Blue Mountains {city} Council’s latest greenwashing promotion of itself, it terms its ‘Planetary Health Initiative‘.
But what on Earth is this construct syntax ‘planetary health‘?
Some quick online research reveals it’s all about human health, not that of planet Earth. It is another anthropocentric ideology, so those guilty of damaging native habitat can feel warm and fuzzy by token eco-gesturing.
We found on a quick Internet search, this cone-shaped model image of how individual human health is the pinnacle and ‘Planetary Health’ being the fifth tier below? It’s globalist and anthropocentric, that is centred on humans above all else. So humans first and other species and Ecology may then benefit?
The Habitat Advocate disagrees strongly with any anthropocentric philosophies. In stark contrast and transparently, we advocate the ‘Deep Ecology‘ philosophy – meaning:
“Deep ecology, environmental philosophy and social movement based in the belief that humans must radically change their relationship to Nature from one that values nature solely for its usefulness to human beings to one that recognizes that Nature has an inherent value.”
In our view, ‘Planetary Health’ comes under the realm of ‘Greenwashing‘ – typically a public relations ploy used by both governments and corporations that are way short of best practice to protect the natural environment under their custodial stewardship, so they resort to token public relations campaigns using expert consultants and publicly trusted ‘celebrities’ to message ‘ecological care’ when it isn’t. Blue Mountains {city} Council is a serial offender of greenwashing – we think the worst in Australia given the council’s location (surrounded by and upstream of natural World Heritage), its record of environmental neglect and harm, and its hubris about is continual self back-patting claims of its ecological stewardship.
Greenwashing?
“‘Greenwashing’ is a term used to describe false or misleading environmental claims. Greenwashing makes business appear more environmentally beneficial than they really are. Omitting information can amount to a false or misleading representation or misleading or deceptive conduct, depending upon the circumstances and the overall impression created. We consider a business to be engaging in greenwashing where they use any claim that makes a product or service seem better or less harmful for the environment than it really is. Sometimes businesses accidentally mislead consumers. By following the ACCC’s guidance, businesses that make environment or sustainability claims are less likely to mislead consumers and break the law.”
Planetary health? Not for the planet, yet this is what Blue Mountains {city} Council approved – ugly mass over-development for many more humans on old Katoomba Golf Course into what was bushland within The Gully Catchment.
Where is this current high density townhouse development taking place?
It’s more than 3 km from Katoomba’s retail precinct, isolated on the defunct golf course site (was fairway #3) within just 100 meters of the World Heritage Jamison Valley escarpment across Narrowneck Road. Here’s the location map with the black star showing the site location of the above photo image.
The black star is the location of this current massive over-development’ of 24 additional townhouses. Transport access is only by private car. It’s isolated just like the ‘The Escarpments’ totalling 21 townhouses adjoining. [SOURCE: Google Maps plan view, 2024 with the black star superimposed]
In our view, hardly close to amenities, and these properties aren’t cheap…
At Council’s public meeting of 29th September 2020, councillors endorsed purchase of the defunct Katoomba Golf Course Clubhouse site (1 Acacia Street, Katoomba) for $3.3 million using ratepayers’ money of course, not theirs. So, an easy low-risk decision by said councillors who voted ‘YES’.
That old defunct clubhouse sits alongside the similarly defunct Katoomba 18-hole golf course – long owned by council. This combined site has become council’s largest operational land holding, at 29.66 hectares (so pretty much 30 hectares). It’s bigger than Ben Hur. It exceeds Council budget and Council doesn’t know what to do with it.
An old PR aerial photo of the defunct Katoomba Golf Course and Clubhouse pre-2013. Plus note the separate portion of designated golf course land that Council subdivided, re-zoned ‘Operation’ and flogged off for profit to a townhouse developer [the housing row deliberately centre focus of the photo].
A key Blue Mountains community question here is that given the Katoomba Golf Club and its predominant owner at the time, golfer Geoff Reed of Reed Constructions had in 2012 gone into liquidation, and the Club then followed suit being liquidated in 2013; so to whom did Council pay the $3.3 million out of Blue Mountains ratepayers’ funds?
Presumably, the money was paid to the Katoomba Golf Club’s liquidator so as to pay off the Club’s owed creditors and owed staff salary entitlements. This means that local ratepayers ultimately bailed out this failed golf club, not Council. This sham had all the while for well over a decade, seen Council senior management and ratepayer-elected councillors stage numerous closed-door secret meetings at Council chambers with the Club and developers (denying access to ratepayers) – yet those developers ultimately all went bloody broke, and ratepayers took the can.
All the while for decades, fewer were interested in playing golf. The writing had been on the wall for decades.
Quite separately, a third adjoining site to the direct east of the Clubhouse used to also be part of the community land that Council undertook in 1920 to be for explicit sole use for the old Katoomba Golf Club. But multiple dodgy closed door meetings by Council re-zoned numerous fairways into ‘operational land’ (so deeming the land saleable) so that Council could flog them off for profiteering of community land to a developer for dense housing development, which it did during in the 1990’s for its own coffers.
That’s just a brief background to this multi-decade saga.
So why did Council buy it?
What was the hard sell to councillors who voted to approve the purchase?
Who benefits?
What is the return on investment for Blue Mountains ratepayers?
How is this part of Council’s remit?
Surely there were opportunity costs for a lazy $3.3 million – like potholes fixed, rates reduced, landslips properly repaired and vital access roads re-opened?
Did this $3.3 million purchase of a tired building (hardly an “asset”) ever appear on Council’s strategy plans, like on its 2017 ‘Blue Mountains Community Strategic Plan 2035’?
Council since its 2020 purchase of the Clubhouse, has for the past four years been trumpeting its planned re-purposing of this 30 hectare defunct recreational site, including options for re-use of the old clubhouse. Before, that purchase and before any local community consultation. Council’s consultation with the local community didn’t start until 14th March 2022.
Council at least two years prior had already (secretly again) seconded external consultants for ideas about the site’s possible uses (another Greenwashing public relations campaign to justify Council’s $3.3 million expense of ratepayer’s funds and its proposed ‘noble’ initiative).
Yet, The Habitat Advocate previously accessed Council’s webpage. We also made a written submission which we shall soon share publicly in a subsequent article on this website.
We discovered the following fine print, which reveals Council had already pre-decided that any community ideas would have to conform within its notion of restoring planetary health – whatever Council decided to have that mean…
Quote:
“Former Katoomba Golf Course Precinct Plan
You’re invited to imagine the future of the former Katoomba Golf Course Precinct
At this extraordinary time, at an extraordinary site in our City within a World Heritage Area, we have an amazing opportunity to do something special.
We urgently need to take better care of nature to protect our own health. Our City is perfectly positioned to explore ways to care for our planet’s natural systems and share these solutions globally.
With Traditional Custodians, our community, educators and researchers from a number of universities, Blue Mountains City Council is exploring opportunities related to planetary health initiatives at the former Katoomba Golf Course precinct (clubhouse and adjoining 30 hectares of public land). We are doing this for the long-term benefit of our City and our community and to create new job opportunities.
We want to know – what opportunities you see for the former Katoomba Golf Course site? How do you think this site could be transformed to help restore planetary health?”
That is why in Council’s media release about the purchase, Council was already on the front foot flagging its pre-arranged re-purposing plans for the large site under its newly conceived ‘Blue Mountains Planetary Health Initiative‘. Read the two media releases we reproduce below – one by Council dated 5th October 2020, the other by Western Sydney University dated 10th December 2020. Recall councillors approved the purchase of the clubhouse on Tuesday 29th September 2020, just a week before Council’s media release, as stated in this article.
Council’s promotional poster inside its Planetary Health Centre. “The highest attainable standard of health , wellbeing and equity worldwide for all species”. [Photo by Editor 2024-05-26]
A few fact checks here…
Katoomba Golf Course bushland verge along Narrowneck Road [Photo by Editor 2024-05-26]
The same verge 50 metres south along Narrowneck Road…
Ye olde turnstiles that provided public access to the Katoomba Golf Course through what had been a fence behind the bushland verge. [Photo by Editor 2024-05-26]
And the forthcoming beneficiaries of Council’s so-called planetary health initiative? …
BENEFICIARIES: Council’s coffers for selling off what was Community bushland, soon the Developer’s coffers with commission to McGrath real estate agent’s coffers. Oh, and ‘Yarrabee’ means ‘place of many gums‘ in Aboriginal. We’ll, there used to be. [Photo by Editor 2024-05-26]
Council has set up a webpage that defines its understanding of this rather academic globalist concept of ‘Planetary Health‘, stating: “Its aim is to provide a framework for us to reassess and adapt human practices to better support a healthy planet for current and future generations.”
Council: …”adapting human practices to better support a healthy planet “…on Council’s defunct Katoomba Golf Course site (this was the 3rd hole). This location is just 300 metres from Lis Bastian’s Planetary Health Centre on the lower ground floor of the old clubhouse. [Photo by Editor 2021-04-11]
Council’s initiative programme is being delegated to Blue Mountains local Lis Bastian, now Council’s Senior Programme Lead for the Planetary Health Local Action Programme. Now there’s a bureaucratic mouthful. Ms Bastian is an experienced art teacher, grassroots environmentalists of sorts with a passion for The Arts and Permaculture amongst other interests and public leadership roles. An eco-celebrity being used by Council to garner trust with the local community. A brave person to take on this role.
But Council didn’t initiate this “Planetary Health” nonsense.
Prior to Council effectively buying back a building asset on the community land of Katoomba Falls Creek Valley it had long already owned, Council had consulted with Western Sydney University to try to attract university interest and ongoing funding for this otherwise very large defunct recreational site on the edge of Katoomba.
This is the Western Sydney University’s media release timed around the same time of Council’s purchase of the Golf Clubhouse (actually, less than two weeks later from 29th September 2020, thus:
‘Western Sydney University to explore Planetary Health excellence in local area’
2020-12-10, by Emma Sandham, Senior Media Office, Western Sydney University, ^SOURCE
“Western Sydney University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) and the Monash Sustainable Development Institute to explore the establishment of a Planetary Health Leadership Centre in Katoomba.
The Centre – to focus on the emerging science of Planetary Health, which links our activities with the health of people and the planet – is set to be based at the former Katoomba Golf Clubhouse recently purchased by BMCC.
Western Sydney University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice President (Research, Enterprise and International) Professor Deborah Sweeney commended the signing, which will place Western at the forefront of this emerging interdisciplinary research field.
