This large healthy mature native Eucalypt has just been chainsawed to death today.   We could hear the noise of multiple chainsaws ripping reverberated around the neighbourhood from early this morning.

This tree grew on private residential land within The Gully Catchment on a large double block on the top of a prominent natural spur overlooking the northern part of The Gully not far from Horrie Gates’ old Catalina Dam.   

The Gully is a valued small natural valley situated on the western edge of the township of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

The particular site is zoned by local Blue Mountains Council as ‘Heritage’ and ‘Environmental Land’ under current Local Environmental Plan 2015.  It is also a very old settlement area of the Blue Mountains dating back to 1876.  In fact, it forms part of the oldest housing area of the Blue Mountains Local Government Area (LGA) and traditionally known as ‘North’s Estate’.

It was named after the first land Torrens Title owner John Britty North (1831-1917), an English immigrant during British colonial times who owned most of the immediate area and became a coal shale miner and then property developer there.

 

Recognition of this colonial heritage is such that this North Estate precinct has been especially zoned by council as ‘K171 – Norths Estate Conservation Area‘ under council’s LEP 2015. 

Was Council permission sought?     It appears from a call to Council, that it knew nothing about the owner’s plan to kill this significant native tree in this heritage and conservation precinct, as confirmed by CSR525105.   Council used to have a Significant Tree Register to protect identified significant trees within its LGA.  It no longer does.

So why kill it?  It was a slight 5 degree lean but in the direction of the prevailing wind.  Was it some perceived fear that in many years to come it might fall on the house?  Was it a prejudiced fear of gum trees?  For fire wood?  

This native tree was probably over 100 years old, perhaps dating back to the 19th Century and was the most prominent specimen in the immediate area.

 

Yet this majestic native tree was in good health and vigour, and showed no signs of decay.

 

Was any prior assessment by professionally qualified arborist conducted on the tree?  

We recall back in 2014 with regards to saving the 300+ year old Eucalyptus oreades tree that local conservationists had dubbed ‘ATLAS’, that The Habitat Advocate contracted renown expert arborist (the late) Mr Fred Janes, to conduct a professional arborist appraisal and report on the relative health of ATLAS.   This was sought because a property developer of the adjoining land wanted the tree killed by chainsaw so that he could selfishly have an overflow car park for the benefit clients of his proposed industrial estate complex.  So he had secured a dodgy arborist, only licensed to use a chainsaw.   Where as Mr Jane’s report found the tree to be in good health and vigour, and Council agreed. 

SAVE ATLAS Campaign – Part 1

 

It’s a sad loss. 

We have observed over time since our own arrival in this special place in 2001, that whilst in The Gully’s ‘Aboriginal Place’ dissociated land parcels of native bush, the native trees within are culturally sacrosanct, as they should be; yet around the immediately periphery of adjoining private lands, housing development and deforestation continues incrementally.  It is death by a thousand cuts transforming the natural valley into an artificial urban landscape. 

This is why council insists on being called Blue Mountains City Council in its urbane dreams within a world heritage area.  

 

Giants of the Valley

© Acrylic on Canvas by Hannah Lenora Teichert, 2019.

 

Artist’s Statement:

Although my painting is set in the Styx Valley of the Giants, it transmits childhood memories of ethereal walks amongst the tallest trees found in the Redwood Forests of California. The Mountain Ash trees of Tasmania may arguably have been their contenders, if not for human intervention having commoditised them in their prime. My painting depicts the narrative of these Giants, whose crevassed valleys I have yet to travel.

The relational theme is exemplified through landscapes suspended in space, conveying our universally intricate ties to the natural world; ‘As above so below’.  The Giants are fused together by their roots, representing the recently discovered language of trees. Their wiring is juxtaposed with our own ever-escalating dissemination of information.

The native White Bellied Eagle protects his island, which is pockmarked with the scabs of clear felled, old growth forests. The monumental forest transforms from ‘hardy’ to ‘harvested’ and rests amongst machinery within the living limbs of a peace symbol balanced between its adversaries. The aerial perspective above the nest leaves the onus for the forest’s future, inescapably with the viewer.

