Australians now support the environmental lobby.
"The vast support of the Australian population is with the environmental non-government organisations," he said.
"This commands them to work with them to create a future without this conflict that moves them from being in opposition for our products and processes, to being supportive.
"This may well mean transitioning to plantation but move we must.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/09/3007304.htm
04 September, 2010
Where the wild things are
Anna Krien
The Age (article), September 4, 2010
I'M AT the National Park Hotel on the road to Maydena, the last town before the Florentine and Styx valleys. It is dark when I walk in and order a beer at the bar. Ignoring the hush, I try to act as if I always walk into pubs full of men in the middle of nowhere. Perched on a barstool, I flick nonchalantly through the paper - but as I scan the front page, I realise my timing is unfortunate.
"Isn't that the river I just drove over?" I asked the barman, holding up the front page. It shows a photo of an Asian girl alongside a picture of the Tyenna River. The barman jerks his head.
"Yes, but it wasn't any of us."
A voice behind me chips in. "Definitely not us. That's a stupid place to put a body. I mean, there's hundreds of mine shafts around here."
I turn around, but there are too many eyes looking at me expectantly and I can't figure out who spoke. I nod slowly and read through the article. Police have arrested two Hobart men after discovering the girl early this morning, her body weighed down by rocks in the shallows.
"Are you a greenie?" another voice calls out, startling me. I spin around quickly this time and catch the speaker, a young man wearing an orange high-visibility top and blue pants; he falls back behind his mates as if to share around responsibility for his question. A couple of girls have walked in to buy a six-pack of sweetened mixers and they pause to look at me. I shrug.
"I dunno. Are you?"
His mates semi-shriek and fall over themselves, while he puffs himself up.
"No way!"
I tell them I'm a writer and that I've been staying at the Florentine blockade up the road. The men recoil.
"They stink, don't you reckon?" says a fella in a hi-vis fleece jumper. "They smell disgusting." I don't answer. "Go on, admit it, they stink. If one were sitting right there, would you sit next to them?"I say I would and the men scream with horror.
"No way! Go on, admit it. They smell," another pitches in.
"Well, yeah," I begin tentatively, "they've got their own …" But before I can finish, they're clapping and cheering.
"She admits it! She thinks they stink!"
I start to laugh, giving in. "OK, some can smell a bit gross, but I reckon Lynx deodorant and most women's perfume stinks as well."
Some of the men nod sagely. Others are giddy with joy that they've made me say it.
I look around. It's an OK pub. Stickers are plastered all over the walls, the usual "I love beer, shooting and f---ing"jokes ("Credit is like sex - some get it, some don't," I spy above the door). It's perhaps a little too antiquated, cashing in on the "Oh, aren't we oddballs, us Tasmanians"theme for the tourists. But at least it makes an effort to charm, unlike the other pubs I've seen on the island, renovated with rows of pokie machines and shrieking metal chairs. I look up at the dinner menu on a blackboard. I want to order a vegetable pattie but worry it will condemn me to "greenie-yuppie" status. Asking for a salad roll can be fraught with danger down here. When I asked for one at a cafe in New Norfolk, the woman behind the counter looked at me with suspicion and asked, "You want ham, chicken or beef with that?"
I order fish and chips, silently apologising to my stomach. I hate meals that are all yellow.
When my meal arrives, a parmigiana is plonked down in front of the man beside me. He introduces himself as John, and tells me he is a tree-faller, a subcontractor in a harvesting team in the Styx Valley. Fallers are among the few who still touch the trees before they fall. If a tree is too difficult to cut with the jerky outstretched arm of a machine, the faller steps in with a hand-held chainsaw and with a series of cuts can make it fall away from the crew. "You can tell the fallers," one activist told me earlier. "They're the skinny ones. The rest are fat from sitting in machines all day." John isn't skinny, but he isn't fat either.
"We're also the 'sawlog chasers'," he explains; they trim the tops, branches and butts off felled trees and separate any sawlogs from the stem - the straight, wide logs suitable for boards rather than pulping.
A big man with blond hair, John is in his early 30s. He was a shearer before he got into falling, but his current occupation runs in the family. "My grandpa did it, my father too, but he got out after Gunns took control of everything. Said it was too much of a monopoly."
John stayed in the game. His family lives in Buckland on the east coast, a few hours' drive across the island from the Styx Valley. He commutes to work, living at this pub during the week and at home on weekends. "I'm trying to get the boss to give me a portion of his fuel subsidy," he tells me. "But it's not looking good."
John is a thoughtful presence amid the fluoro rowdiness. As we chat, there are times I think he hasn't heard me he is quiet for so long. I ask him about the activists.
"It's the weirdest thing," he says slowly, two beers between us. "You come to work and there they are. One dressed as an eagle, another looking like she wants to tear your eyes out, and then they try to talk to us as if this is normal."
John is part of a small "bush crew", contracted by Forestry Tasmania to fell a coupe and haul the timber to a mill. "[The protesters] tell you to call the police and FT, so you have to drive back in to phone reception, and then the boss tells us to go back - and then they want to talk to you all mate-like. Offering us cups of tea and bullshit like that. I mean, f--- , we're here to work, not to have a chat."
He shakes his head and says again, "It's the weirdest thing. You see them barefoot on top of a machine or tree, and there's a frost and they're dancing round, singing - they're f---ing crazy."
For many of the activists at the Florentine blockade, it's woodchips they have the biggest problem with, the turning of whole hectares of forest into mulch. I am told repeatedly that sawlogs account for only a small portion of the industry's output. They are cynical about the industry's claims that sawlogs are their top priority.
When I put this to John, he looks genuinely confused.
"It's the cream of the crop. I'd have to be stupid to send a sawlog to the chipper. What's left over goes to woodchips."
I tell John what the activists at the Florentine told me: 80 to 90 per cent of the forest felled there will go to the chipper.
"Yeah, but sawlogs are the prime cut," he insists.
LIKE a carcass in an abattoir, the forest is divvied into cuts. But unlike a cow that couldn't live without its T-bone, perhaps a forest could be left standing and just its prime cuts removed? John considers this for a while before answering cautiously.
"In regrowth forest, selective logging would be possible, but in old-growth it would be way too dangerous. You'd have to clear-fell." John already has the most dangerous job in the industry, and the most under-represented. When I ask him who in all the forestry brouhaha speaks for him, he again goes quiet, as if fishing in some dark place for an answer.
"Not Ferdie Kroon [CEO of the Forest Contractors Association], that bastard loves himself. And Barry Chipman, he's a wanker. I mean, who is Chipman? He is quoted in every bloody news item but I've never
seen him [Chipman is the Tasmanian spokesman for Timber Communities Australia, an industry group]." John laughs out loud. "And now Brant Webb is
running for election. What a goose."
Webb became famous when he and another miner were trapped in the Beaconsfield mine for two weeks. Their survival story made headlines around the world; they even appeared on Oprah.
As we talk, advertisements play on the television above the bar. There's one promoting Forestry Tasmania, another publicising a "Walk Against Warming" to be held in the Upper Florentine. A tourist on a nearby barstool overhears our conversation and starts to talk to the man behind the bar about the logging of old-growth forests.