“This MOU underpins the University’s mission of striving for innovation and excellence in its pursuit of impactful research that solves some of our most pressing local, regional, national and international challenges,” said Professor Sweeney.
The Planetary Health Leadership Centre’s (PHLC) proposed aims include:
The research and promotion of sustainable living, environmental science and other initiatives relating to how human practices can better support a healthy planet for current and future generations;
Research into climate change and bushfire management, and their impact on the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and its unique biodiversity;
A reinvigorated sustainability model for the region based on the principles of planetary health;
A substantive forum for BMCC, academics, local stakeholders, and global theorists and practitioners to be in meaningful dialogue about:
the practicalities of enacting transitions to cultures of planetary health;
the undertaking of research and promoting the development of strategies to improve the environmental health of the planet and to respond to the challenges of climate change, natural disaster, bushfire, and other processes which threaten sustainable living;
emulating the persona of the Blue Mountains as a unique place that fosters a culture of diverse and high quality creative endeavour as a City of the Arts.
Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said: “The signing of this MOU to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Blue Mountain’s World Heritage status announcement, is fitting.
Planetary Health is a global imperative. It resonates with the people of the Blue Mountains, but it is a matter for all people globally.”
For further information about plans for the PHLC, please contact Professor Nicky Morrison nicky.morrison@westernsydney.edu.au.
Yet, before 2020, we find this online academic article on Planetary Health dated September 2018…
‘Planetary Health: From the Wellspring of Holistic Medicine to Personal and Public Health Imperative’
by Susan L Prescott 1, and Alan C Logan 2, PMID: 30316687 DOI: 10.1016/j.explore.2018.09.002, National Library of Medicine (an official website of the United States government), ^SOURCE.
Abstract
“The term planetary health – denoting the interconnections between the health of person and place at all scales – emerged from the environmental and holistic health movements of the 1970-80s; in 1980, Friends of the Earth expanded the World Health Organization definition of health, stating: “health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological well-being and not merely the absence of disease – personal health involves planetary health”.
By the 1990s, the concept of planetary health was part of the fabric of integrative medicine; more recently, after the 2015 Lancet Commission on Planetary Health report, the concept has penetrated mainstream academic and medical discourse.
Here, we explore this history and describe its relevance to contemporary healthcare; integrative medicine is uniquely positioned to educate and advocate on behalf of patients and communities (current and future generations), helping to safeguard health of person, place and planet.
We use the emerging microbiome science as a way to illustrate the interconnectivity and health implications of ecosystems (including social/political/economic systems) at all scales. As highlighted in the Canmore Declaration, mainstream planetary health discourse will be strengthened by inter-professional healthcare perspectives, and a more sophisticated understanding of the ways in which social dominance orientation and medical authoritarianism compromise the World Health Organization’s broad vision of global health.
Planetary health isn’t a “new discipline”; it is merely an extension of a concept that was understood by our ancestors, and remains the vocation of all healthcare providers. Discourse on the topic requires cultural competency, critical consciousness and a greater appreciation of marginalized voices.”
Ok, so this term ‘Planetary Health’ pre-existed as a human holistic health concept back in the 1960’s. So, it was definitely NOT Blue Mountains {city} Council’s original initiative. Yet, admittedly borrowed from some external consultant – a university or one more local?
Notably, the term ‘planetary health‘ from this definition from 2018 is clearly NOT about the health of the planet, but rather the health of person and place. The notion is purely anthropocentric – meaning “regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals“. [Oxford Dictionary]
It states that by the 1990s, the concept of planetary health was part of the fabric of integrative medicine. So NOT ecology.
Council has made up it’s own different definition, akin to somehow saving the planet. But clearly not by what it does itself, but by what it expects others to do.
Out of the blue then in 2020, Blue Mountains {city} Council issued a press release to the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper
‘University push for Katoomba as council buys old golf clubhouse site’
“Two universities are planning to establish a centre in Katoomba under a major proposal unveiled by Blue Mountains City Council. Monash University and Western Sydney University are currently finalising a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with council after it purchased the old Katoomba Golf Clubhouse site for about $3.3 million. The MoU sets out a commitment to establish a leadership centre of international significance in the field of planetary health at the clubhouse site.
Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute director, Professor Tony Capon, described the plan as “a visionary way to mark the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO world heritage listing of the Greater Blue Mountains Area next month. We are very much looking forward to pressing forward with our shared vision for planetary health in the Blue Mountains,” he said.
Councillors endorsed the purchase of the clubhouse site that sits alongside the former Katoomba golf course – already owned by council – at their September 29 meeting. The purchase makes the site council’s largest operational land holding, at 29.66 hectares.
Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill: “The site is a strategic investment opportunity with significant potential benefits for the city in the short, medium and long term,” “Council will explore, with the community, the best strategic options for future uses of the precinct through the upcoming master plan process for Katoomba. What’s exciting is that this opportunity gives us our first real chance to work with universities to establish a leadership centre in the Blue Mountains that would provide jobs, as well as income that comes from sources other than rates.”
Establishing a planetary health leadership centre with universities was part of a local strategic planning statement endorsed by council this March.
Discussions with the universities have canvassed linking the centre with a hub in Katoomba’s town centre.
A UNESCO Chair in Planetary Health, funded by an external donor, could also be attached to the learning centre.
Professor Capon said the emerging field of planetary health “acknowledges that human health entirely depends on the health of natural systems. The COVID-19 pandemic, and last year’s unprecedented bushfire season, are signs that our current lifestyles are out of balance with nature”.
“In the interest of the well-being of all people, we should re-think the way we feed, move, house, clothe and power the world,” he said. “The Planetary Health Leadership Centre will advance practical solutions to everyday challenges, and strive for planetary conscious in the way we live.”
Blue Mountains mayor Mark Greenhill and Blue Mountains City Council CEO Dr Rosemary Dillon at the former Katoomba Golf Clubhouse (below).
Blue Mountains City Council CEO Dr Rosemary Dillon said the former clubhouse site has “significant potential to support appropriate development of this precinct that enables sustainable economic and social development, as well as job creation. By purchasing the clubhouse site, it remains in council’s ownership and leverages opportunities for the future.” She said “it is a fitting gift to the city – and the world – that we look to establish such a significant centre” as the Blue Mountains prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its world heritage listing.
The purchase has been funded by council’s property investment fund and internal sources to avoid the long-term cost of borrowing.
While the establishment of any university-linked centre is likely years away, council believes income generated from the site in the short term will help cover the costs associated with the facility and maintenance of the former golf course site.”
Council’s corporate culture still blindly considers it’s a “city”. It’s management and staff need to get outside that ivory tower more.
No city here – not yet anyway.
Our Blue Mountains region is the antithesis of being a city. It remains one of the last natural tracts of contiguous forested land in New South Wales and indeed Australia. That is why many local folk campaigned from the 1920s to protect it to achieve its World Heritage status. So why celebrate an ugly ‘city’ status for this beautiful and rare natural place in which we live?
According to Council’s ‘Blue Mountains Planetary Health Initiative’ webpage, it wants us to recognise as humans #WeAreNature. Yet, the reality is that with the planet’s human population plague at 8.1 billion and forecast to reach a “milestone” of 10 Billion by 2058 according to the United Nations, humans are not Nature but a virulent destructive, self-serving plague; hardly a Natural phenomenon.
… “you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?” – Joni Mitchell, 1970 . [Google Maps satellite view 2024 showing a dark green island within a mostly otherwise deforested landscape].
Council: #WeAreNature
Council’s ‘city’ mindset emanated from councillors proclaiming the string of villages along the Cox’s Watershed to be a ‘City’ back in post-war 1946. That’s where the bureaucrats mindset is stuck, still boasting in its media releases of “celebrating the unique privilege of managing a City within a World Heritage Area“. A city is not a privilege. It is an oxymoron. The mindset poses a threat to World Heritage – mostly juxtaposed downstream of Council’s encouraged urban development.
If council management, staff and councillors want to live in a city they should go back to the Sydney megalopolis which permeates on our Nepean River boundary – and crossing it recently by gerrymandering the NSW Penrith electoral boundary into Glenbrook. The Blue Mountains is not ‘Greater’ Sydney. When a NSW Government declaration, like a lockdown, is imposed for Greater Sydney, it does NOT affect the Blue Mountains.
[9] ‘Wollumboola threatened by selfish 20thC ‘golf’‘, 2011-09-02, by The Habitat Advocate, ^https://habitatadvocate.com.au/wollumboola-threatened-by-selfish-20thc-golf/
Smoking Ceremony or Smoke and Mirrors?Staged for the delegates by National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (NPWS), somewhere outside Sydney, Australia
[Source: ‘Global First Nations environmentalists share stories at the World Parks Congress in Sydney.5:30’, ^https://twitter.com/nitvnews, 20141113]
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Every ten years a World Parks Congress is a forum staged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to discuss the effectiveness of World Heritage Listed Protected Areas. For 2014, Parks Australia put up Sydney’s hand to host and fund it.
<<“We (Parks Australia) are delighted to be co-hosting the IUCN World Parks Congress with our colleagues in the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service – and look forward to welcoming inspiring leaders from around the world.”>>
IUCN’s vision is a “just world that values and conserves nature.” The theme for the 2014 conference is “Parks, people, planet: inspiring solutions”.
The last congress was in Durban, South Africa eleven years ago in 2003 and significant messages from that congress were that:
Considerable progress has been made in the establishment of protected areas although significant gaps remain
Protected areas face many challenges, and management effectiveness must be strengthened
Protected areas play a vital role in biodiversity conservation and sustainable development
A new deal is needed for protected areas, local communities and indigenous peoples
There is a need to apply new and innovative approaches for protected areas, linked to broader agendas
Protected areas require a significant boost in financial investment
Protected areas management must involve young people
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Congress Cost Benefits ?
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The obvious first question for the 2014 Sydney Congress is what are the outcomes from these seven messages of 2003?
The second question is what is to be the conservation return on investment of staging the 2014 congress in Sydney? That starts with Parks Australia and NPWS disclosing the full costs of the congress. How much will it have cost by the time this week is over? Five million? Ten million? Twenty million? More? That also involves disclosure of the onground conservation outcomes, if any. The congress hosts more than 5000 delegates for a week-long event in Sydney.
If the answers are not forthcoming and/or the performances less than satisfactory, then perhaps the money could have been better spent (invested) by Parks Australia and NPWS on specific onground conservation of current and worthy Protected Areas in Australia. So the third question is what is the opportunity cost of the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress which could have delivered the IUCN vision of a “just world that values and conserves nature”?