The ‘Weld Angel’, perched atop a giant tripod, protests peacefully. She embodies repressed respect for mother earth and strives to regain equilibrium with her political nemeses abseiling from what remains of The Valley of the Giants.

White-Bellied Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster)

Source:  ^https://www.threatenedspecieslink.tas.gov.au/Pages/White-bellied-Sea-Eagle.aspx

 

Snuggle up to your stolen forest fire this winter

“…excellent quality, excellent service. We only source premium sustainable hardwood firewood (Ironbark and Box).”

Yeah sure you do, because it’s stolen from native forests when nobody’s watching.

Which forest for the restaurant industry?  RFS Hazard Reduction for Firewood profiteering?

 

No permit. No certification.  Any claim of sustainable is just lying advertising.

Legitimate Red Ironbark timber flooring retails for $100 per lineal metre.  So if you’re buying ironbark firewood off the back of a truck $140 a cubic metre, it is surely illegally taken from native forests.  Ever wonder why the ex-crim looking delivery driver only takes cash?

Firewood supplied across Australia is a cash black market run by criminal types.  It’s a winter scam.

 

If the firewood is not certified as plantation timber with an Australian Standard AS4708, then the firewood is likely stolen, which means you are in receipt of stolen goods.

And beware of this label photocopied in black and white

 

So snug up to an ironbark wood fire this winter and know you are part of the deforestation problem driving threatened woodland species into extincting. 

Your grand kids will ask why you were so selfish, when they see there’s none left – just like trying to buy Turpentine flooring these days.

Box Ironbark forest in central Victoria dominated by Red Ironbark (Eucalyptus tricarpa)

© Ian Lunt, ^https://ianluntecology.com/2012/01/20/fire-and-rain-2-water-for-ironbarks/

 

Criminal Loggers Caught

 

Pizzas sponsored by RFS commercial Hazard Reduction on the side?

 

There remains a termite-ridden industry needing eradicating in Gippsland Victoria and it is the old Heyfield Sawmill.  From the outside, the incidious business goes by the innocuous name Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, but like termite damage, it is rotten on the inside.

It’s website claims that the rare and disappearing “Victorian Ash is a beautiful hardwood that is dense, versatile, readily available and sustainably managed.”

Well, that’s why ASH have clear-felled logged it near to extinction?

ASH brands its products ‘Goodwood’, ‘Iron Ash’, ‘Alpine Oak’, ‘Supa Span’, but it’s all the same old growth Victorian Ash native forests older than any of the lumberjacks employed.  The only way these loggers could be sustainable would be if they planted the species, but then to get to a commercial size they would have to wait until their grand-kids grew up to use a chainsaw, the liars.

ASH exports Victorian Ash to China, Japan, South East Asia, Europe the Middle East and the USA.  Why?  Let these countries wreck their own forests.

So the 200 greedy timber workers at Heyfield Sawmill need to pack their utes and transition to a real job.  If their industry was as sustainable as they claim then  they wouldn’t have run out of trees to chop down, but some are just slow on the uptake.

If renovators want fancy timber floors then they need to pay for the plantation laminates.

Heyfield has a continual history of environmental exploitation since the 1840s.  They’ve been clear-felling Gippsland since 1939.  What did the greedy loggers expect?   That ASH needs a $40 million subsidy from Victorian taxpayers to refit the mill, so that it can process the smaller logs from newer regrowth forests, exposes the lie that logger John Tyquin at Heyfield Sawmill claims:

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“It’s just like farming – we cut a tree down, we replace it with two more. The timber is there, we want to keep working.”

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So go to your plantations John!  How high are the trees?  Twenty foot?  If there are less suitable trees left whose fault is that?

You should have put out the bushfires and saved the swathe of Alpine forests, rather than just watch them burn to ash.

