The plight of the old growth forest of Tasmania’s Upper Florentine Valley was given some attention yesterday when 22 protesters were arrested at a Mother’s Day Rally. But judging by the cursory coverage the issue was given by Tasmania’s media last night, it will take much more action before this extraordinary valley attracts the attention needed to halt its destruction.
As usual, the media characterised the greenies as ferals and the issue got lost in the colour of the arrests, but what I saw yesterday suggests this is a battle which is deep and profound, in which the very values of Tasmania itself are at stake.
I was standing with the other media, wedged at the edge of the thin line of coppers, most of whom were wearing blue helmets like something out of the United Nations. Against them was a fair representation of middle class Tasmania and locals from the Derwent Valley. We were standing at the beginning of a road, which the Tasmanian Government has forged over the past three months deep into an area of pristine old growth forest after evicting protesters in January and bulldozing their protest camps.
The whir of chainsaws was audible across the valley as speakers addressed the crowd of 300 people and spoke passionately about the majesty of 500-year-old trees. When one speaker invited the crowd to join her in walking into the logging coupes the stand off began.
Some broke through the police line demanding entry into what they described as “their public forest”, and were arrested. Sixty others, led by the former Wilderness Society activist, Geoff Law, avoided conflict by taking another path through the dense forest on to the road behind the police, where they could freely enter the logging coupe.
Coupe 44A is a mess. It’s an area of about two acres carved out of the bush, about half of which is stacked high with logs. The coupe is over 20 hectares in size and just one of four coupes already earmarked for immediate logging. The “refuse” material — the logs that miss out on sawlog grading and are destined to become wood chips — overwhelmingly dominate the stack, filling close to half of the clearing. The better quality trees, massive myrtles and black hearted sassafras are piled on a much smaller stack behind it.
The protesters say that only two of the last 14 log trucks to leave the exclusion zone have carried high-quality saw logs. They say this makes a lie of Forestry Tasmania’s claim that this pristine old growth won’t be squandered for woodchips.
With the protesters in the coupe, the contractor’s grader was forced to shut down. The driver was smiling self consciously at the protesters as he climbed out of the cabin, aware that several cameras were trained on him. “Happy Mother’s Day” called out a protester as others cheered. I asked him what he thought of the rally. “What do you think?” he hissed back at me.
The Upper Florentine is so remarkable that even the Howard Government promised to protect it. In 2004, the year Howard made his infamous appearance in Launceston and declared he was the loggers’ friend, the Liberal Party issued its forestry policy promising immediate protection for 18,700 hectares of old growth in the Styx and the Florentine Valleys on the eastern boundary of the World Heritage Area. But by May 2005 that promise was worthless when the the Tasmanian Community Forestry Agreement revealed that only 6460 hectares would be protected, of which only 4730 hectares would be old growth.
In 2006, soon after the Tasmanian election, the state government began building a road into the area. The Protesters moved in and set up camps and tree-sits to try and halt the incursion. On 12 January this year those camps were raided and the tall tree lookouts were felled as gravel trucks and bulldozers worked for 12 days straight, pushing several kilometres into the valley.
When the protesters returned they were evicted again and have now set up camp on the main road where tourists honk their horns in support and contractors have allegedly harassed them.
At yesterday’s Rally, Tasmanian photographer, Rob Blakers, held up a sign and named the new road “Bartlett’s Road” in recognition of the current premier’s determination to push it deeper into the wilderness.
Yesterday the police finally entered the coupe. Geoff Law and others were arrested. A group of us avoided arrest by disappearing into the bush. Sean, a long-term protester led me back through the forest, pointing out the giant tree-sits felled to prevent the greenies re-establishing their camp. At one point we came across a giant of a tree, with a triangular base of massive proportions and which disappeared into the canopy 50 metres above us. It, like all the rest, is destined for the chainsaw.