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Congress Opportunity Costs
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According to IUCN director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre, assessments during the past decade have found that half of the world’s protected areas at best — and possibly as few as 20 per cent — are managed effectively. “Some are what we refer to as ‘paper parks’ ” – parks just on paper.
The Australian Government’s $180 million allocation to expand the park reserve system expired last year.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a case in point. It is the iconic Protected Area in Australia. Its World Heritage listing along with various national zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives are supposed to protect and conserve the marine ecosystems and migratory species from human threats. But farm and urban runoff continues to contaminate the rivers that flow into the Reef.
In 2009 and 2011, mining company Queensland Nickel discharged nitrogen-laden water and 516 tonnes of toxic waste water into the Great Barrier Reef.
On 21 July 2013, on the second day of the biennial joint training exercise Talisman Saber, two American AV-8B Harrier fighter jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) dropped four bombs, weighing a total 1.8 metric tons (4,000 pounds), into more than 50 metres (164 ft) of water. On 3rd April 2010, The Shen Neng 1, a Chinese ship carrying 950 tonnes of oil, ran aground, causing the 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill.
In December 2013, Greg Hunt, the Australian environment minister, approved a plan for dredging to create three shipping terminals as part of the expansion of an existing coal port. According to corresponding approval documents, the process will create around 3 million cubic metres of dredged seabed that will be dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
On 31 January 2014, a permit was issued to allow three million cubic metres of sea bed from Abbot Point, north of Bowen, to be transported and unloaded in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, just outside of Abbot Bay. The dredge spoil will cloud the water and block sunlight, thereby starving sea grass and coral up to distances of 80 km away from the point of origin due to the actions of wind and currents. The dredge spoil will smother reef or sea grass to death, while storms can repeatedly resuspend these particles so that the harm caused is ongoing; secondly, disturbed sea floor can release toxic substances into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Dredging the Great Barrier Reef for bulk export shipping
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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has become just a blue line on a map. The trickle of funds for Australia’s national parks betrays a lack of appreciation of their economic contribution. Annual funding for the authority that runs Australia’s most famous reserve, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, is about 1 per cent of the $5.2bn it earns the country in tourism revenue.
Yet if the IUCN World Parks Congress cost a conservative $20 million to stage then a key opportunity cost would be the June 2014 Federal budget cuts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The budget axed 17 staff including five of its’ directors positions. These positions included the director of heritage conservation, the director of policy and governance and the director of coastal ecosystems and water quality as part of an internal restructure. It’s being described as the greatest loss of expertise from Australia’s most important natural wonder and it comes at the very time the Great Barrier Reef is facing the greatest threat to its survival.
The Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been reduced by the Australian Government to being in name only and ineffective at protecting the reef.
Until recently, one of those five directors, Adam Smith, was charged with dealing with the contentious Abbot Point coal terminal development and the proposal to dump three million cubic metres of dredge spoil into the marine park. Despite Dr Smith’s concerns, the sea dumping was approved by the Marine Park Authority.
Dr Smith has since accepted voluntary redundancy and moved on after disagreeing with the Authority’s new economic leadership and values. Heritage conservation director Jon Day has left after 21 years, disillusioned too with the direction the Authority has taken to compromise the reef.
Next year UNESCO will decide whether to put the reef on its world heritage in danger list. Native Dugongs are already endangered. The deliberate extermination of the dugong and turtles which habituated the Gladstone area is a national tragedy. Dugongs are species listed under the Federal Environment Protection Biodiversity & Conservation Act, which requires the Federal government to legally protect these animals.
Prior to the massive dredging operation of 52 million cubic metres of seabed for the development of the world’s largest LNG Terminal, ( which is 62% completed) a study commissioned by the Gladstone Ports Corporation found that a take, or a quota, of more than zero dugongs would be unsustainable.
In the face of massive mortality of dugongs, turtles and inshore dolphins during the ongoing massive dredging, both the Federal and Queensland governments ignored the slaughter.
Look at the stranding data from the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. Monthly cumulative Dugong strandings by year for Queensland, up to 31 January 2012.
There are 22,000 vessel movements a month in Gladstone Harbour. No ship strikes of Dugongs or of Green Turtles need to be reported. No audit of environmental conditions has been undertaken by the Queensland or Federal Governments. The wholesale slaughter of our marine wildlife is the price Australians are paying for the transformation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area into the world’s largest unregulated quarry.
Mass tourism operators good for the economy Getting up close to protected Humpback Whales within their 100 metre Protected Area
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Australian protected areas have seen rule changes in the eastern states have allowed cattle to graze, recreational shooters to hunt and hotel developers to build in national parks. Shore-based recreational fishing has been allowed in areas of NSW marine parks previously zoned as no-take sanctuaries. National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts, in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences.
Yet as host of the 2014 World Parks Congress, Australia is showcasing “our own inspiring places, inspiring people and inspiring solutions.” The Global Eco Forum within the Congress programme focuses on tourism exploitation of Protected Areas because like the new Greater Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the new values are not about conservation by the billions in revenue opportunity to Australia’s economy.
The October 2006 issue of National Geographic published an article “The Future of Parks: Hallowed Ground – Nothing is Ever Safe”.
It stated:
“Landscape and memory combine to tell us certain places are special, sanctified by their extraordinary natural merits and by social consensus.
We call those places parks, and we take them for granted.”
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Sydney’s 2014 World Parks Congress appears to be expensive window dressing, showcasing fraudulent conservation of Protected Areas in Australia.
It’s termed Greenwashing. The opportunity cost of the 2014 Congress could have instead funded the retention of the previously effective Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so done more for Protected Areas than all the pomp, promising, luncheons, showcasing, and talk-festing of the congress combined.
White Lemuroid Possum(Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area in Danger)Has the white lemuroid possum become the first mammal to go extinct due to global warming?
The species, normally found above 1000m, has not been sighted during any nighttime spotlighting expedition since 2005. Experts fear a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius may be to blame for the animal’s disappearance. [Source: ^http://www.wherelightmeetsdark.com/index.php?module=newswatch&NW_user_op=view&NW_id=453]
To all but the exploitation deniers, the demise of industrial logger Gunns this week was a fait accompli about a case of insular management obstinately pursuing an unsustainable business model.
Gunns plans for industrial deforestation have deservedly been condemned to civilised obsolescence like the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Fur Trade before it.
The industrial culture of taming Nature as if Man needed to compete
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Gunns employees, contractors, suppliers, investors and lenders have all been in denial – ‘market denial‘ – a story of “corporate arrogance, complacency, denial and hubris“.
And the Tasmanian and Australian parliaments have been equally negligent in delaying the implementation of their 2011 ^TasmanianForestsIntergovernmentalAgreement to transition Tasmanians out of this dying native timber industry, as well as shunning their broader social responsibilities to dependent communities.
Gunns Pulp Mill Site
Tamar Valley, Tasmania
(an ideal job for Planet Ark to make amends)
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They have allowed the problem to fester and to escalate. So now the inevitable crash has been all the more severe for all involved. This is a classic failure of leadership and of a parochial culture locked in 20th Century exploitism and despondently lost trying to find sustainable profit in a more complex and very different 21st Century.
A puppet passing the buck
Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings tactically softens the crash: “this does not mean that the pulp mill project itself is dead”
(famous last words in Tasmania’s Parliament, last Tuesday)
[Source: ‘Giddings: Gunns ‘not the end’ of pulp mill project’, 20120925,
^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-25/giddings-not-the-end-of-pulp-mill-project/4279564]
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‘The story of Gunns is a parable of corporate hubris. You can, as they did, corrupt the polity, cow the media, poison public life and seek to persecute those who disagree with you. You can rape the land, exterminate protected species, exploit your workers and you can even poison your neighbours. But the naked pursuit of greed at all costs will in the end destroy your public legitimacy and thus ensure your doom. Gunns was a rogue corporation and its death was a chronicle long ago foretold. The sadness is in the legacy they leave to Tasmania—the immense damage to its people, its wildlands, and its economy.’
Ta Ann Tasmania now remains the major driver of logging operations that continue to destroy large areas of old growth and high conservation value forests in Tasmania. Ta Ann Holdings is a Malaysian-based multinational logging and timber products company.
The Ta Ann Group has a track record of rainforest destruction and human rights violations in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
The Ta Ann Group’s operations began in 1985 when a subsidiary was granted a 257,604 acre concession to extract timber in the Kapit District, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. In recent years the conglomerate has grown substantially to be among the top five timber groups in Sarawak. The Ta Ann Group includes many subsidiaries and is worth around $US1.6billion.
The principal activities of the Ta Ann Group are in oil palm, timber concession licenses, trading logs, and manufacturing as well as the sale of sawn timber and plywood products. Japan and Europe are the main markets for structural plywood and floor base boards produced by the company.
In January 2006, Ta Ann was welcomed to Australia’s island state of Tasmania with a golden political handshake and they have since established forestry operations to sell Tasmanian wood products to customers in Japan, China and Europe.
Ta Ann’s decision to commence operations in Tasmania was likely driven by two core objectives: they were offered hardwood by the state-owned forestry company, Forestry Tasmania, at lower rates than they could access in Malaysia or Indonesia and they needed Tasmania’s ‘clean, green’ brand to access an increasingly environmentally concerned and lucrative international market.
Ta Ann received timber from Old Growth Coupe HA045E
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Ta Ann Tasmania has rejected timber from plantations, staked its future on continued access to timber from native forests and has actively lobbied to stall an industry-wide transition to plantation harvesting. Ta Ann has received timber from the destruction of Tasmania’s world class forests, including timber from old growth forests, forests with recognised World Heritage values, threatened species habitat and other forests that are of high conservation value.
Malaysian-owned Ta Ann does not process old growth but accepts wood from forest coupes where some old growth, or forest regarded by green groups as of high conservation value, may be harvested. This has led conservation groups to attack Ta Ann’s two Tasmanian mills as the main “driver” of the destruction of many of Tasmania’s oldest and most environmentally significant forests.
Huon Valley Environment Centre (HVEC) and Markets for Change have pursued their advocacy campaign for the protection of high conservation value forests and a rapid transition out of native forests in Tasmania. This has included actually travelling to Japan to Ta Ann’s Japanese markets. They have exposed Ta Ann’s false claims of using only plantation timber. They have exposed Ta Ann’s sourcing of timber from high conservation value forests, accused Ta Ann of lying to their Japanese markets about timber certification, and directly lobbied Ta Ann’s Japanese customers to tear up their contracts with Ta Ann and instead seek timber supply that meets high environmental standards, that which the current industry in Tasmania does not meet.