ASH has been told they can’t have the logs they haven’t planted.    Nathan Trushall, General Manager of VicForests, has stated publicly that there are simply not the logs there to supply their customers.

This is a serious admission of a major calculation goof-up and/or years of lying. Incompetent wood supply modelling can’t be blamed on possums or bushfires. The writing has been on the wall for years with every report and enquiry pointing to ongoing over-logging.

That future is now here. The bosses have geed up workers to blame ‘the greenies inside Labor’ and ‘the latte-sipping greenies in the city’. They are of course reluctant to admit their industry’s criminal waste and abuse of forests since 1939.

Chief executive Vince Hurley says supply in the pipeline forecasts ASH is set to lose $12 million over three years.    “Having done the analysis we have no alternative but to close the mill.”

So once again they’re screaming job losses, town closures, families starving, and no more footy club. The bosses will receive massive tax-payer funded payouts and nothing changes.   150,000 cubic metres and 130,000 hectares may be critical mass for 260 mill jobs,  but if the plantations aren’t ready, then 260 mill jobs are not sustainable.

Who did all the recent hiring on false pretences?  Try 26 jobs!  Tick toc, tick toc.

Forests are not a Magic Pudding and this fact finally caught up with the government and VicForests in January 2017.  Knocking down forests faster than they can regrow has been the management standard for decades by every logging agency and overseen and excused by every government (Liberal and Labor). After such cut-throat management, the industry and workers are now screaming that their throats have been cut because the limit has been reached; forests can no longer provide the sawlogs demanded.

The acronym ‘ASH’ is about the scorched earth attitude and result and nothing about ‘sustainable’.  That ‘hardwoods’ are critical to the Australian Sustainable Hardwoods business model at Heyfield, was always short termism without eco-plantings staying ahead of a 150,000 cubic metre sawmill throughput to sustain 200 workers.   Google Maps shows not much native forest is left.   The writing has been on the wall for decades.

These forestry hard heads are the Easter Islanders of Heyfield.  They even call themselves “an endangered species”.

If ASH wants to refit it’s Heyfield Sawmill to scale down to smaller logs, then use the $40 million out of the profits of your profitable business if it’s as viable as claimed.   But thieving from the Victorian taxpayer else shows up your business to be the unprofitable scam that it is – existing not as a viable business but as a charity for loggers too lazy to get out of a 19th Century rort.

ASH says it plans to transition to plantation timber within 20 years.  That’s what it said 20 years ago.  The game is up.

Heyfield sawmilling is a 19th Century mentality of environmental exploitation.  The diehards can pretend with euphemisms like ‘sustainable’ and ‘good wood’ all they like.  Like a house of sand below high tide, next month is a forestry king tide.

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Why Aren’t the Logs There?

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Along with the historic malpractice of unrestricted clearfell logging, another industry crime is the illegal downgrading and chipping of good quality sawlogs for a quick buck. This has helped drain the landscape of forests that can provide sawlogs. Today we also see VicForests selling whole logs to China, a practice that was illegal not long ago. Logs needed to be ‘processed’ before being exported, so the ends were simply cut off to fit them into the containers – hey presto, processed log!

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What About Australian Paper?

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The AP mill at Maryvale (makers of Reflex paper) has been a favoured political donor with considerable influence. Decades ago it was granted long-term access to the beautiful Mountain Ash forests of the Central Highlands with their contract for Mountain Ash logs secure until 2030. They are VicForests biggest customer alongside ASH. But to cut trees down to put through a shredder to make paper, they have to be deemed ‘waste’.  For this they need a token sawmill as the fig-leaf to hide behind that takes the odd sawlog. Then the rest of the forest can be defined as logging ‘waste’. Without a sawmill, VicForests will find it hard to justify clearfelling solely for woodchips.

But even with all the millions this paper mill receives as ‘industry assistance’, various other handouts and dirt cheap quality logs, it still hasn’t made a profit for four years.  It is up against cheap imported paper, a boycott campaign and increasing demand for certified forest-friendly paper by customers. Its owner Nippon paper in Japan, has been considering the mill’s viability for some time.