"We used to go into the pub and say we were loggers," John tells me. "Now we keep quiet if we don't know the place. It's intimidating. I wanted to go see Johnny Diesel play in Hobart last month, but he was at the Republic Bar and I just thought I'd stand out like a sore thumb."
Around us, there's a hum in the room, fuelled by talk of timber. A younger logger leans between us to listen. Boyish, he gains confidence as more men gather. Pulling out a mobile phone, he shows me videos of working in the forest - skidders going back and forth, timber being dragged to a landing, trees falling over.
John eyes him and says with a dry smile, "When have you got time to do this, Mitch? Shouldn't you be working?"
Mitch laughs and shows another clip to a man standing near us.
"Oh, I reckon she would have already seen that one, mate," the man says knowingly. Curious, I lean over. It's the video of the car being smashed with Nish and Miranda inside it. Mitch must have downloaded it on to his phone. I wonder how many times he's watched it. He giggles as he replays it for me. I look at the faces around me, wondering who might be one of the blurry bodies in the video.
I ask John what he does when protesters come into a coupe he's working in.
"I try to keep out of it. Just don't say anything. But there was this one time we'd started logging a coupe in the Styx, 10F, and this woman she came out of nowhere and was going crazy at us. She was sobbing, a thirty-something-year-old woman, sobbing over a few trees. I was pretty rude to her, I could have dealt with that better."
Again I ask John about clear-felling. "It's the safest way in the old forests," he says. But what about all the potential sawlogs that go to the chipper before they've grown? Isn't that your future yield? John is quiet.
But then Leon, the pub owner, appears behind the bar. Leon is a retired logger himself, and John snaps up his head. "It would be OK if you guys didn't cut everything in the '70s."
A small round man with white hair and glasses, Leon barks back: "That's not true - we did a good job around Triabunna. All the wood was rotten, so we cleared it and reseeded."
John shakes his head accusingly. "That's bullshit. There was good wood in there."
"No, it was all rotten, John, I'm telling you."
"Good wood and you guys cut it all for the chipper. So now we're two generations behind."
I'm not sure what I've started. The man sitting on the other side of me winks and says in my ear, "Who needs an activist?"
Further down the bar, another man puts his beer down and says loudly, "I recommend that everyone shut their mouths and not say another word to this woman."
There's a silence. I lean forward to look at him properly. He's wearing a fluorescent orange jacket, and has closely cropped hair and a pointy face that almost fits into his beer glass. "She'll take it all back to the Greens, to Bob Brown. Or you'll be on A Current Affair next week."
I protest. "C'mon, mate - I've got standards. Today Tonight, at least."
The man beside me says, "Lay off, Turk, she's OK." But the others are quietly looking me over more closely.
"So, whose side are you on?" asks John, leaning back, his blue eyes on me.
This is an extract from Anna Krien's Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania's Forests, published by Black Inc
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/where-the-wild-things-are-20100903-14uhd.html
The Age (article), September 4, 2010
I'M AT the National Park Hotel on the road to Maydena, the last town before the Florentine and Styx valleys. It is dark when I walk in and order a beer at the bar. Ignoring the hush, I try to act as if I always walk into pubs full of men in the middle of nowhere. Perched on a barstool, I flick nonchalantly through the paper - but as I scan the front page, I realise my timing is unfortunate.
"Isn't that the river I just drove over?" I asked the barman, holding up the front page. It shows a photo of an Asian girl alongside a picture of the Tyenna River. The barman jerks his head.
"Yes, but it wasn't any of us."
A voice behind me chips in. "Definitely not us. That's a stupid place to put a body. I mean, there's hundreds of mine shafts around here."
I turn around, but there are too many eyes looking at me expectantly and I can't figure out who spoke. I nod slowly and read through the article. Police have arrested two Hobart men after discovering the girl early this morning, her body weighed down by rocks in the shallows.
"Are you a greenie?" another voice calls out, startling me. I spin around quickly this time and catch the speaker, a young man wearing an orange high-visibility top and blue pants; he falls back behind his mates as if to share around responsibility for his question. A couple of girls have walked in to buy a six-pack of sweetened mixers and they pause to look at me. I shrug.
"I dunno. Are you?"
His mates semi-shriek and fall over themselves, while he puffs himself up.
"No way!"
I tell them I'm a writer and that I've been staying at the Florentine blockade up the road. The men recoil.
"They stink, don't you reckon?" says a fella in a hi-vis fleece jumper. "They smell disgusting." I don't answer. "Go on, admit it, they stink. If one were sitting right there, would you sit next to them?"I say I would and the men scream with horror.
"No way! Go on, admit it. They smell," another pitches in.
"Well, yeah," I begin tentatively, "they've got their own …" But before I can finish, they're clapping and cheering.
"She admits it! She thinks they stink!"
I start to laugh, giving in. "OK, some can smell a bit gross, but I reckon Lynx deodorant and most women's perfume stinks as well."
Some of the men nod sagely. Others are giddy with joy that they've made me say it.
I look around. It's an OK pub. Stickers are plastered all over the walls, the usual "I love beer, shooting and f---ing"jokes ("Credit is like sex - some get it, some don't," I spy above the door). It's perhaps a little too antiquated, cashing in on the "Oh, aren't we oddballs, us Tasmanians"theme for the tourists. But at least it makes an effort to charm, unlike the other pubs I've seen on the island, renovated with rows of pokie machines and shrieking metal chairs. I look up at the dinner menu on a blackboard. I want to order a vegetable pattie but worry it will condemn me to "greenie-yuppie" status. Asking for a salad roll can be fraught with danger down here. When I asked for one at a cafe in New Norfolk, the woman behind the counter looked at me with suspicion and asked, "You want ham, chicken or beef with that?"
I order fish and chips, silently apologising to my stomach. I hate meals that are all yellow.
When my meal arrives, a parmigiana is plonked down in front of the man beside me. He introduces himself as John, and tells me he is a tree-faller, a subcontractor in a harvesting team in the Styx Valley. Fallers are among the few who still touch the trees before they fall. If a tree is too difficult to cut with the jerky outstretched arm of a machine, the faller steps in with a hand-held chainsaw and with a series of cuts can make it fall away from the crew. "You can tell the fallers," one activist told me earlier. "They're the skinny ones. The rest are fat from sitting in machines all day." John isn't skinny, but he isn't fat either.
"We're also the 'sawlog chasers'," he explains; they trim the tops, branches and butts off felled trees and separate any sawlogs from the stem - the straight, wide logs suitable for boards rather than pulping.
A big man with blond hair, John is in his early 30s. He was a shearer before he got into falling, but his current occupation runs in the family. "My grandpa did it, my father too, but he got out after Gunns took control of everything. Said it was too much of a monopoly."
John stayed in the game. His family lives in Buckland on the east coast, a few hours' drive across the island from the Styx Valley. He commutes to work, living at this pub during the week and at home on weekends. "I'm trying to get the boss to give me a portion of his fuel subsidy," he tells me. "But it's not looking good."