‘Ta Ann’s veneer of truth‘
[Source: Huon Valley Environment Centre]
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So when it was discovered this week that The Wilderness Society (TWS) and Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on 20th August 2012 had unilaterally written a letter to the Japanese customers to ask these customers to continue to purchase timber from Ta Ann Tasmania, naturally HVEC and Markets for Change were appalled. The letter by ACF’s Don Henry and TWS Inc.’s Lyndon Schneiders requests the Japanese customers to continue to purchase the contentious wood supply that Ta Ann Tasmania is supplying.
TWS and ACF are accused of selling out Tasmania’s native forests by secretly undermining the market campaigns of fellow conservationists in Japan and Australia. TWS and ACF are accused of “treachery” and “betrayal”.
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Markets for Change and the Huon Valley Environment Centre yesterday expressed shock and dismay at the letter, accusing ACF and TWS of secretly undermining their campaigns, which had been blamed for some cancelled contracts.
“This is an act of treachery to the forests,” Markets for Change campaigner and former Tasmanian Greens leader Peg Putt told The Australian. “TWS and ACF never had the decency to inform us that they had done this.”
Huon Valley Environment Centre campaigner Jenny Weber said the letter, sent to Ta Ann customers on August 20, seriously undermined campaigning in Japan against the veneer maker.
“It’s unprecedented that TWS and ACF are prepared to support the forest industry and undermine not only our own campaign but that of Japanese campaigners,” Ms Weber said.
“We have felt that these organisations have worked against us in the Japanese markets, and worse still they have supported a forestry industry that is not yet sustainable, committed to a transition out of native forests, and continues to log world heritage value and high conservation value forests. A forestry industry where the biggest timber company is a Malaysian logging company with a record of displacing indigenous people and environmental desecration in their home state of Sarawak.
The letter states; “As a buyer of Tasmania forests products we continue to respectfully request that you not make any decisions that could adversely affect Tasmanian suppliers during the current negotiations that are now closer to achieving a sustainable future for the forest industries in Tasmania. Far from giving peace a chance, the letters have reduced pressure for the forestry industry to come to an agreement. There is still no final forest agreement in Tasmania and the outlook is bleak as forestry industry representatives have now suspended their participation in the talks,” Ms Weber continued.
“At best the ACF TWS letters are grossly misguided, at worst they are a capitulation to industry. In either case these peak bodies have shown they are willing to support the forestry industry and deliberately undermine our campaign in secret. They have endorsed the ongoing logging of high conservation value forests for Ta Ann and their Japanese customers by making this communication with the markets.”
“This is not a time for these environment groups to lose their way and become the green tick for an unsustainable native forest logging industry in Tasmania. This is one step too far for these groups who have been waylaid by a long drawn out process that has not delivered any conservation gains and these conservation groups are endorsing the very company that contributes to the devastation of the forests for which they are trying to secure protection,” Ms Weber concluded.
“This act is undermining the chances of achieving protection of magnificent forests in Tasmania, and also the campaigns of Tasmanian, Australian and Japanese groups who have been participating in a successful markets campaign for the past twelve months”, said Peg Putt of Markets for Change.
“We have consistently asked companies receiving Ta Ann product to call for an immediate stop to logging the conservation claim in Tasmania whilst negotiations over the future protection of these forests take place, and to refuse to take wood product coming from inside this area.
“The ACF and TWS letters are clearly designed to counteract this campaign and to appease the forest industry. They repeatedly express concern for “a sustainable future for the forest industries in Tasmania”, but not for the fate of the magnificent forests under the chainsaw. We do not believe that their members and supporters are aware of or would condone their actions” Ms Putt said.
“The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society Inc. (TWS Inc) have sent false confidence to the Japanese customers of Ta Ann. This miscommunication in the markets will increase uncertainty. The fact remains that Ta Ann is shipping high conservation value forests to Japan, and these environment groups have endorsed this controversial product in the international market,” said Jenny Weber of the Huon Valley Environment Centre.
No organisation is so big that it cannot fail. It is recent logging industry appeasement that since last month has seen Planet Ark lose its environmental credibility with many.
Planet Ark was formed in 1992 and is well known for having established ‘National Tree Day’ across Australia – ‘Australia’s largest community nature event’. Planet Ark claims to be “an environmental organisation committed to encouraging positive behaviour change… We guard our independence and reputation fiercely.” ~ Planet Ark.
Yet just last month (August 2012) Sydney-based environmental not-for-profit organisation, Planet Ark, has been found out allowing its Planet Ark logo to be used on advertisements for timber, paid for by Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA). It is part of a sponsorship deal in which Planet Ark gets $700,000 from the timber industry. The deal involves Planet Ark’s public endorsement in the ‘Make It Wood’ advertising campaign which promotes the increased use of certified, responsibly sourced wood as a building material, along with the organisation’s decision to join the timber industry’s certification system for wood products, called the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS).
Yet the AFS Scheme has been found to have allowed timber to be sourced from high conservation value native forests. A timber company ticked off by the AFS was last year fined for illegal logging. AFS board member, the Victorian Government’s industrial logger, VicForests, was fined more than $200,000 by the Victorian Government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment for logging over allocation. ViCforests has also lost a Supreme Court case for planning to log threatened species habitat in East Gippsland and is being taken to court this year over alleged rainforest logging.
Australian environmental groups claim that the AFS Scheme is dodgy and approves “the most appalling logging practices like we see in Indonesia and Malaysia. AFS is endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), which has also been condemned globally for endorsing the certification of forest operations that destroy biodiversity, revoke human and community rights, and fail to undertake adequate engagement with key stakeholders.”
Reflex (copy paper) lost its Forestry Standard Certification by using native forest timber supplied by VicForests, yet retains AFS certification. The Tasmanian Government’s industroial logger, Forestry Tasmania, had its AFS certification renewed in July 2012, despite its ongoing clearfelling of high conservation forests and scorched earth practices that permanently destroy forest ecology and replace it with plantation timber, which it then calls ‘sustainable timber’.
So Planet Ark is not in good company. Planet Ark’s endorsement of AFS would seem to be contrary to Planet Ark’s key objective – ‘to protect and enhance the natural environment‘. It would be interesting to learn how FWPA answered Pkanet Ark’s Prospective Partners Questionnaire question #6:
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‘What is the environmental advantage and rationale/justification for this partnership?‘
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Conservationists have accused Planet Ark of having gone over to the ‘darkside’.
Sarah Rees from My Environment has said, “What in effect Planet Ark is doing today is endorsing logging in the Styx Valley (South West Tasmania). This is a very confusing message for consumers, given Planet Ark has such an important role to play in advising people on best brands and good wood.”
Greens Leader Christine Milne agrees. “What Planet Ark has done is they have undermined the rest of the environment movement by effectively trying to give some green wash to the native forest logging industry,” she said. “The AFS has no credibility at all. It was only dreamt up in response to the FSC standard and Australia couldn’t meet that standard. Next thing we knew we had this dodgy standard which no-one has any respect for.”
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon says Planet Ark’s deal with the timber industry is a conflict of interest. “There could be a perception that who pays the piper calls the tune. And when you’re getting $700,000 in donations from the industry and part of the review of the forest standard, then it raises some serious questions of a potential conflict of interest,” he said.
“The AFS scheme concerns many environmentalists. Clear felling, environmental destruction, death of native forests,” said environmentalist Jon Dee who helped found Planet Ark twenty years ago. “We believe this campaign, tied up with the forest industry, is one step too far.”
Joint founding member, Australia’s tennis great, Pat Cash, issued a statement to ABC TV’s 7.30 programme stated:
“The deal with the forest industry and the controversy around the Peter Maddison TV advert has eroded Planet Ark’s credibility as an environmental organisation. The Planet Ark board and management team should be held accountable for this decision to work with the forest industry…Planet Ark needs to return to the values that once made it such a great organisation and withdraw from their association with the AFS and the FWPA.”
The Director of environment group My Environment, Sarah Rees, says these are confronting issues for big NGOs who traditionally don’t come out against each other. “Discussions with Planet Ark with organisations including the Wilderness Society and Greenpeace over 14 months have failed to get Planet Ark to amend its attitude to the issues of clear-fell logging.
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“Planet Ark has dug its heels in with its message that all wood is good wood and this is just not right. The role of the environmental organisations is to ethically educate the public on forestry issues but Planet Ark has muddied that message.”
The Australian Forestry Standard provides certification for logging in extensive areas of native forests across Australia, and for wood products arising from such logging.
Watch the new promotional video ‘The Facts’ right now to see what sort of assurance the standard provides to retail customers and the Australian consumer about the forest and wood products they are purchasing.
‘World Forestry Day’ on 21st March is a greenwash promotion by the logging industry. It has the same meaning as the oxymoronic ‘eco-logging‘ (see above photograph).
[‘Eco=logging‘ means that we do leave some trees, sometimes. Some dodgy entrepreneur in South America has tried to register the name ‘ecologging’ as a trademark [^Read More] ]
The concept sounds noble enough on the Victorian Government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) site:
“World Forestry Day has been celebrated around the world for 30 years to remind communities of the importance of forests and the many benefits which we gain from them. The concept of having a World Forestry Day originated at the 23rd General Assembly of the European Confederation of Agriculture in 1971.”
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But hang on a second!
…a “Confederation of Agriculture” …this suggests a different set of values than anecological respect for native forests; somewhat more to do with agriculture (aka ‘logging‘). But I let the Victorian Government’s Dept of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) site continue:
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“Forests provide many valuable things for the whole community. These include fresh water from forested catchments, a safe home for our flora and fauna, timber for our homes, furniture and paper, beautiful scenery and rugged environments for those who enjoy the outdoors, pollen and nectar for honey production, and archaeological and historical sites.”
“Today, Victoria has an area of approximately 22.7 million hectares. About 40% is public land, meaning that it is owned by the State and managed by the government. There are about 4.8 million hectares of publicly owned native forest which is divided into the following categories: National parks and reserves – 1.7 million hectares, State forest – 3.1 million hectares.”
“Less than one third of Victoria’s state forests are available for timber harvesting and these forests produce more than two million cubic metres of wood products which return about $50 million in revenue to the State.”