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What was VicForests’ Brainwave?

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The result of all this is that the industry has finally hit the brick wall.

VicForests has been buying logs from NSW forests to meet its contracts with the bigger customers like Auswest and ASH to stave off the inevitable.  Smaller mills have closed after being starved of logs needed to feed the bigger mills.

VicForests has also been caught smashing down rainforests and key habitats regularly; it has been desperate to find every extra tonne of wood it can glean – legally or illegally.

But now VicForests finally admits there are far fewer logs out there. It has been caught illegally logging more times than we have changed our socks. The government can’t pretend to not notice or act.  So VicForests is now fessing up and offering contracts of ‘only’ 80,000 m3 next year and 60,000 for each of the two following years.

But ASH states that it would not be commercially viable at that reduced level.

We understand there is also a bit of haggling over VicForests wanting higher prices for the fewer logs.

The industry has over-logged itself into a terminal mess.

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What is the Real Solution?

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Since the early 1970s woodchipping has driven this industry.

If it is to continue it would be at a vastly reduced size with a vastly different product output. As the forests have been scraped to the bone and left struggling to regrow as healthy forests, what is taken now should only be used for very high-value end products using selective logging.

However even this is unlikely to be viable, as markets, products and competitors have changed. Plantations meet about 85% of all our building and furniture needs and this proportion is growing as technology finds ways to create stronger and better appearance timbers from pine.

Our forebears were resilient tough people and moved with the times – maybe this should be something the logging industry aspires to as well. The future is in nature tourism, outdoor recreation, the foodie trails, agriculture, enviro land management and who knows what else.

As Professor David Lindenmayer explained in a recent article, crunch time has come. The only solution is a very rapid transition to plantation timber processing. The plantations are there, ready and waiting.   We can’t stall this shift any longer while certain players position themselves for a massive payout in the next year or two.

In the Central Highlands, water and tourism (sustainable products our forests provide) are worth $260M value-added contribution to the economy.  The equivalent value of logging is just $9M at best.

These are the kinds of economic data government needs to look at to make sensible decisions.  It must maximise our forests’ assets and benefits, to get the best value for the people of Victoria who own these forests and create long-term, secure and conflict-free employment.

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Where does the state Taskforce fit in?

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The Victorian Forest Taskforce was set up in late 2015 to sort out how forests should be managed for timber and conservation into the future. It comprises reps from industry and the enviro movement, but no government reps are in the room.

And if you think Dan Andrews is extending the umpteenth deadline again and may even buy the mill, keep dreaming. He’d hanging you lot out to dry.  You are about to be the largest hardwood ex-processor in Australia.  The Andrews government was aware of this looming cliff.

With the above realities and when the VEAC reports are handed to government, we look forward to seeing Daniel Andrews assist – not the bosses and mill owners – but towns and workers to transition into new growth areas; outdoor work to put in walking trails, picnic areas, maintain park facilities, revegetation, catchment management, feral animal control – there is endless work to be done repairing and maintaining the environment. If $50M a year can be found to pay VicForests to knock down forests with immense natural values, surely it can find $50M a year to assist the dawning of a new era for Gippsland’s forests.

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Further Reading: 

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[1]   VicForests – ensuring there are none ^http://www.vicforests.net/

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[2]  Environment East Gippsland, ^http://www.eastgippsland.net.au/

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[3]  Goongerah Environment Centre,  ^http://www.geco.org.au/

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[4]   ‘‘Camp Kuark’ launches this weekend to save a forest‘, 5th March 2015, in Wild magazine, ^http://wild.com.au/news/camp-kuark-saving-gippsland-forest/

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[5]   ‘The Kuark Forest‘, ^https://themountainjournal.wordpress.com/environment/logging/the-kuark-forest/

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[6]   Forest Network – East Gippsland, ^http://www.forestnetwork.net/Docs/eg.htm

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Katie Ball, Saving Goolengook Old Growth by Bipod Blockade, 22nd August 1997

 

R.I.P – Katie Ball (1965-2004)

<<Katie was a staunch social and environmental activist who gave her all in any campaign she was involved in. Who can forget Katies wheel chair in bipod and tripod blockades?