John is a thoughtful presence amid the fluoro rowdiness. As we chat, there are times I think he hasn't heard me he is quiet for so long. I ask him about the activists.
"It's the weirdest thing," he says slowly, two beers between us. "You come to work and there they are. One dressed as an eagle, another looking like she wants to tear your eyes out, and then they try to talk to us as if this is normal."
John is part of a small "bush crew", contracted by Forestry Tasmania to fell a coupe and haul the timber to a mill. "[The protesters] tell you to call the police and FT, so you have to drive back in to phone reception, and then the boss tells us to go back - and then they want to talk to you all mate-like. Offering us cups of tea and bullshit like that. I mean, f--- , we're here to work, not to have a chat."
He shakes his head and says again, "It's the weirdest thing. You see them barefoot on top of a machine or tree, and there's a frost and they're dancing round, singing - they're f---ing crazy."
For many of the activists at the Florentine blockade, it's woodchips they have the biggest problem with, the turning of whole hectares of forest into mulch. I am told repeatedly that sawlogs account for only a small portion of the industry's output. They are cynical about the industry's claims that sawlogs are their top priority.
When I put this to John, he looks genuinely confused.
"It's the cream of the crop. I'd have to be stupid to send a sawlog to the chipper. What's left over goes to woodchips."
I tell John what the activists at the Florentine told me: 80 to 90 per cent of the forest felled there will go to the chipper.
"Yeah, but sawlogs are the prime cut," he insists.
LIKE a carcass in an abattoir, the forest is divvied into cuts. But unlike a cow that couldn't live without its T-bone, perhaps a forest could be left standing and just its prime cuts removed? John considers this for a while before answering cautiously.
"In regrowth forest, selective logging would be possible, but in old-growth it would be way too dangerous. You'd have to clear-fell." John already has the most dangerous job in the industry, and the most under-represented. When I ask him who in all the forestry brouhaha speaks for him, he again goes quiet, as if fishing in some dark place for an answer.
"Not Ferdie Kroon [CEO of the Forest Contractors Association], that bastard loves himself. And Barry Chipman, he's a wanker. I mean, who is Chipman? He is quoted in every bloody news item but I've never
seen him [Chipman is the Tasmanian spokesman for Timber Communities Australia, an industry group]." John laughs out loud. "And now Brant Webb is
running for election. What a goose."
Webb became famous when he and another miner were trapped in the Beaconsfield mine for two weeks. Their survival story made headlines around the world; they even appeared on Oprah.
As we talk, advertisements play on the television above the bar. There's one promoting Forestry Tasmania, another publicising a "Walk Against Warming" to be held in the Upper Florentine. A tourist on a nearby barstool overhears our conversation and starts to talk to the man behind the bar about the logging of old-growth forests.
"We used to go into the pub and say we were loggers," John tells me. "Now we keep quiet if we don't know the place. It's intimidating. I wanted to go see Johnny Diesel play in Hobart last month, but he was at the Republic Bar and I just thought I'd stand out like a sore thumb."
Around us, there's a hum in the room, fuelled by talk of timber. A younger logger leans between us to listen. Boyish, he gains confidence as more men gather. Pulling out a mobile phone, he shows me videos of working in the forest - skidders going back and forth, timber being dragged to a landing, trees falling over.
John eyes him and says with a dry smile, "When have you got time to do this, Mitch? Shouldn't you be working?"
Mitch laughs and shows another clip to a man standing near us.
"Oh, I reckon she would have already seen that one, mate," the man says knowingly. Curious, I lean over. It's the video of the car being smashed with Nish and Miranda inside it. Mitch must have downloaded it on to his phone. I wonder how many times he's watched it. He giggles as he replays it for me. I look at the faces around me, wondering who might be one of the blurry bodies in the video.
I ask John what he does when protesters come into a coupe he's working in.
"I try to keep out of it. Just don't say anything. But there was this one time we'd started logging a coupe in the Styx, 10F, and this woman she came out of nowhere and was going crazy at us. She was sobbing, a thirty-something-year-old woman, sobbing over a few trees. I was pretty rude to her, I could have dealt with that better."
Again I ask John about clear-felling. "It's the safest way in the old forests," he says. But what about all the potential sawlogs that go to the chipper before they've grown? Isn't that your future yield? John is quiet.
But then Leon, the pub owner, appears behind the bar. Leon is a retired logger himself, and John snaps up his head. "It would be OK if you guys didn't cut everything in the '70s."
A small round man with white hair and glasses, Leon barks back: "That's not true - we did a good job around Triabunna. All the wood was rotten, so we cleared it and reseeded."
John shakes his head accusingly. "That's bullshit. There was good wood in there."
"No, it was all rotten, John, I'm telling you."
"Good wood and you guys cut it all for the chipper. So now we're two generations behind."
I'm not sure what I've started. The man sitting on the other side of me winks and says in my ear, "Who needs an activist?"
Further down the bar, another man puts his beer down and says loudly, "I recommend that everyone shut their mouths and not say another word to this woman."
There's a silence. I lean forward to look at him properly. He's wearing a fluorescent orange jacket, and has closely cropped hair and a pointy face that almost fits into his beer glass. "She'll take it all back to the Greens, to Bob Brown. Or you'll be on A Current Affair next week."
I protest. "C'mon, mate - I've got standards. Today Tonight, at least."
The man beside me says, "Lay off, Turk, she's OK." But the others are quietly looking me over more closely.
"So, whose side are you on?" asks John, leaning back, his blue eyes on me.
This is an extract from Anna Krien's Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania's Forests, published by Black Inc
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/where-the-wild-things-are-20100903-14uhd.html
18 August, 2010
Forests NSW investigated over logging breaches
Ben Cubby, August 18, 2010
Sydney Morning Herald (article)
Source
Forests NSW is being forced to review its logging practices, after the discovery of a spate of new breaches including logging old-growth rainforests and destroying the habitat of threatened native animals.
The latest damage, at Girard State Forest near Tenterfield, is the fifth time in five months that the state agency has come under investigation.
The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, which oversees environmental protection licences, is conducting a joint audit with the agency of logging in the region.
The review will examine the regulations under which contractors are employed by Forests NSW, and rules protecting native wildlife, young trees and trees surrounding waterways.
The department has already handed out four penalty notices to the agency this year for breaking logging rules in the nearby Yabbra State Forest.
Damage in Girard State Forest was uncovered by a team of zoologists and botanists, working with an environment group, North East Forest Alliance.
It included a nine-hectare stand of mature trees, some of them two metres wide at ground level and 50 metres tall, which was part of a ''special prescription zone'' under the area's forestry agreement. This does not forbid logging, but requires contractors to "maintain or enhance the values that the area is zoned to protect".
The area was also part of Forests NSW's 1995 Tenterfield environmental impact statement, and part of one of the wildlife corridors the state government is striving to link up along the Great Dividing Range, from Queensland to Victoria.