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Ah Ha! So it’s all about revenue FROM our native forests, not a about being FOR our native forests! That phrase ‘timber harvesting‘ conveys such wholesome overtones of good honest pastoral labour, except it’s bloody logging forests! The term has been borrowed by poachers slaughtering kangaroos who euphemistically label the wildlife crime as ‘kangaroo harvesting‘.
So why not just rename this green-washing ‘World Forestry Day‘ what it really is: a celebration of logging – and rename it ‘World Logging Day‘?
DSE on its site suggests:
‘What can I do on World Forestry Day?” ..well children (the propaganda targets school children):
“Celebrate World Forestry Day by visiting your local forests and learning more about the many contributions they make to our well-being. For further information and ideas, see our Forest Education Information.” This link then takes the children directly to the ‘For Schools;’ section of its website which sends a key mesage [sic] to students that ‘forests have many different uses and values.” A second link takes children direct to the hardcore logging site of the Department of Primary Industries”.
Forests should be celebrated in their natural state, not by their exploitative revenue potential. Pity that we are now celebrating these in islands and outside the mainstream media. The contrasting ‘Earth Hour’ hype of late seems so token, yet attracts such mainstream publicity and has even Peter Garrett as its cheerleader! But beyond people thinking about turning off lights, Earth Hour pales in addressing irreversible planet damage compared with any day that recognizes the value of global forests.
Recognising natural undisturbed forests and the ‘green carbon’ benefits they contribute to a healthy global future is more important than token politics. As advocated by Professor Brendan Mackey in an article in EEG’s The Potoroo Review (current Spring/Summer 2008-09 edition, p9), “estimates that around 9.3 billion tones of carbon can be stored in the 14.5 million hectares of eucalypt forest in southeast Australia IF THEY ARE LEFT UNDISTURBED.”
While one supports the celebration of native forests in their natural place, the drawback of World Forestry Day is that the forestry industry has corrupted the word ‘forestry’ into a vernacular meaning of ‘exploitation value’.
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World Forest Day – online propaganda during 2010
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In 2010, if one searched ‘World Forestry Day’ online, one got the following suspicious results:
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Google Search #1: Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) (aka Victorian Government)…say no more
So when searching ‘World Forestry Day‘ online, clearly Australian state governments’ greenwashing has set up prime presence.
[Editor: The above government links have disappeared consistent with government short-termism].
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NAFI Propaganda
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Equally the National Association of Forestry Industries (NAFI) ^http://www.nafi.com.au offered a propaganda page on World Forest Day during 2011.
NAFI’s logo
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NAFI boasts that it is..
‘the peak forest industry body in Australia representing a wide variety of companies involved in forest management, wood processing, commercial tree plantation growing, timber sales and distribution, carbon offset growers, forestry harvesters, haulage contractors, and engineered wood products manufacturers. NAFI also represents the interests of forestry research bodies, timber community groups and state forest industry bodies.’
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Not surprisingly NAFI is located within a ten minute drive of Parliament House Canberra, with a politician never out of earshot.
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NAFI’s VISION THING
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‘The vision of NAFI is for an ecologicaly [sic] sustainable Australian society based, in part, on a dynamic, internationally competitive forest industry.’
Clearly drafted by an expensive consultant, it is utopian in its desire for harmonious co-existence between making a buck from logging forests, and conserving the ecological values of those same forests. In other words having one’s cake and eating it too. Pity they couldn’t spell ‘ecologically’.
Yet, conspicuously, ‘ecologically sustainable’ is missing in NAFI’s Objectives.
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NAFI’s OBJECTIVES
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Improve the commercial results and investment attractiveness of the forest industries through favourable government policy decision and actions (i.e. make money from logging).
Create a preferred position for the Australian forest industries in the rapidly changing international framework of treaties, codes of practice, standards, conventions and legislation. (i.e. influence law making so that more money can be made from logging).
Achieve widespread community recognition of the social, environmental and economic benefits of forest industries. (i.e. drive a propaganda strategy to win hearts and minds that logging is good).
Support and promote innovation, research and development. (i.e. pay universities to write reports to show that logging is good).
Improve market opportunities and competitive advantage in order to increase demand for forest products and achieve consumer satisfaction (i.e. market logging).
Achieve maximum utilisation of Australian resources within a framework of an open and competitive market. (i.e. be efficient by logging all the forest and invite others to join in).
Service members needs and maximise industry ownership and involvement in the Association. (i.e. lobby loggers interests for more forests to log and build numbers to maximise political influence)
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Without compromise, the above objectives convey a single minded focus on commercial logging of forests.
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NAFI’s BIGGER LOGGER LOBBY GROUPING: ‘AFPA’
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Consistent with the NAFI objectives (not the VISION), in April 2011 the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) was formed through the merger of the Australian Plantations Products and Paper Industry Council (A3P) and the National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI). Nothing uncertain about the motives of this organisation. Anyone who profits from logging is represented by AFPA – ‘tree plantation growers, harvest and haulage contractors, sawmillers, forest product exporters, and pulp and paper processors’. The new website is ^http://www.ausfpa.com.au/site/
Not surprisingly, AFPA is strategically located in NAFI’s offices, just a ten minute drive from Parliament House, Canberra, with ready access to the hearts and minds of Australia’s federal politicians.
A few weeks prior on 21 March 2011, a gala dinner was staged between the loggers and the politicians up the road at Parliament House, Canberra to (believe it or not) celebrate the United Nations’ Declaration of 2011 as the ‘International Year of Forests’. The logger body’s response to 2011 being the ‘International Year of Forests’ has been to unite loggers into a single united mighty lobbying force for logging – the AFPA.
“A single voice, a single association, is a clearer and more concise way to present the forest products industry to governments, the media and the people of Australia in a united fashion.”
– Linda Sewell, transitional Chairperson of AFPA and A3P Chairperson, after announcing the creation of AFPA in Canberra on 21 March 2011.
No surprise who is on the Transitional Board of AFPA – loggers and logging product merchants one and all:
Ms Linda Sewell, HVP Plantations (Transitional Chairperson)
Mr Terry Edwards, Forest Industries Association of Tasmania (FIAT)
Mr Vince Erasmus, Elders Forestry
A more apt logo for the Logging Industry
The motives for World Forestry Day are nothing but blatant pro-logging propaganda.
Stihl Chainsawing Old-Growth
…’are you looking for the best chainsaw for cutting trees?’ ~ quote from Stihl’s website.
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The term ‘Existence value’ deserves to be further explored and promulgated, so we can develop a greater non-utilitarian value of our natural and now rare forests. Our precious forest exists for their own sake, the forest ecosystems they support and of which we have so little comprehension of their global existence value and scarcity.
Originally posted February 23rd, 2009 by Tigerquoll on CanDoBetter.net.
In Victoria in 1992, some bureaucrat got the idea of changing the name (and focus) of the Department of Conservation and Environment to a Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, then in 1996 to a Department of Natural Resources and Environment, then in 2003 a split to (1) a Victorian Department of Primary Industries and (2) a Department of Sustainability and Environment.
Currently this government department is known by an obscure acronym: ‘DSE‘. But those out in the ‘tree face’ genuinely caring for old growth forests of Victoria, discard this acronym to mean either…’Don’t Support Environment‘ or simply the ‘Department of Sparks and Embers‘. The reason in empirical. The DSE has a reputation for Forestry Logging bias – facilitating old growth logging, habitat deforestation and related bush arson.
Meanwhile, across the border in NSW, in 2007, the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) was changed to the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) so as to make it look like the NSW Labor Government publicly cared about climate change by delegating a name change.
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While pandering to ‘climate change’ populism, the fundamental concept of ‘conservation’ has been dismissed by government.
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All the DEC business cards and logos were changed to DECC at what impact on climate change? At what cost this extra ‘C‘? The cost has been to remove the Conservation imperative!
Rather than forming a dedicated research and response organisation to focus on climate change, the conservation was dropped from the existing department. Cynically, including ‘climate change’ as a name of one of its departments, government must feel cosy sending a message it is addressing climate change. For a while the department was headed up by The NSW Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water – a bucket of outdoor type activities that sounded good together.
Across the border in South Australia, they have the Department for the Environment and Heritage (DEH), which sounds borrowed from the federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (another collective bucket). It is hard to see how with so many diverse portfolios, a minister can dedicate any leadership to making genuine improvements to what’s left of Australia’s intact natural environment and its desperate need for conservation.
With all the money spent on names changing, the tens of thousands could have gone into on-ground conservation activities like fox control programmes.
Wildlife Service sets fires to another 3000ha of World Heritage bushland
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Last Wednesday (18th May 2011) right across the Blue Mountains, thick smoke choked the sky in a eye watering haze. By Friday, an artificial red sunset was blazing through the wood smoke at the end of two days of New South Wales government-sponsored bush arson.
I knew exactly the ecological disaster unfolding, out of sight out of mind.
In its annual misguided winter ritual, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (Wildlife Service), aided and abetted by the Rural Fire Service has deliberately setting fire to remote bushland across The Blue Mountains World Heritage Area – a ‘natural planet asset’ of which the Wildlife Service is international custodian.
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Linden Ridge HR Ops (May 2011)
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On Wednesday afternoon 18th May 2011, the aerial incendiary bombing commenced at Linden Ridge and extended down to the Grose River inside the Blue Mountains National Park (within designated wilderness within the World Heritage Area). Bushfire management euphemistically call it ‘hazard reduction‘ (HR) ; rejecting any notion that bushland habitat is a natural asset, and instead demonising it as a ‘hazard’.
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Massif Ridge HR Ops (May 2010)
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The Linden Ridge ‘ops’ follows an almost identical HR ‘ops’ conducted the same time last year on 12 May 2010 in which aerial incendiary ‘ops’ commenced around Massif Ridge some 12 kilometres south of the town of Woodford in wild inaccessible forested area of the World Heritage Area. Some 2500 hectares of high conservation habitat bushland in a protected wilderness area called the ‘Blue Labyrinth’ was indiscriminately incinerated – ridgetops, gullies, everything. Refer to previous article on this website: >’National Parks burning biodiversity‘.
The same Blue Mountains National Park has been targeted by the same aerial incendiary bombing by the same Wildlife Service. Both the operations were carried out under the orders of the Blue Mountains regional manager, Geoff Luscombe.
This is reducing the ‘hazard’
Click photo to enlarge, then click again to enlarge again and look for anything living.
After a year look for the animals.
After two years look for the animals….