A disability rights campaigner Kathleen (Katie) Ball died in Melbourne on June 25, 2004 from pneumonia at the age of 39. Katie was a qualified secondary teacher, a community development worker and a grassroots activist, who never shied away from taking direct action, whether it be in highlighting the social and sexual inequalities in the treatment of disabled people or protesting the logging of East Gippsland forests.

A disability rights campaigner from her late teens, Katie had Kugelberg Welander Syndrome (juvenile spinal muscular atrophy) and used an electric wheelchair for mobility.

Involved in the phone sex industry, she also taught the “politics of disablement” at the Kangan-Batman TAFE.  Katie was featured in the award-winning 1994 documentary film Untold Desires and her photos have been published in Picture magazine. She was featured on the ABC Radio National program, Earshot (“In the hoist with Katie Ball”), in 2000.

Kate was a founding member of the DLF, which continues to campaign for rights for people with disabilities, and for funding to be used for services for greater access for people with disabilities.  She spoke at many forums and wrote a library-based dissertation on the sociological analysis of sexuality and the disability rights movement.

In 1998 at the ska TV Activist Awards, Katie accepted the Most Daring Action award on behalf of the Disability Liberation Front for the DSF’s gate-crashing in September 1997 of the launch of the Disability Services Directory for the City of Brimbank by youth and community minister Denis Napthine.

In a very candid essay titled “Who’d Fuck an Ableist”, published in the US Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 2002, Volume 22, No. 4). Katie explained her fascination with human sexuality and the extent of discrimination against the sexual expression of disabled people.

Katie left behind her loving partner Peter Vanderfeen and their two young children. She continues to be remembered, missed and celebrated by many people in the social change movements whom she worked with and inspired.>>

Source:  Green Left Weekly, July 7, 2004.

Article by Noel Plumb Convenor of Forest Conservation Group ‘ChipBusters’

Logging desecration along the Snowy Mountains Highway at Glenbog State Forest

[Source: Aerial photo by Richard Green http://www.serca.org.au/pics/desecration.jpg  – see postscript]

 

The Federal Coalition Government has declared the forests open for business and tried to strip World Heritage listing from Tasmanian forests to permit yet more clearfell logging and woodchipping.

It has also passed new laws adding native forest wood to the clean energy sources under the Renewable Energy Target, effectively giving the logging industry a public subsidy to burn forests for electricity.

The move potentially creates a massive new ‘woodchip’ industry as forests are felled to fuel domestic power stations and huge amounts of whole logs or pellets are shipped to North Asia for power plants and domestic heating. These changes have been strongly supported by State governments and State Forestry agencies are now scrambling to identify massive new wood resources for long term contracts to supply biomass fuel from the forests.

In NSW there are nearly two million hectares of native forests subject to intensive industrial logging and woodchip operations. The South Coast, the North Coast as well as Pilliga and other western State Forests will be likely targets for the dense hardwood eucalypt species presently not suitable for pulp making and possibly also the White Cypress Pine.

These State Forests are supposedly managed “sustainably” for both timber resource and the conservation of nature, especially the wildlife. As such they form an essential part of the biodiversity reserve system.

It is a nonsense on both counts – the State’s Forestry Corporation has overestimated the resource available and cannot meet various contract commitments. Worse, the intensive logging and clearfelling can in no way sustain the required habitat for most forest wildlife.

On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping and this is just the tip of a massive biodiversity crash in our forests.

In NSW, complimentary legislation to allow forests to be burnt for electricity was passed last year and the Liberal Government is proceeding to change the logging rules all along the east coast to permit access to areas previously off limits such as rainforest and old growth remnants, streamside buffers, endangered species exclusion areas and very steep land, including cable logging for slopes over 30 degrees.