Girard State Forest provides a home for koalas, stuttering frogs, sooty owls, powerful owls, golden-tipped bats and yellow-bellied gliders.
"Recent audits have exposed illegal logging of rainforest, wetlands, endangered ecological communities and now old-growth forest,'' said a spokesman for North East Forest Alliance, Dailan Pugh.
''These are what the regional forest agreement was meant to protect. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is in addition to systemic failures by Forests NSW to implement many of the measures required to protect threatened species and streams.''
Altogether, the report documented 24 recent breaches of a threatened species licence, 10 of an environmental protection licence, nine of a fisheries license and two of the site's integrated forestry operations approval.
Forests NSW, a public trading enterprise within the NSW Department of Primary Industries which plays a central role in the state's $1 billion timber industry, confirmed it was taking part in the joint audit.
''In addition, a compliance response team has been established to address these issues,'' the agency said in a statement.
''Forests NSW is committed to ensuring that the highest possible standards are maintained during harvest operations.''
The environment department said separate investigations into other breaches in Double Duke and Grange state forests were still under way.
''Once these investigations are complete and, if a pattern is identified, [the department] would consider further regulatory steps,'' a spokesman said.
Sydney Morning Herald (article)
Source
Forests NSW is being forced to review its logging practices, after the discovery of a spate of new breaches including logging old-growth rainforests and destroying the habitat of threatened native animals.
The latest damage, at Girard State Forest near Tenterfield, is the fifth time in five months that the state agency has come under investigation.
The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, which oversees environmental protection licences, is conducting a joint audit with the agency of logging in the region.
The review will examine the regulations under which contractors are employed by Forests NSW, and rules protecting native wildlife, young trees and trees surrounding waterways.
The department has already handed out four penalty notices to the agency this year for breaking logging rules in the nearby Yabbra State Forest.
Damage in Girard State Forest was uncovered by a team of zoologists and botanists, working with an environment group, North East Forest Alliance.
It included a nine-hectare stand of mature trees, some of them two metres wide at ground level and 50 metres tall, which was part of a ''special prescription zone'' under the area's forestry agreement. This does not forbid logging, but requires contractors to "maintain or enhance the values that the area is zoned to protect".
The area was also part of Forests NSW's 1995 Tenterfield environmental impact statement, and part of one of the wildlife corridors the state government is striving to link up along the Great Dividing Range, from Queensland to Victoria.
Girard State Forest provides a home for koalas, stuttering frogs, sooty owls, powerful owls, golden-tipped bats and yellow-bellied gliders.
"Recent audits have exposed illegal logging of rainforest, wetlands, endangered ecological communities and now old-growth forest,'' said a spokesman for North East Forest Alliance, Dailan Pugh.
''These are what the regional forest agreement was meant to protect. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is in addition to systemic failures by Forests NSW to implement many of the measures required to protect threatened species and streams.''
Altogether, the report documented 24 recent breaches of a threatened species licence, 10 of an environmental protection licence, nine of a fisheries license and two of the site's integrated forestry operations approval.
Forests NSW, a public trading enterprise within the NSW Department of Primary Industries which plays a central role in the state's $1 billion timber industry, confirmed it was taking part in the joint audit.
''In addition, a compliance response team has been established to address these issues,'' the agency said in a statement.
''Forests NSW is committed to ensuring that the highest possible standards are maintained during harvest operations.''
The environment department said separate investigations into other breaches in Double Duke and Grange state forests were still under way.
''Once these investigations are complete and, if a pattern is identified, [the department] would consider further regulatory steps,'' a spokesman said.
13 August, 2010
LETTER: Plantations the solution
John Renowden, Princes Hill
THE government must recognise that the community is overwhelmingly opposed to the continued woodchipping of our native forests. Modern forestry is destructive, with clear felling followed by intensely hot regeneration burns. These practices obliterate wildlife and convert natural forest into even-aged monocultures for industrial use. They are uneconomic and are subsidised by taxpayers. The time is long overdue to transition logging into plantations, which have sufficient wood to meet 90 per cent of our timber needs. Mr Brumby, respect the wishes of the broader community, and protect our forests for biodiversity, water and carbon storage.
The Age, August 13, 2010
THE government must recognise that the community is overwhelmingly opposed to the continued woodchipping of our native forests. Modern forestry is destructive, with clear felling followed by intensely hot regeneration burns. These practices obliterate wildlife and convert natural forest into even-aged monocultures for industrial use. They are uneconomic and are subsidised by taxpayers. The time is long overdue to transition logging into plantations, which have sufficient wood to meet 90 per cent of our timber needs. Mr Brumby, respect the wishes of the broader community, and protect our forests for biodiversity, water and carbon storage.
LETTER: Volunteers to the rescue
Chris Owens, Lysterfield South
The Age, August 13, 2010
IT IS now official. Protection of rare and endangered species now relies on volunteer organisations rather than governments. This case demonstrates how you can't find rare animals if you are not looking for them.
The only question now is: Will the Victorian government change the rules so the plunder can continue, as occurred in Tasmania?
LETTER: Signs there decades ago
Judith Wakeman, Templestowe
THOSE asserting that thousands of jobs will be lost and rural towns decimated by the decision to suspend logging should ask the forestry industry and state governments why they did not heed the recommendations of the Land Conservation Council review into East Gippsland in 1986, which stated that the industry was operating at twice the level required to ensure it was sustainable, and that the biggest threats to employment in the forestry industry were unsustainable practices and the development and implementation of methods aimed at greater efficiency.
The review also stated that the best hope for increasing employment opportunities was in the environmental education and tourism industries, provided they were properly supported.
These opportunities are undermined by logging activities.
Maybe this decision will open the door to an alternative future for Gippsland.
The Age, August 13, 2010
THOSE asserting that thousands of jobs will be lost and rural towns decimated by the decision to suspend logging should ask the forestry industry and state governments why they did not heed the recommendations of the Land Conservation Council review into East Gippsland in 1986, which stated that the industry was operating at twice the level required to ensure it was sustainable, and that the biggest threats to employment in the forestry industry were unsustainable practices and the development and implementation of methods aimed at greater efficiency.
The review also stated that the best hope for increasing employment opportunities was in the environmental education and tourism industries, provided they were properly supported.
These opportunities are undermined by logging activities.
Maybe this decision will open the door to an alternative future for Gippsland.
LETTER: The many faces of conservation
April Reside, North Ward, Qld
The Age, August 13, 2010
Source
As entrusted custodians of our environment and biota, we would hope that our government would act to protect our iconic endangered species. Sadly, this is not the case.
If it weren't for the community group Environment East Gippsland, rare and endangered species such as the long-footed potoroo would have seen their old-growth forest habitat on Brown Mountain destroyed long ago (''Greens hail win on logging'', The Age, 12/8). VicForests is aware that logging practices in Victoria are unsustainable.
Protecting forests is a pivotal conservation issue, with many states banning land clearing. However, protecting forests is not just an endangered-species issue: it is a water conservation issue, a carbon issue, a tourism issue and a community issue. This landmark case will hopefully show the government that the community will hold it accountable.