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Gross Valley Defacto HR Ops (Nov 2006)
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Both the above HR Ops follow the massive conflagration of November 2006, infamously recalled across the Blue Mountains community as ‘The Grose Fire‘. Two abandoned lightning strikes coupled with HR Ops along the Hartley Vale Road and escaping backburns coalesced and incinerated an estimated 14,070 hectares of the Grose Valley and adjoining ridge lands, much of which is designated wilderness. Many consider the actions of the bushfire management response in hindsight to have been a defacto hazard reduction burn. With such an effective elimination of the natural ‘hazard’ that year, as well as the public outrage, HR Ops went quite for four years.
How many animals native to this beautiful Grose Valley suffered an horrific burning death?
How many of their kind have now perished forever from the Grose?
…ask your Wildlife Service at Blackheath!
Charles Darwin in 1836 counted platypus in the area.
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The perverted rationalisation by bushfire lighting theorists who have infiltrated the Wildlife Service is that the natural bushland, forests and swamps of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area are perceived not as a valuable natural asset, but as a world ‘hazard’ area to be feared and ‘to be burned in case they burn‘.
These same bushfire lighting theorists have effectively infiltrated, appeased and silenced local conservation groups such as the otherwise very vocal Blue Mountains Conservation Society, the National Parks Association of New South Wales and the umbrella conservation group the New South Wales Conservation Council.
The local conservation movement’s complicity to sanction explicit broadscale ecological harm is a disgraceful and ignoble abandonment of cherished core values, and a breach of duty to faithful environmental membership.
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Broadscale indiscriminate ‘HR’ is no different to wildfire or bush arson
The Linden Ridge and Massif Ridge HR Ops were approved and executed by government in the name of ‘hazard reduction’ – to reduce the available ‘fuel’ (native vegetation) for potential future wildfires or bush arson. In both cases, the massive broadscale natural areas burnt were not careful mosaic low intensity burning around houses. This was broadscale indiscriminate fire bombing of remote natural bushland many miles from human settlement. How can the deliberate setting alight of bushland where no fire exists, where no human settlement requires protection from the risk of wildfire be construed but anything other than ‘government-sanctioned bush-arson‘?
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The ‘Ecological Burn’ Myth
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When bushfire management can contrive no other excuse for setting fire to native vegetation, such as when that vegetation is many miles away from human settlement and so poses no direct threat, out comes the concocted theory of the ‘ecological burn’. The ‘ecological burn’ theory starts with the premise that because humans have observed that the Australian bush ‘grows back’ (eventually) after a bushfire, it may be concluded that the Australian bush can tolerate bushfires. This hypothesis relies on evidence that selected species of Australian germinate after smoke and fire and the example of epicormic growth of many Eucalypts after fire.
The first deductive fallacy of this theory is that all the Australian bush is bushfire tolerant. This deduction is then extended by unsupported assumption that since the Australian bush is bushfire-tolerant, bushfire must be an integral natural process to which the Australian bush has become adapted to bushfire. The assumption is then extrapolated to assert that bushfire is indeed beneficial to the Australian bush. The assumption is then stretched even further to conclude that without bushfire the Australian bush will be adversely affected. The ecological burn theory then prescribes that by burning the Australian bush, whether by natural or unnatural means, the biodiversity of the Australian bush will be improved.
The deductive fallacy goes further, to suit the motives of the fire-lighters. The outrageous generalisation is made that all the Australian bush must be burnt at some stage for its own ecological benefit. ‘So go forth and burn it. The bush will grow back. It will do it good.’
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The perverted irrational logic that Australia’s native vegetation has adapted to recover from fire, is akin to claiming the human body is adapted to recover from injury such as burns. A wound may heal but no-one seeks to be injured in the first place. And not all wounds heal. A third degree burn to more than 50% of a human body is almost a certain death sentence. What percentage of a wild animal’s body can be burnt and the animal still survive? That’s a perverted question for the fire-lighters.
Broadscale hazard reduction is not mosaic patch-work fire. It is not creating a small scale asset protection zone around the immediate boundary of a human settlement. It is wholesale bush arson that is driving local extinctions. Ever wonder why when bushwalking through the Australian bush so few native animals are seen these days? Their natural populations have been decimated through two centuries of human harm – mainly poaching, introduced predation and habitat destruction including by human-caused bushfires and human-abandoned bushfires.
The recent concept of the so-called ‘ecological burn’ is a contrivance, a myth. It is a false cause fallacy. Ecological fire a defunct scientific theory contrived by bushfire management engaging unemployed graduates to think up an idea for a PhD. It belongs in the same discarded bucket of defunct scientific theories from days of yore of such ilk as ‘alchemy‘, ‘phlogiston‘, ‘flat earth‘, ‘hollow earth‘ and ‘the birth cries of atoms’ theories. Yup, these were once believed.
The effect on wildlife habitat by broadscale ‘hazard’ reduction is no different than if it was caused by wildfire or bush arson. The hazard to wildlife habitat is the same. The broadscale blanketing of bushland with high intensity burns that reach into the tree tops and scorching ground cover and earth, present the same intense fire regime. The landscape is laid to waste in just the same way as wildfire or bush arson does. Habitat and the wildlife it accommodates become the innocent victims of horrific bushfire, no matter how caused.
There is no wildlife monitoring before, during or after one of these aerial incendiary ‘ops’. Aerial incendiary guarantees no discretion between fire sensitive habitat and fire-resilient habitat. It is a simplistic, convenient a cheap one-size-fits-all solution that re-colours the fire maps to appease political masters. The chopper boys are given their bombing co-ordinates and then do their search and destroy mission. These airborne lads should apply their skills to good and not evil. They should stick to improving their water bombing skills, not participating in this perverted fire-lighting culture.
When the rains follow, the thin yet vital topsoils get washed away into the gullies and streams. This erodes the landscape and prevents regrowth of many flora species due to the lack of vital nutrients. After both the Massif Ridge HR and the Linden Ridge HR, heavy rains did follow.
Only the species of flora adapted to bushfire recover. Fire sensitive species of flora are eliminated from the landscape. Name one species of fauna that is fire tolerant. Where are the zoologists in the Wildlife Service to tell of the impact of the HR? If this mob is providing a ‘service’, it certainly ain’t providing a service to wildlife.
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Wildlife Service chief boasts of mass incineration of 92,000 ha of National Parks
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And the Wildlife Service regional chief for the Blue Mountains region, Geoff Luscombe, in his media release 17th May 2011 boasted of his:
“3000 hectare burn” that “the NPWS carried out more than 92,000 hectares of hazard reduction in 269 burns in 2009/10 – its biggest ever program.”
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To put this area into perspective, in terms of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area of about 1 million hectares, such a hazard reduction programme over a decade would decimate the Blue Mountains completely. And they call themselves a ‘Wildlife Service’?
Once again thousands of hectares of pristine flora and fauna habitat in deep inaccessible terrain, miles from houses and human property, has been incinerated from the air using contracted aircraft dropping indiscriminate aerial incendiaries. If only these boys had napalm!
Luscombe confirms in his media release…
“An aircraft will be used to manage the burn as most of the burn will take part in remote areas of the Blue Mountains.”
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This incineration of natural wildlife habitat is justified by the Wildlife Service as ‘strategic‘ and ‘hazard reduction‘ operations are one of many being conducted by NPWS around the state making the most of the dry sunny winter conditions. This burn is part of the NPWS annual fire management program.
Luscombe again:
…“reducing the volume of fuels within strategic areas of the Park, can assist in limiting the intensity and rate of spread of a wildfire in the area.”
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Then on Friday 20th May 2011, vertical plumes of smoke were seen rising from Cedar Valley south of the Jamison Valley ~ another one of these secret HR aerial incendiary black ops that the public is not supposed to know about? No notice on either the Blue Mountains Rural Fire Service site or the Wildlife Service site. Out of sight, out of mind.
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‘Strategic Fire Management Zones’ – a symptom of a bushphobic cult out of control
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Under the Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee which governs the Blue Mountains region, ‘environmental assets’ are restricted to “threatened species, populations and ecological communities and Ramsar wetlands, locally important species and ecological communities, such as species and ecological communities especially sensitive to fire.”
So how does aerial incendiary discriminate when setting fire to a contiguous 2500 hectares or 3000 hectares of wilderness?
Answer: It doesn’t , it doesn’t seek to, it doesn’t care. The guidelines are only to keep the greenies happy. It’s called ‘greenwashing’.
The Wildlife Service in its official Fire Management Strategy, has relegated 97.7% of the Blue Mountains National Park into either what it calls ‘Strategic Fire Advantage Zones’ or else ‘Heritage Zones. In essence, heritage Zones are valued natural areas that are protected from fire, whereas the Strategic Fire Advantage Zones are expendable. The Wildlife Service proclaims that …due to the ‘relative lack of practical fire control advantages’ (lack of access and resources), Strategic Fire Management Zones are ‘managed’ to protect community assets… to reduce fire intensity… assist in the strategic control… to contain bush fires and to strengthen existing fire control advantages.
All of which simply means is that it is expendable and can and should be burnt in case it burns. Strategic Fire Management Zones ‘are considered priority for ‘treatment‘ – read targeted for broadscale indiscriminate aerial incendiary. So 2500 hectares of wilderness around Massif Ridge copped it last winter and 3000 hectares of wilderness around Linden Ridge copped it this winter. If it’ red on the fire map, burn it!
What do these ecological vandals get up to deep in the wilderness at night with their matches and petrol drip torches out of the direct view of the public? They put up signs to deny public access to their nefarious activities. Out of the public view, they are out of sight out of mind.
A cult is a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. Starting large bushfires would seem to fit that definition. Fire-lighting is a cult of ecological deviance, just like any form of arson.
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Precautionary principle ignored
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“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.” [Source: Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration (1992)] Such is the internationally agreed precautionary principle which Australia has adopted as a guiding principle of environmental management. The National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (1992) adopts the precautionary principle as a “core element” of ESD as does the Inter-Governmental Agreement on the Environment, and the Wildlife Service is supposed to be bound by it in its management of National Parks.
The Wildlife Service once a trusted upholder of the science-based ‘precautionary principle‘ has of late succumbed to the more red neck bushphobic fear of the bush. What the general public hears about the Wildlife Service these days is its broadscale fire bombing of vast areas of vegetation in its ‘protected’ National Parks. This is confirmed these days by the wood smoke-filled air choking many communities and responsible for unknown volumes of smoke emissions contributing to net human-caused pollution to the planet – what many call ‘climate change’.