Twenty year forestry agreements (Regional Forestry Agreements) around the country are set to be renewed over the next few years and negotiations between the Federal and state Governments for renewal of the five NSW agreements have already begun. These agreements suspend almost all environmental protection laws for forests with the result that the forests have been mercilessly over logged at unsustainable supply levels and with massive damage to biodiversity. On the South Coast from Nowra to Eden there are less than 100 surviving Koalas after 40 years of intensive logging and woodchipping.

Both Federal and State Labor profess to oppose the burning of forests for electricity but Federal Labor refused to block the passage of the new RET laws allowing forests to be burnt for electricity. The NSW labor Party opposes cable logging. However, both Federal and State Labor are still in support of continuing intensive logging and woodchipping of native forests. WE have to change the position of one of the two big parties and Labor at this stage seems the best prospect.

If you would like to support the Log Off campaign to put an end to native forest logging once and for all, please contact ChipBusters at chipbusters@iinet.net.au or phone 0425 23 83 03.

 

Footnote 

Sydney conservationist Richard Green, his wife Carolyn and passenger John Davis were found in the helicopter’s wreckage in mountainous terrain, south of Cessnock, in the Watagans National Park on Monday.   The aircraft, which took off from Breeza in northern NSW on Saturday, had been reported missing on Monday after it failed to arrive at its destination, Mona Vale.

Vica Bayley, Tasmanian campaign manager for the Wilderness Society in disputed World Heritage listed forest in the Styx Valley in southern Tasmania.  Photo © Peter Mathew.  [Source: ‘Senate puts weight behind push to retain Tasmania forests’ World Heritage status, 20140515, by Andrew Darby, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/senate-puts-weight-behind-push-to-retain-tasmania-forests-world-heritage-status-20140515-zrdqi.html]

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“It took the World Heritage Committee less than 8 minutes to unanimously reject this shameful Australian Government proposal to delist 74,000 hectares from the Tasmanian World Heritage Area.  It is a stunning victory for World Heritage!

Thank you to those who understood the value and the importance of protecting our wild places.”

~ Keith Muir, Colong Foundation for Wilderness

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Further Reading:

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^Tasmania needs a Wilderness Act

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Historic rally in Tasmania’s Upper Florentine Valley, Tasmania, Sunday 20140427

Photo © Matthew Newton

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Almost 2000 people have rallied today in the Upper Florentine Valley to defend World Heritage listed forests.

The Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber stated, “Today’s outstanding turn out in the Upper Florentine forests clearly shows that Australians are very proud of their World Heritage forests. We are sending a strong message to UNESCO that we love our spectacular forests of outstanding universal value, and the Australian community will stand up to defend them.”

“The Australian community strongly opposes the government’s proposal to the World Heritage Committee to remove 74 000 hectares of World Heritage listed forests from the Tasmanian World Heritage Area,” Jenny Weber said.

Speakers included Australian Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne, Markets for Change CEO Peg Putt, Still Wild Still Threatened’s Miranda Gibson and Home and Away actor Lisa Gormley.

 

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Further Reading:

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[1]  ^http://www.bobbrown.org.au/

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For the cause and their honour

Camp Flozza remembered

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New Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman believes in a headline sense of “economic renewal” somehow and that his vote to power provides a Viking Mandate for him to ecologically ‘rape pillage and plunder’ Tasmania’s natural resources.

With the business community on side, the minerals council, the housing industry association, the developers, the loggers, everything is up for grabs, especially Tasmania’s old growth forests.

Logging trucks are already crossing back over Bass Strait from exile in parochial log state Queensland.

Here we go again…

Tasmanian police escort a log truck out of the Upper Florentine Valley after a week of protests, January 2009.

[Source: ‘Protests have failed to stop the log trucks’, 20090121, ABC News,

^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-21/tasmanian-police-escort-a-log-truck-out-of-the/273180]

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“We are going to embrace a new way of doing things in this state,” Mr Hodgman said.

Scary.  What does he mean by that?