The Age, August 13, 2010
Source
As entrusted custodians of our environment and biota, we would hope that our government would act to protect our iconic endangered species. Sadly, this is not the case.
If it weren't for the community group Environment East Gippsland, rare and endangered species such as the long-footed potoroo would have seen their old-growth forest habitat on Brown Mountain destroyed long ago (''Greens hail win on logging'', The Age, 12/8). VicForests is aware that logging practices in Victoria are unsustainable.
Protecting forests is a pivotal conservation issue, with many states banning land clearing. However, protecting forests is not just an endangered-species issue: it is a water conservation issue, a carbon issue, a tourism issue and a community issue. This landmark case will hopefully show the government that the community will hold it accountable.
12 August, 2010
Greens hail win on logging
Adam Morton
The Age (article), August 12, 2010
Source
ENVIRONMENTALISTS are claiming a landmark victory after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on logging of old-growth forest in hotly disputed parts of East Gippsland.
Environment East Gippsland had sued VicForests, the government agency responsible for logging in state forests, over plans to log about 60 hectares at Brown Mountain, near Orbost.
Justice Robert Osborn yesterday ruled that campaigners had shown that part of the proposed logging zone was home to endangered potoroo and glider species and should be protected.
The rest of the area cannot be felled until the court is satisfied the government has carried out surveys that show endangered frog and quoll species are not present. The judgment effectively rules that government surveys that prompted Environment Minister Gavin Jennings to lift a moratorium on logging in the area failed to properly examine whether endangered wildlife was at risk.
Justice Osborn ruled VicForests was obliged to take a precautionary approach if warned that endangered animal species were in proposed logging areas.
Environmentalists said they were confident new surveys would force an end to logging at Brown Mountain, which is seen as a symbolically important battleground by greens and the timber industry.
Greens leader Bob Brown, in court supporting the environmentalists' case, said the judgment was ''breakthrough territory for the whole nation''. ''This is a green letter day for the forests, for endangered species and for the 80 per cent of Australians who want the destruction of our wild forests [with] their carbon stores and their magnificent biodiversity ended,'' he said.
Environment East Gippsland won a temporary injunction over logging last year after producing video footage showing an endangered long-footed potoroo in the area to be felled.
The group's co-ordinator Jill Redwood said the ruling was a significant win that would force the state government to abide by its logging laws.
Agriculture Minister Joe Helper said the judgment meant extra precautions needed to be taken before the ban on logging the four Brown Mountain zones could be lifted.
''The decision does not mean that logging cannot occur in these areas in the future,'' he said.
The Age (article), August 12, 2010
Source
ENVIRONMENTALISTS are claiming a landmark victory after the Supreme Court upheld a ban on logging of old-growth forest in hotly disputed parts of East Gippsland.
Environment East Gippsland had sued VicForests, the government agency responsible for logging in state forests, over plans to log about 60 hectares at Brown Mountain, near Orbost.
Justice Robert Osborn yesterday ruled that campaigners had shown that part of the proposed logging zone was home to endangered potoroo and glider species and should be protected.
The rest of the area cannot be felled until the court is satisfied the government has carried out surveys that show endangered frog and quoll species are not present. The judgment effectively rules that government surveys that prompted Environment Minister Gavin Jennings to lift a moratorium on logging in the area failed to properly examine whether endangered wildlife was at risk.
Justice Osborn ruled VicForests was obliged to take a precautionary approach if warned that endangered animal species were in proposed logging areas.
Environmentalists said they were confident new surveys would force an end to logging at Brown Mountain, which is seen as a symbolically important battleground by greens and the timber industry.
Greens leader Bob Brown, in court supporting the environmentalists' case, said the judgment was ''breakthrough territory for the whole nation''. ''This is a green letter day for the forests, for endangered species and for the 80 per cent of Australians who want the destruction of our wild forests [with] their carbon stores and their magnificent biodiversity ended,'' he said.
Environment East Gippsland won a temporary injunction over logging last year after producing video footage showing an endangered long-footed potoroo in the area to be felled.
The group's co-ordinator Jill Redwood said the ruling was a significant win that would force the state government to abide by its logging laws.
Agriculture Minister Joe Helper said the judgment meant extra precautions needed to be taken before the ban on logging the four Brown Mountain zones could be lifted.
''The decision does not mean that logging cannot occur in these areas in the future,'' he said.
11 August, 2010
Environmentalists hail court win
Michelle Draper
The Age (article), August 11, 2010
AAP
Source
Logging in an environmentally significant old growth forest in Victoria will remain banned until the state government implements a host of measures to protect endangered species.
Victoria's Supreme Court has upheld the ban preventing logging at Brown Mountain in the state's far east under an injunction, while a number of surveys on endangered wildlife are carried out.
In a decision hailed as a victory by environmentalists, Justice Robert Osborn also ordered special protection zones and "habitat retention" areas be created at Brown Mountain, north of Orbost in East Gippsland before logging can start.
Anti-logging campaigners Environment East Gippsland took action in the Supreme Court last year to stop the state-owned timber agency VicForests logging at Brown Mountain.
Logging was due to start at the site last September but it was halted until the outcome of the Supreme Court trial, which took place in March.
In a pivotal point for the environmentalists' case, video footage of an endangered long-footed potoroo was captured at the site and formed a key piece of evidence in the trial.
The decision will benefit several threatened and rare species including the potoroo, greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders, the spot-tailed quoll and two species of endangered frogs, the giant burrowing frog and the large brown tree frog.
Wednesday's decision means VicForests will be legally obliged to take further action to protect endangered species, along with the Department of Sustainability and Environment, before logging can take place.
Unless VicForests complies with the requirements to establish the special protection zones and habitat retention areas, logging at Brown Mountain would be illegal, Justice Osborn said.
Greens leader Bob Brown labelled the ruling a "breakthrough".
"This is breakthrough territory for this whole nation," Senator Brown told reporters outside the court.
"It is now up to the legislators in Melbourne and in Canberra to follow through and not leave it to the courts but to represent the people of Australia by legislation with teeth in it to protect our forests and our wildlife."
Environment East Gippsland spokeswoman Jill Redwood hailed the decision as a win and said it sent a strong message to the DSE and VicForests.
"This is a huge win for not just Brown Mountain, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but old growth forests right across the state," Ms Redwood said.
Ms Redwood said the decision was significant because pre-logging surveys had not been required previously.
She said if the surveys ordered by Justice Osborn were carried out correctly then endangered species would certainly be uncovered in the logging areas.
Justice Osborn ordered habitat retention areas be created for potoroos found at the logging site while special protection zones should be established for the gliders and further surveys for the frogs.
"In order to give effect to these conclusions VicForests should be restrained by injunction from harvesting until the relevant steps have been completed," Justice Osborn said.
Reviews of management areas that are currently under way for powerful owls and sooty owls should also be completed, he said.
VicForests director of strategy Nathan Trushell said the organisation wanted time to digest the 232-page judgment.
"Clearly the injunction remains until a number of conditions that need to be met to the satisfaction of the Department of Sustainability and Environment are met," he told reporters.