In the Wildlife Service’s Plan of Management for the Blue Mountains National Park the only reference to the precautionary principle is “Maximum levels of total commercial recreational use in the park will be set for particular activities and particular locations according to precautionary principles.” (p.84) In its Fire Management Strategy for the Blue Mountains, the only reference to the precautionary principle is “the precautionary approach will generally be applied in the absence of specific information.” (p.53)
Clearly the Wildlife Services respect for the precautionary principle is tokenistic, and wholeheartedly disregarded with its use of aerial incendiaries. The Blue Mountains delicate ecosystems are vulnerable to the indiscriminate fire regimes being imposed upon them. The burning into the tree canopy, the broadscale contiguous burning, the scorching of the landscape until bare earth can be seen is highly damaging to the many micro ecosystem across the Blue Mountains. When such burning occurs what happens to the micro-organisms, fungi species and the natural soil biota?
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” Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown.”
~ Michael Clarke (Associate Professor, Department of Zoology, La Trobe University, 2008)
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A discredited Wildlife Service
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The once trusted and respected Wildlife Service has lost its conservation way. It now spends more time, money and training on burning fragile ecosystems in its National Parks and exploiting those same parks for tourism exploitation, than it does on wildlife habitat rehabilitation. Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has become far more active and valuable in its urban wildlife recovery programmes than the Wildlife Service is in the wild.
At the carpark above Katoomba Falls within the Blue Mountains National Park, a rather old and deteriorating sign put up by the Wildlife Service years ago, conveys a conservation message to park users. The last two sentences are particularly poignant in light of the massive scale of broadscale bush arson repeatedly being inflicted by the protectorate of the National Park – the Wildlife Service. If only the Wildlife Service would “leave nothing but footprints” and follow its own maxim.
Indiscriminate bush arson of remote bushland in a National Park shows that the Wildlife Service has descended into a predatory wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s management cannot be trusted with its custodial responsibility to protect the unique treasure of the Blue Mountains.
Once I had a desire to embark on a career as a National Parks Ranger. Had I, in the end, I would have morally wrestled with the hypocritical politics and lasted less than the initial probationary period. I empathise with those who hold a personal commitment to ecology and environmentalism within the Wildlife Service.
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The key drivers of the ‘HR Culture’
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The perverted and unquestioned rush to set fire to as much bushland as possible across the Blue Mountains and indeed across Australia is being driven by five cultural factors:
‘Ecological Fire’ Myth. (as described above) Certain ”fire ecologists’ (a self-described term for many seeking to make this a lucrative profession) who are funded by bushfire management agencies, not surprisingly have conjured the academic theory that burning the bush is good for it because it increase biodiversity – just what bushfire management with their cheque book want to hear! They have conjured the term ‘ecological fire‘, which as a euphemism sounds good, so it must be good. So those setting fire to the bush may have no moral qualms. Crap. Show me any native fauna that proliferate after fire – ‘ecological’ or otherwise!
Under-Resourced. Bushfire management is being repeatedly denied the necessary resources and technologies to quickly detect, respond to and suppress bushfore ignitions as and when they do occur, so there is a mindset of futile frustration that nothing can be done to stop bushfires frequently getting out of control.
Bushphobic Extremists have become effective in their fear campaign to influence natural land managers, politicians and the media in their one dimensional theory that if bushland is not burnt to remove ‘fuel loads’ catastrophic firestorms will inevitably bring forth Armageddon. They preach that only the wholesale removal of forests will prevent wildfire. (Replacement with concrete would prevent it too.) Their constant evangelising reaches such irrational hysteria, that in order to appease them, HR Ops are promised and executed just to keep them at bay.
False Sense of Security. ‘Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security’ (James Woodford, 8-9-2008). But how is burning remote bushland many kilometres from the human interface, allaying human security concerns? Yet hazard reduction is known to directly cause a sharp increase in fuel loads due to an unnaturally high and uniform germination of understory plants.
Winter Idleness. Fire fighting naturally quietens off during the cooler wetter month of winter, and since Australian bushfire management agencies in the main only do bushfire management rather than throw on an SES jacket, multi-task in complimentary emergency management; many bushfire agencies are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being idle over winter. So HR gives ’em all something to do!
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The Wildlife Service must ‘love the smell of napalm (and smoke) in the morning’
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The Wildlife Service undertaking these remote HR Ops, sending in the airborne firelighters, must be like watching the Huey helicopter beach attack scene in Francis Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘A Heart of Darkness’. Colonel Kilgore in his black Confederate cowboy hat shouts:
“We’ll come in low out of the rising sun, then about a mile out we’ll put on the music; scares the hell out of the slopes.”
Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” is played and the boys play war games with real aircraft and real fire and causing real death and destruction.
A giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning… The smell, you know that gasoline smell… Smells like … victory”, as he recalls a battle in which a hill was bombarded with napalm for over twelve hours.
The Wildlife Service aerial incendiary boys must think of themselves as Special Forces. Perhaps there is a Colonel Kurtz among them – like an insane killer operating deep inside Laos. Kurtz’ final lines in the film are “The horror! The horror!” How comparable with what is happening deep inside Australia’s wilderness areas, out of sight out of mind? …with extreme prejudice!
How comparable is the US secret war fire bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War with the out of sight fire bombing by the Wildlife service of vast areas of Australia’s natural landscape?
The legacy of the Wildlife Services’ aerial incendiary campaigns deep inside National Parks will be one remembered for fire bombing wildlife habitat from once natural and densely vegetated into a one unnatural, sterile and ghostly quiet.
When it is too late, hazard reduction will be acknowledged by our children as naiive threatening process of our generation that drove Australia’s remaining wildlife into extinction.
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Further Reading:
[1] ‘Catering for the needs of fauna in fire management: science or just wishful thinking?’ by Michael F. Clarke, Wildlife Research, Vol. 35 No. 5 Pages 385 – 394, Published 19 August 2008, ‘Ecological fire management in Australia is often built on an assumption that meeting the needs of plant species will automatically meet the needs of animal species. However, the scarcity of..’. ‘Wildlife Research: Ecology, Management and Conservation in Natural and Modified Habitats’, a CSIRO Journal, ISSN: 1035-3712, eISSN: 1448-5494, Available for subscription at http://www.publish.csiro.au/index.cfm
[2] ‘The dangers of fighting fire with fire‘, by James Woodford, Sydney Morning Herald, 20080908, p.11, http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-dangers-of-fighting-fire-with-fire/2008/09/07/1220725850216.html (Accessed 20110523).
Gunns’ must really be loaded to commit $2.2 billion on a pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley.
Not many companies have that sort of money and certainly not in cash-strapped Tasy. But with access to so much financial capital, why waste it on 20th Century logging? Tasmania has so much economic potential using 21st Century thinking and think what a smart $2.2 billion could otherwise benefit Tasmania’s future, without 19th Century exploitation?
The money to build such a pulp mill has to come from somewhere and it appears Gunns’ may have found a financial joint venture backer in Finnish pulp giant, UPM-Kymmene Oyj.
Gunns tries to claim that it’s motive is all about forestry jobs for Tasmanians. But once UPM gets a foothold in Tasmania, check UPM’s record with jobs…
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“In September 2008 UPM announced another cost reduction program that includes layoffs thousands of employees, and its Kajaani paper mill and Tervasaari pulp mill will be closed altogether. These will be the largest layoffs ever in Finland. In March 2006 UPM announced a cost reduction program that includes layoffs approximately 3,600 employees, nearly 3,000 of those in Finland, and its Voikkaa paper mill in Kuusankoski was closed altogether. This was the largest single layoff ever in Finland. This is attributed[by whom?] to the worldwide overproduction of paper. UPM announced the permanent closure of a large mill complex in Miramichi, New Brunswick on December 17 2007, citing economic pressures in the North American forest industry.”
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPM_%28company%29 ]
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Greg L’Estrange, Gunns’ replacement CEO for John Gay since July 2009, seems to be tasked with getting the pulp mill up and running no matter what the cost, no matter what spin doctoring efforts are employed to secure government approval. Somehow his deal making has succeeded in government fast-tracking of the assessment process.
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On 25th November 2010, Gunns released a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange stating that the pulp mill project remained on track. This is Gunn’s ‘do-or-die‘ single corporate strategy. It has no plan B. . L’Estrange’s initial ploy was to remove the motive driving Gunns’ key enemies. Gunns’ declared a moratorium on native forest logging across Tasmania. It was clearly a bid to secure Forestry Standard Certification, to comply with new Japanese buyer benchmarks; rather than any noble recognition of native forest conservation values.
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Then L’Estrange concocted Gunn’s Forest Statement of Principles and armed with this did a secret forest peace deal late last year with local greenie groups. L’Estrange sold it as a new greener Gunns’ “working with environment groups to create a future without conflict.” Consistent with strategy, the ‘Tassie Talks’ deal it was all about quelling Tasmanian public dissent and he quickly branded the deal pivotal to the Tasmanian forest industry and ‘historic’. Be seen to be green! Whatever it takes! Except environmental groups deny they have given the green light to Gunns Tamar valley pulp mill by signing the deal. There’s that greenwashing term again – ‘sustainable‘. It’s become an abused and hollow marketing euphemism really about corporate ‘financial viability‘ in the exploitation of natural resources. Such corporations shy from using the term ‘triple bottom line’ any more, because it is harder to promote when one is only focused on the bottom line. And there’s fresh water demand of the mill and the marine effluent it will spew, which L’Estrange has tried to allay concerns claiming new pulp bleaching technology promises to reduced toxic outflow of chlorine dioxide by some 40%. Despite the promise of ‘stricter controls’ an expected 64,000 tonnes of effluent will still be released by the pulp mill into Bass Strait daily. And it won’t harm marine life?
‘At its annual general meeting in November, Gunns told shareholders that modelling work showed the mill would have no impact on marine ecosystems, but Environment Tasmania said it was still concerned about the effect of up to 51 gigalitres a year of industrial effluent being discharged into the sea.’
Securing Gunns’ shareholder backing, L’Etrange at Gunns’ recent annual general meeting, drew a line in the sand claiming the moratorium on native forest logging (the greenie forest deal) was now conditional on the Tamar Valley pulp mill going ahead. If the greenies want to keep Tasmania’s native forests, they must agree on the pulp mill proceeding. The ‘Tassie Talks’ deal was always a loaded gunn deal.