Not one for mature mediation, ham-fisted Hodgman is determined to tear up the $273 million ‘Tasmanian Forest Agreement‘ in what he has off-handedly vilified as a “job-destroying forest deal.”   “It only threatened to lock away forever future productive forest.”

But how many Tasmanian loggers got paid out by Canberra’s $273 million Will?  How much of that $273 million is left?  Are you endorsing two-timing loggers – those paid out and now in for second crack?

So the hated 19th Century wood chip pulp mill is back on the table, with no prospect of profit, just a ‘work-for-the-dole’ scheme for crusted-on loggers.

But Hodgman, like Groom and Rundle before him, is sure short-term market conditions for woodchips will improve.   Six hundred year old forests are renewable anyway Will reckons.  Will says he has a mandate to follow through on the divisive election promise. “More wood equals more jobs” and “our plan focuses on growing the industry … not appeasing environmentalists.”

Dem’s fightin’ words indeed!

“I can’t do this on my own with these. . . people.”

Hodgman’s heavies are regrouping and more police are being recruited and resourced.  Hodgman is prepared for Forest War on the belief he has the endorsement of high-T Tasmanians.

“We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move.”     ~ Vladimir Putin.

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[Sources:  ‘Premier claims Tasmania in period of economic renewal since Liberals seize power’, by Lucy Shannon, 20140407, ABC News, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-06/premier-claims-tasmania-has-entered-a-period-of-economic-renewa/5370640;  ‘Tasmania’s forest agreement to be ‘torn-up’’, 20140410, ^http://www.enviroinfo.com.au/tasmanias-forest-agreement-to-be-torn-up/]

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Does young Will mean blood?

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Rally to Defend Tasmania’s World Heritage in the Upper Florentine!

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When:    Sunday, 27 April 2014
Time:     12 noon for 12:30pm start
Where:  Camp Flozza, In Tasmania’s magnificent Florentine Valley World Heritage Area, Gordon River Road, 21 km east of Maydena

(From Maydena drive along Gordon River Road, heading towards Lake Pedder. On the right, 3.3 km from the Thumbs Lookout, there will be signs for rally).

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Tasmanians and Australians this is your time!

The Bob Brown Foundation is hosting a rally in World Heritage listed forests of the Upper Florentine, Tasmania, in response to the Australian Government’s intention to remove 74,000 ha from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Speakers include Senator Christine Milne – Leader of the Australian Greens, Peg Putt – CEO of Markets for Change and Miranda Gibson – spokesperson for Still Wild Still Threatened.

Bob Brown Foundation Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said, “Tasmania’s globally significant World Heritage Area is gravely threatened by the Australian Government’s request to the World Heritage Committee to remove 74,000ha of forests from World Heritage listing. We are receiving huge support from members of the public who are coming along to this rally, people who love these forests and don’t want to see the listing stripped from forests which have outstanding universal values.”

“We will stand together in the magnificent World Heritage listed Upper Florentine forests to support the world heritage convention and call for protection of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area and the maintenance of the current boundary.  Standing together among the ancient tall eucalyptus forests, we will prove that the Australian Government is wrong in claiming that it is logged and degraded,” Jenny Weber said.

“The Upper Florentine is pristine.  This entire region is proposed for removal from the World Heritage Area, though it is a perfect contradiction of the Liberal Government’s claims that these 74,000 ha are logged or degraded.  The Upper Florentine is an extensive area of pristine tall eucalypt forest, part of a corridor of tall eucalyptus forests from the far south to the central west of Tasmania, recognised as World Heritage in 2013. This intact region of ancient forest is again under threat by the Australian Government’s proposal to remove these magnificent intact forests for logging,” Jenny Weber said.

World Heritage Campaign Manager
The Bob Brown Foundation

[Source:  ^http://www.bobbrown.org.au/rally_to_defend_world_heritage]

 

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Sacred Upper Florentine Valley being logged only a few years ago

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For Tasmanians, Tasmania is all we’ve got.

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