The Age (article), August 11, 2010
AAP
Source
Logging in an environmentally significant old growth forest in Victoria will remain banned until the state government implements a host of measures to protect endangered species.
Victoria's Supreme Court has upheld the ban preventing logging at Brown Mountain in the state's far east under an injunction, while a number of surveys on endangered wildlife are carried out.
In a decision hailed as a victory by environmentalists, Justice Robert Osborn also ordered special protection zones and "habitat retention" areas be created at Brown Mountain, north of Orbost in East Gippsland before logging can start.
Anti-logging campaigners Environment East Gippsland took action in the Supreme Court last year to stop the state-owned timber agency VicForests logging at Brown Mountain.
Logging was due to start at the site last September but it was halted until the outcome of the Supreme Court trial, which took place in March.
In a pivotal point for the environmentalists' case, video footage of an endangered long-footed potoroo was captured at the site and formed a key piece of evidence in the trial.
The decision will benefit several threatened and rare species including the potoroo, greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders, the spot-tailed quoll and two species of endangered frogs, the giant burrowing frog and the large brown tree frog.
Wednesday's decision means VicForests will be legally obliged to take further action to protect endangered species, along with the Department of Sustainability and Environment, before logging can take place.
Unless VicForests complies with the requirements to establish the special protection zones and habitat retention areas, logging at Brown Mountain would be illegal, Justice Osborn said.
Greens leader Bob Brown labelled the ruling a "breakthrough".
"This is breakthrough territory for this whole nation," Senator Brown told reporters outside the court.
"It is now up to the legislators in Melbourne and in Canberra to follow through and not leave it to the courts but to represent the people of Australia by legislation with teeth in it to protect our forests and our wildlife."
Environment East Gippsland spokeswoman Jill Redwood hailed the decision as a win and said it sent a strong message to the DSE and VicForests.
"This is a huge win for not just Brown Mountain, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but old growth forests right across the state," Ms Redwood said.
Ms Redwood said the decision was significant because pre-logging surveys had not been required previously.
She said if the surveys ordered by Justice Osborn were carried out correctly then endangered species would certainly be uncovered in the logging areas.
Justice Osborn ordered habitat retention areas be created for potoroos found at the logging site while special protection zones should be established for the gliders and further surveys for the frogs.
"In order to give effect to these conclusions VicForests should be restrained by injunction from harvesting until the relevant steps have been completed," Justice Osborn said.
Reviews of management areas that are currently under way for powerful owls and sooty owls should also be completed, he said.
VicForests director of strategy Nathan Trushell said the organisation wanted time to digest the 232-page judgment.
"Clearly the injunction remains until a number of conditions that need to be met to the satisfaction of the Department of Sustainability and Environment are met," he told reporters.
20 July, 2010
Twice-shy Labor lets forest jobs policy slide
Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
The Age (article), July 20, 2010
The Gillard government is reluctant to produce a forestry jobs policy before the election because it fears getting its fingers burnt, as Labor did during the 2004 election campaign.
Talks between timber industry players are well advanced to end or reduce old-growth logging in Tasmania, and the big parties are under pressure to unveil a jobs-rescue policy to help the timber workers who will inevitably lose out.
But the government, while watching developments closely, is staying at arm's length from negotiations and will step in with a jobs package only when it is sure there will be no backlash.
At least two marginal seats - Bass and Braddon - are at risk.
''It's not going to happen unless everyone's in the boat this time,'' said a senior government source. ''We got burnt last time.''
In 2004, the Labor Party's then-leader, Mark Latham, had his campaign badly damaged when John Howard outflanked him on forestry policy. Mr Howard put more emphasis on jobs than trees, and wrested Bass and Braddon from Labor.
But since then the bottom has fallen out of the market for old-growth products such as wood chips and there is a growing consensus to start shutting the industry down.
A worldwide glut of wood and, more significantly, a public awareness campaign in key markets such as Japan, have significantly reduced demand.
Talks are well advanced between the industry, unions and conservation groups.
''Even the native-forest logging industry in this state and Victoria and NSW is in very hard times,'' the Greens leader, Bob Brown, said in Hobart yesterday.
''It requires government involvement at state and federal level. It's a key issue. It's a test of the government's and the opposition's recognition that biodiversity is a huge economic and environmental issue.''
Labor has already struck a preference deal with the Greens in key marginal seats, including Bass and Braddon.
The Labor source said there was a level of co-operation between interested parties ''that no one would have thought possible. There's a willingness to reach a settlement.''
However, he said Labor was in no rush to step in before the election and, at best, would release ''a statement of general principles'' before August 21.
He speculated that negotiations could take another three months because of the details that need to be sorted out.
These include what constitutes high-value forests which would warrant complete protection. There is disagreement over details such as whether a forest damaged by fire is still a natural forest or could be classified as regrowth and be logged.
''The Liberals are running around, they want a Latham deal, they want to say thousands of jobs will be lost,'' he said. ''It's not going to happen.''
Asked on Saturday whether she envisaged intervening before the election, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said she expected negotiations to continue for some time.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
The Age (article), July 20, 2010
The Gillard government is reluctant to produce a forestry jobs policy before the election because it fears getting its fingers burnt, as Labor did during the 2004 election campaign.
Talks between timber industry players are well advanced to end or reduce old-growth logging in Tasmania, and the big parties are under pressure to unveil a jobs-rescue policy to help the timber workers who will inevitably lose out.
But the government, while watching developments closely, is staying at arm's length from negotiations and will step in with a jobs package only when it is sure there will be no backlash.
At least two marginal seats - Bass and Braddon - are at risk.
''It's not going to happen unless everyone's in the boat this time,'' said a senior government source. ''We got burnt last time.''
In 2004, the Labor Party's then-leader, Mark Latham, had his campaign badly damaged when John Howard outflanked him on forestry policy. Mr Howard put more emphasis on jobs than trees, and wrested Bass and Braddon from Labor.
But since then the bottom has fallen out of the market for old-growth products such as wood chips and there is a growing consensus to start shutting the industry down.
A worldwide glut of wood and, more significantly, a public awareness campaign in key markets such as Japan, have significantly reduced demand.
Talks are well advanced between the industry, unions and conservation groups.
''Even the native-forest logging industry in this state and Victoria and NSW is in very hard times,'' the Greens leader, Bob Brown, said in Hobart yesterday.
''It requires government involvement at state and federal level. It's a key issue. It's a test of the government's and the opposition's recognition that biodiversity is a huge economic and environmental issue.''
Labor has already struck a preference deal with the Greens in key marginal seats, including Bass and Braddon.
The Labor source said there was a level of co-operation between interested parties ''that no one would have thought possible. There's a willingness to reach a settlement.''
However, he said Labor was in no rush to step in before the election and, at best, would release ''a statement of general principles'' before August 21.
He speculated that negotiations could take another three months because of the details that need to be sorted out.
These include what constitutes high-value forests which would warrant complete protection. There is disagreement over details such as whether a forest damaged by fire is still a natural forest or could be classified as regrowth and be logged.