“We believe that the development of the Bell Bay Pulp Mill will be the centrepiece of this strategy for the modern industry in Tasmania.”
Of course it’s all rather reminiscent of Gunn’s heavy-handed power playing under John Gay. The Gunns’ Board hasing changed; only its front man. This latest greenwashing approach is one of image rebranding and loaded deals, all the while Gunns’ pulp mill strategy remains on track. L’Estrange plays good cop while the pulp mill unswervingly looms as Tasmania’s big bad cop.
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Tasmania’s natural heritage is Tasmania’s future… whether dead in a museum like its Thylacene or alive and precious…is ultimately an existence decision for local Tasmanians.
Update News Friday 20110311: ‘Contentious pulp mill wins federal approval’
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Yesterday L’Estrange must have earned his executive performance bonus following Labor’s federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, announcing government approval for the pulp mill to proceed. L’Estrange’s comment was that the decision brought certainty for proposed investors in the pulp mill project, now estimated to cost $2.3 billion, pre-cost blowout, pre-government subsidies. (‘Contentious pulp mill wins federal approval’, SMH, 20110311)
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Upon gaining the final three environmental permits Gunns needs for the mill, Gunns shares rose 5.88% to close at $0.63. (Finnewsnetwork.com.au, 20110311). Certainly a ‘sustainable’ result for L’Estrange.
Gunn’s pulp mill will perpetuate 20th Century logging across Tasmania. It will continue to make Tasmanian rural communities dependent on one industry and vulnerable to the whims of one employer – Gunns.
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Gunns’ spin is that the mill will only use timber from plantations, capitalising on the fact that those plantations were planted as a result of clear felling destruction of Tasmania’s rare native forests. According to The Wilderness Society, Gunns’ wood supply deal with Forestry Tasmania commits it to supplying a million tonnes a year of native forest for the next twenty years. (‘Gunns’ proposed pulp mill, The Wilderness Society, 20110310)
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So Gunns’ ‘plantation only’ claim is false and misleading.
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The mill will spew odorous fumes downwind through the Tamar Valley forcing thousands of residents of this rural region to breathe polluted and toxic air and contaminate local horticultural producers such as vineyards. The mill is forecast to consume fresh water equivalent of the combined use of all water users across Northern Tasmania, according to The Wilderness Society there. (‘Gunns’ pulp mill impacts – Environment, heritage, economy and community threatened, The Wilderness Society, 20100530).
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Gunns’ mill is still set to spill 64,000 litres of toxic chlorine, dioxins and furans a day from its chemical pulping process into the Tamar River and downstream into Bass Strait. That it will obviously pollute the surrounding waters, kill marine wildlife, poison and permanently contaminate marine habitat, and destroy the local fishing industry; Burke has still managed to find a way to approve the bloody mill!
“I’m only doing what my requirements are under the Act. We’ve got some very specific requirements on environmental approvals. I’m delivering on that.” – Tony Burke. (‘Milne: Pulp mill approval a corrupt process’, ABC TV Lateline, 20110310)
Burke in the same week, managed to push through legislation to allow Sydney’s Barrangaroo development avoid the cost of a heavy metals clean up, while at the same time stuck to the letter of the law with his approval of Gunns’ pulp mill. Can there be no clearer display of pro-development bias? Laws for some!
But then Burke’s bias is predicable, given he came to the portfolio from the other side of the fence, as Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; and his quick rise from the NSW right faction. (‘Gunns deal a shedding of responsibility, by Andrew Darby, The Age, 20110311)
According to federal Greens Senator Christine Milne responding on last night’s Lateline programme:
“There has never been a thorough and rigorous assessment (of the pulp mill) because Paul Lennon, former Premier of Tasmania together with John Gay, managed to pull it out of the proper assessment process (at State level), fast-track it through the Tasmanian Parliament…so what we have got here is a project that has been through a corrupt assessment process.”
Milne is factually correct. There was no rigorous assessment of the Bell Bay site. The Tasmanian assessment process was corrupt, the community was denied a say, the democratic process was abused. The mill has no social license to operate. It is illegitimate and Gunns’ development actions are one of a corporate and political bully imposing its selfish shortsighted greed on Tasmania and Tasmanians.
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Gunn’s Bell Bay pulp mill will not only degrade the region, but dominate the northern heart of Tasmania. On Google Earth it will show up like a festering sore poisoning a diminishing green forested Tasmania.
L’Estrange borrowed Labor’s classic dirty tactic of divide and conquer to stymie opposition and protests from Tasmanian conservation groups. His deal has seeded a split between conservationists and the Greens over the pulp mill. He has lured local conservationists to compromise with the offer to surrender Gunns’ contract rights to 220,000 cubic metres of native forest saw logs a year and to protect an extra 600,000ha of forests. Even Labor’s appointed negotiator Bill Kelty has been brought in to clench a forest peace deal with select conservationists. The Wilderness Society in Tasmania, together with Environment Tasmania and the Australian Conservation Foundation seem to be coming on board backing down on their opposition to the pulp mill. They are now at odds with the Tasmanian Greens who are a little more savvy about the hollow politics and promises.
“It looks as though somebody wants to save some high conservation value forests, but is sacrificing the Tamar Valley to get them”, says Tamar Valley resident and mill opponent Peter Cundall. (Greens v Greens on Gunns pulp mill, The Australian, 20110304)
Site of proposed Gunns’ pulp mill, Bell Bay, Tamar Valley
Photo: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/10/3160890.htm
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The editor agrees with the following selected comments posted in The Australian to the article ‘Greens v Greens on Gunns pulp mill, 20110304:
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By James McMaugh’:
“The mill will never be built. The people are opposed and are right not to trust Gunns. There will be a huge outcry and mass protests blockading construction. I will travel to Tasmania and so will many others to make sure of this. The proposal is dead.
It’s about time politicians listened to the people and business should too. You cannot run roughshod over the will of the people and they don’t want this mill. Overwhelmingly they don’t. It will cost more jobs than it creates and destroy the river. No, no and no to this mill.”
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By ‘Chris B of Australia’:
“The only acceptable outcome is NO Pulp Mill at all in Tasmania. Gunns has no credibility and has proven time and again how they cannot be trusted by the community. I personally believe there is no place for a company like Gunns in Tasmania and they should make transition plans for their workforce to move to a sustainable industry.
The environmental groups willing to compromise the values and allow Gunns to sacrifice the Tamar Valley should be ashamed of themselves. Make no mistake, the pulp mill will completely and utterly degrade the environment of the Tamar Valley and Bass Strait, no matter which form it takes.”
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By ‘SW’:
“ Senator Milne speaks for me. Thank you, Christine, for maintaining the rage. It certainly hasn’t died down here in the Tamar Valley.”
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By ‘Robert of Adelaide’:
“ Same old argument of lack of development, growth, jobs, high crime etc. The same attitude is taken in the case of the Brazilian Rainforest as well. Where does it stop and what will we actually be left with in 100 years? Oh, that’s right, we won’t be here, so who cares… If people want employment, go to where the jobs are in the rest of the country and the world like everyone else is doing! And while you are working in places like Sydney, London, Beijing, Tokyo and Bangkok… reflect on how wonderful development has been for these these concrete infested cities! Then maybe we can appreciate what we have here.”
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‘Green movement outguns Gunns’ [20110311]
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…’Gunns had gone so far as to sue an elected politician, the Greens leader, Bob Brown.
“When I got the writ,” says Brown, “I knew better than to call the lawyers. The first thing I did was to call a press conference. Within 24 hours we had a candlelight vigil for democracy, in Hobart. It was like the Prague Spring.”
Ultimately, Gunns underestimated its opposition and its decision to sue backfired spectacularly.
Far from being cowed by the suit, Marr and his colleagues ramped up an environmental campaign the likes of which had not been seen in this country – targeting the Gunns bankers and shareholders, Japanese customers and European partners – which ultimately brought the company to its knees, decimating its market value and ousting its divisive chairman, Gay.
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..It was left to the new chief executive, Greg L’Estrange, to concede defeat last September, and promise that Gunns would get out of native forest logging altogether. Despite this week’s federal approval of the mill, and the talks over a Tassie forests peace deal, Gunns is by no means out of the woods. A long, painful process of rebuilding trust with former enemies is only beginning.
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Gunns was once a corporate powerhouse. A series of acquisitions in 2000-01 turned it into Australia’s largest export woodchipper, and No. 1 target for the environment movement.
..’A bulked-up Gunns put the pedal to the metal. This was logging on an industrial scale. Between 2000 and 2006, working with Forestry Tasmania, Gunns clear-felled 110,966 hectares of native forest, 90 per cent of the timber being used for woodchipping and 58% of the land making way for timber plantations.
“Gunns got unlimited amounts of other people’s money and went on a clearing binge,” says Marr.
The forest was clear-felled and waste burnt off using napalm-like incendiaries. Gunns used 1080 poison bait to protect seedlings, inflicting gruesome death on untold native animals and risking the health of forest workers.
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Whether from strength or desperation, Gunns launched its ill-fated suit. The company’s shares hit their all-time peak a month later, at $4.38, and began to slide downwards. The story of the Gunns 20 suit, which dragged on until last year and was ultimately settled at a cost to the company of $2.8 million – including $1.3 million paid to the Wilderness Society – has been well told. Perhaps less well understood is the international backlash the case triggered.
The decision in 2008 by the new ANZ chief, Mike Smith, to refuse finance for the pulp mill, quickly followed by the other big banks, was unprecedented in this country and followed a strong online petition campaign by the Wilderness Society and the online activist group GetUp!After a decade’s lobbying, Japanese paper-makers decided in February last year not to accept Gunns wood unless it was Forest Stewardship Council- controlled.
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Shares in Gunns are off their lows but the company’s future remains uncertain. Bob Brown says if Gunns ”doesn’t survive – and I hope it does – it will be nobody’s fault except the board’s”.
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[Source: ‘Green movement outguns Gunns, by Paddy Manning, Sydney Morning Herald, News Review, p 6,
http://www.watoday.com.au/national/green-movement-outguns-gunns-20110311-1br8m.html]
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References
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[1] ‘Contentious pulp mill wins federal approval’, by Andrew Darby and Dylan Welch, 20110311, Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/environment/contentious-pulp-mill-wins-federal-approval-20110310-1bpt4.html]
[3] Greens v Greens on Gunns pulp mill, by Matthew Denholm and Matthew Franklin, The Australian, 20110304, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greens-v-greens-on-gunns-pulp-mill/story-fn59niix-1226015622300