Dear Andrew; are you an active participant, or an impartial observer? One minute you are standing with the press, the next you are barely avoiding arrest. Please tell me your role here so I can judge your role accordingly. This is either a sloppy piece of work or a deliberately misleading one. Claiming that the mainstream media portrays green activists as ferals does not mean that there is a screaming need for equal (and opposite) bias to achieve balance. If true, it means that those responsible should be held to account. Please also make up your mind- should Protesters be honoured with a big P, or are they just protesters?
For once I would like to read a subtle, well considered story on a protest that portrayed the ugliness and lies on both sides; the redefinition of specific terms and selective use of statistics that mean that any public forum on forestry is simply name calling using mutually unintelligible languages. There is no debate on forestry in this state; but that’s what I’m looking for- a story that shames all of us into an alternative course of action and makes us consider our own values and choices rather than simply attacking those of others.
Dear Crikey, I thought you were above publishing work in the style of the impartial observer but peppering it with value laden adjectives. Why are you passing this off as journalism? I support an end to logging in the Florentine, but feel that articles such as this do the cause a disservice. Those who agree with the article will continue to feel righteously outraged; those who are confused about the issue will remain so, and those who oppose it from a distinct set of values will see no reason to change. Nothing achieved, unless you count disappointment from a reader at your lowering standards.
What Matt Dalziel said. Crikey could do with a regular Tasmanian correspondent, supplementing Greg Barns – I hereby nominate Matt to replace Andrew Dodd, even though you could characterise me as one of those who ‘oppose the article from a distinct set of values’.
The carnage that goes on in Australian old growth forests is mostly well-hidden because of legislation that restricts the public’s access to the public land that is being ravaged for profit. When it reaches the press, the forestry industry PR machine rolls out, aided amply by the politicians whose support it lobbies with a success that is astonishing given that most Australians don’t want to see our native forests clearfelled for a measly few hundred jobs and a few avaricious businessmen.
It’s good that Geoff Law is bringing it the the public’s attention. This vandalistic madness has gone far enough. It makes no economic or environmental sense.
And the ‘balance’ demanded by such commentators as Matt Dalziel only muddies the debate: it’s the same kind of “balance” demanded by climate change deniers and creationists.
We need more of the kind of clarity and vivid, lived experience that the Dodd article conveys.
Enough spin: just stop the destruction and the corruption that enables it.
Such a pity that the media no longer give this important issue any coverage. What has happened to the public’s right to know about our government’s activities. How can we claim to live in a democracy with free speech when our ‘free press’ and its news is dominated by government media minders and their press releases; and public dissent, like the protesters in the Upper Florentine, is silenced by omission.
Andrew Dodd accurately noted that the woodchip log heap in the coupe he was reporting from was bigger than the sawlog heap, clearly giving the lie to the industry’s claim that the old growth forests are needed for saw logs and veneer logs – the Gunns veneer mill at Boyer closed over a year ago.
Although he mentioned myrtles and blackheart sassy, he neglected to report on celery top pine. This very slow-growing rainforest tree (typically 400 years to maturity) is second only to Huon pine as a boat building timber, yet Forestry Tasmania routinely burns it. This is because the volume of timber being felled in the clearfelling of old growth forests exceeds the demand.
Last month I salvaged in excess of 25 tonnes of celery top from coupe TN021B, adjacent to the National Park reserve. The size of the logs varied from about 200mm diameter at the small end to about 400mm – a very useful size for c.t.p.
For this timber, (which FT described as “out of specification” or “outspec”) I was charged the princely sum of $15.29 per tonne – including GST!
The firebreaks around the coupe had been formed (but not around the stream-side reserve in the centre of the coupe) the met. instrument stands were in place and if the weather had been suitable, the coupe would have been burned, the c.t.p along with it.
This utter waste of a finite resource is a disgrace, expected only in a third-world regime.
Several years ago, FT conducted a trial of selective logging on a coupe called Warra 8G. The trial showed that a wet forest could be selectively harvested profitably, safely and with a satisfactory regrowth of eucs. As far as I can ascertain, the report has not been published.
To read independent reports on the way our heavily subsidised industry operates in Tasmania, I recommend a visit to the website of Timber Workers For Forests Inc. . click on “Research”.