''The Liberals are running around, they want a Latham deal, they want to say thousands of jobs will be lost,'' he said. ''It's not going to happen.''
Asked on Saturday whether she envisaged intervening before the election, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said she expected negotiations to continue for some time.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
15 July, 2010
Loggers lash out at claims
Bryony Triggs
Daily Examiner (article), 15th July 2010
TIMBER industry representatives have lashed out at Clarence Environment Centre conservationist John Edwards over allegations lowland rainforest and old growth was illegally logged at Grange State Forest.
Mr Edwards' claims, pub-lished in yesterday's Examiner, relate to a 15 hectare area, alleged to have been illegally logged in the forest 50km west of Grafton early this month.
The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) is now investigating.
However NSW Forest Products Association executive director Russell Ainley said Mr Edwards was “unqualified” to make the allegations.
“John Edwards and the Clarence Environment Centre are running a campaign of unsubstantiated trivial allegations to attack the good work of well-qualified and highly experienced forest managers,” he said.
Mr Ainley said less than two per cent of the available area of State Forest was harvested each year. “That is after areas of old growth, rainforest, riparian zones and other special protection areas are excluded,” he said.
He said Mr Edwards' allegations of harvesting of rainforest and old growth in Grange State Forest were “wrong”.
“Such areas are carefully mapped, checked on the ground and excluded from all harvesting activity,” he said.
Mr Ainley said the definition of lowland rainforest was “complex”.
“It involves a full description, transitional forms, sub alliances and a great deal of scientific interpretation,” he said. “Contrary to John Edwards' assertion, you do have to be a botanist to even start to understand the definition.”
Spiro Notaras, owner of Notaras & Sons Timber Mill in South Grafton, backed Mr Ainley's comments, declaring he felt the public was being misled by an “instant expert”.
Mr Notaras said more than one million hectares of State Forest was put into National Parks in 1996/1997, as per the Regional Forest Agreement.
“The industry paid dearly for the lock-up of the forest and the government did too,” he said.
“We've spent millions to stay there and do the right thing.
“It doesn't matter what logging operation you look at, you could find little things you could pick on. Cutting trees down is emotional for anybody.”
Mr Notaras said the Forestry Commission only logged 30 per cent of the actual area they mapped to log each year, “because of all the restraints”.
He said there was a “plan of management” for every State Forest block, which had to have National Parks and Wildlife Service and DECCW approval before a contractor started logging.
Source: http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/story/2010/07/15/loggers-conservationists-claims-grange-forest/
Daily Examiner (article), 15th July 2010
TIMBER industry representatives have lashed out at Clarence Environment Centre conservationist John Edwards over allegations lowland rainforest and old growth was illegally logged at Grange State Forest.
Mr Edwards' claims, pub-lished in yesterday's Examiner, relate to a 15 hectare area, alleged to have been illegally logged in the forest 50km west of Grafton early this month.
The NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) is now investigating.
However NSW Forest Products Association executive director Russell Ainley said Mr Edwards was “unqualified” to make the allegations.
“John Edwards and the Clarence Environment Centre are running a campaign of unsubstantiated trivial allegations to attack the good work of well-qualified and highly experienced forest managers,” he said.
Mr Ainley said less than two per cent of the available area of State Forest was harvested each year. “That is after areas of old growth, rainforest, riparian zones and other special protection areas are excluded,” he said.
He said Mr Edwards' allegations of harvesting of rainforest and old growth in Grange State Forest were “wrong”.
“Such areas are carefully mapped, checked on the ground and excluded from all harvesting activity,” he said.
Mr Ainley said the definition of lowland rainforest was “complex”.
“It involves a full description, transitional forms, sub alliances and a great deal of scientific interpretation,” he said. “Contrary to John Edwards' assertion, you do have to be a botanist to even start to understand the definition.”
Spiro Notaras, owner of Notaras & Sons Timber Mill in South Grafton, backed Mr Ainley's comments, declaring he felt the public was being misled by an “instant expert”.
Mr Notaras said more than one million hectares of State Forest was put into National Parks in 1996/1997, as per the Regional Forest Agreement.
“The industry paid dearly for the lock-up of the forest and the government did too,” he said.
“We've spent millions to stay there and do the right thing.
“It doesn't matter what logging operation you look at, you could find little things you could pick on. Cutting trees down is emotional for anybody.”
Mr Notaras said the Forestry Commission only logged 30 per cent of the actual area they mapped to log each year, “because of all the restraints”.
He said there was a “plan of management” for every State Forest block, which had to have National Parks and Wildlife Service and DECCW approval before a contractor started logging.
Source: http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/story/2010/07/15/loggers-conservationists-claims-grange-forest/
PM's visit linked to forest deal
Sue Neales
The Mercury (article), July 15, 2010
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is expected to fly into northern Tasmania tomorrow ahead of an expected announcement on Saturday of a late August election.
But it is not yet certain whether Ms Gillard will use her rushed visit to the marginal electorates of Bass and Braddon to announce a breakthrough in the decades-old and divisive Tasmanian forest conflict.
Last night forest industry insiders were denying a deal had been reached with environmentalists to end all logging of Tasmania's high-conservation native forests.
Federal Forestry Minister Tony Burke is in Tasmania and will address the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association national conference in Launceston today.
But a spokesman for Mr Burke denied the Gillard Government was ready to announce a peace pact or breakthrough affecting Tasmania's forests.
Before going to the polls the Prime Minister is keen to announce a sweeping "climate statement" addressing voter concerns about the Federal Government's commitment to tackle climate change.
Any deal to end all native forest logging in southern Australia, accompanied by an industry restructuring package and a switch to a plantation-only timber industry, would be part of the environmental or climate policy pitch.
The Federal Government has previously indicated to the stricken forest industry that Commonwealth funds are available to encourage some native forest loggers and contractors to leave the industry.
But talks appear to be stymied by debate between industry groups about how quickly and completely logging should cease in all state-owned native forests.
While an immediate end to felling high-conservation native forests appears certain, the speed with which a transition out of all native forests can be completed lies at the heart of last-minute negotiations.
It is understood the industry is also keen to get concessions from environmentalists to allow the $2.2 billion Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley to proceed, but using only plantation timber.
Tasmanian Forestry Minister Bryan Green said he was not aware of any visit to northern Tasmania by the Prime Minister tomorrow.
Source
The Mercury (article), July 15, 2010
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is expected to fly into northern Tasmania tomorrow ahead of an expected announcement on Saturday of a late August election.
But it is not yet certain whether Ms Gillard will use her rushed visit to the marginal electorates of Bass and Braddon to announce a breakthrough in the decades-old and divisive Tasmanian forest conflict.
Last night forest industry insiders were denying a deal had been reached with environmentalists to end all logging of Tasmania's high-conservation native forests.
Federal Forestry Minister Tony Burke is in Tasmania and will address the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association national conference in Launceston today.
But a spokesman for Mr Burke denied the Gillard Government was ready to announce a peace pact or breakthrough affecting Tasmania's forests.
Before going to the polls the Prime Minister is keen to announce a sweeping "climate statement" addressing voter concerns about the Federal Government's commitment to tackle climate change.
Any deal to end all native forest logging in southern Australia, accompanied by an industry restructuring package and a switch to a plantation-only timber industry, would be part of the environmental or climate policy pitch.
The Federal Government has previously indicated to the stricken forest industry that Commonwealth funds are available to encourage some native forest loggers and contractors to leave the industry.
But talks appear to be stymied by debate between industry groups about how quickly and completely logging should cease in all state-owned native forests.
While an immediate end to felling high-conservation native forests appears certain, the speed with which a transition out of all native forests can be completed lies at the heart of last-minute negotiations.
It is understood the industry is also keen to get concessions from environmentalists to allow the $2.2 billion Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley to proceed, but using only plantation timber.
Tasmanian Forestry Minister Bryan Green said he was not aware of any visit to northern Tasmania by the Prime Minister tomorrow.
Source
14 July, 2010
Gillard paves way to end Tasmania logging conflict
Tom Arup
The Age (article), July 14, 2010
The Gillard government has offered to finance a potential breakthrough between environmentalists and forestry companies to end the decades-long conflict over native forest logging in Tasmania.
In meetings in Tasmania last week, Forestry Minister Tony Burke is understood to have told negotiating parties some federal money is available for an agreement and he has asked for a deal to be presented to him by early next week.
Over recent months, representatives of the timber industry and the environmental movement have been negotiating an agreement that could end much of the native forest logging in the state.
While any deal could still fall through, the parties are now understood to be getting close. The environment movement - represented in the negotiations by the Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Environment Tasmania - is understood to want an almost immediate halt to logging of high-conservation-value forests and a phased end, over a number of years, to almost all native logging throughout the state except in rare circumstances.
In return, the struggling Tasmanian timber industry - represented by Timber Communities Australia, the National Association of Forest Industries, and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union - wants a restructuring package to help industry move towards certified plantation timber.
The industry is also understood to be asking for financial help for new infrastructure and roads to ensure its long-term survival. It also wants support for Gunns' stalled Bell Bay pulp mill.
Mr Burke is understood to have asked the parties to present a deal to the government by early next week and has told them that while there is not unlimited money to get an agreement, the government would step in if an appropriate agreement were presented.
While refusing to comment on any government offer, Mr Burke told The Age yesterday ''there are genuine efforts being made by people who have spent their lives arguing with each to see if they can reach a settlement''.
''We are not there yet, but it would be a massive change from the conflict that has plagued this issue for generations.''
National Association of Forest Industries chief executive Allan Hansard will meet his Tasmanian member companies today to discuss the agreement.
Green groups have also presented parts of the deal to many of the community-based environment bodies they are representing in the talks.
Logging in Tasmania has been a vexed issue for federal Labor for years. Labor leader Mark Latham's promise to protect large parts of Tasmania's forests during the 2004 election sparked an angry campaign by the CFMEU against the proposal, which is credited with losing Labor the Tasmanian seats of Braddon and Bass at that election.
The Tasmanian timber industry has suffered financially in recent years because of a global glut of wood chips and an increased demand for environmentally friendly plantation timber from key Asian customers.
Source
The Age (article), July 14, 2010
The Gillard government has offered to finance a potential breakthrough between environmentalists and forestry companies to end the decades-long conflict over native forest logging in Tasmania.
In meetings in Tasmania last week, Forestry Minister Tony Burke is understood to have told negotiating parties some federal money is available for an agreement and he has asked for a deal to be presented to him by early next week.
Over recent months, representatives of the timber industry and the environmental movement have been negotiating an agreement that could end much of the native forest logging in the state.
While any deal could still fall through, the parties are now understood to be getting close. The environment movement - represented in the negotiations by the Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Environment Tasmania - is understood to want an almost immediate halt to logging of high-conservation-value forests and a phased end, over a number of years, to almost all native logging throughout the state except in rare circumstances.
In return, the struggling Tasmanian timber industry - represented by Timber Communities Australia, the National Association of Forest Industries, and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union - wants a restructuring package to help industry move towards certified plantation timber.
The industry is also understood to be asking for financial help for new infrastructure and roads to ensure its long-term survival. It also wants support for Gunns' stalled Bell Bay pulp mill.
Mr Burke is understood to have asked the parties to present a deal to the government by early next week and has told them that while there is not unlimited money to get an agreement, the government would step in if an appropriate agreement were presented.
While refusing to comment on any government offer, Mr Burke told The Age yesterday ''there are genuine efforts being made by people who have spent their lives arguing with each to see if they can reach a settlement''.
''We are not there yet, but it would be a massive change from the conflict that has plagued this issue for generations.''
National Association of Forest Industries chief executive Allan Hansard will meet his Tasmanian member companies today to discuss the agreement.
Green groups have also presented parts of the deal to many of the community-based environment bodies they are representing in the talks.
Logging in Tasmania has been a vexed issue for federal Labor for years. Labor leader Mark Latham's promise to protect large parts of Tasmania's forests during the 2004 election sparked an angry campaign by the CFMEU against the proposal, which is credited with losing Labor the Tasmanian seats of Braddon and Bass at that election.
The Tasmanian timber industry has suffered financially in recent years because of a global glut of wood chips and an increased demand for environmentally friendly plantation timber from key Asian customers.
Source
04 July, 2010
LETTER: The bones will tell the story
Sarah Rees, executive director, My Environment, Healesville
Letter, The Age, 3 July 2010
VICFOREST chief executive David Pollard claims ''all trees harvested in Toolangi had dated from 1939 bushfire regrowth and no possums had been affected'' - ''Green groups in logging case bid'' (The Age, 1/7).
We may have a different picture. Beneath a large, smashed tree in the logging zone lies the burnt remains of what looks to be a small marsupial. We exhumed some skeletal remains, bone-white against the charred soil, from the coupe burn. The skeleton is at a veterinary clinic, awaiting analysis. It may be an eastern pygmy possum, a bobuck possum, a ringtail possum or even a Leadbeater's possum.
This forest had many possums and as many gliders again - the Department of Sustainability and Environment's maps shows this. These bones may tell the story of the logging disaster that took place in this possum's home. But let us leave it for the judge to decide.
Letter, The Age, 3 July 2010
VICFOREST chief executive David Pollard claims ''all trees harvested in Toolangi had dated from 1939 bushfire regrowth and no possums had been affected'' - ''Green groups in logging case bid'' (The Age, 1/7).
We may have a different picture. Beneath a large, smashed tree in the logging zone lies the burnt remains of what looks to be a small marsupial. We exhumed some skeletal remains, bone-white against the charred soil, from the coupe burn. The skeleton is at a veterinary clinic, awaiting analysis. It may be an eastern pygmy possum, a bobuck possum, a ringtail possum or even a Leadbeater's possum.
This forest had many possums and as many gliders again - the Department of Sustainability and Environment's maps shows this. These bones may tell the story of the logging disaster that took place in this possum's home. But let us leave it for the judge to decide.
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