MEDIA RELEASE
Thursday 5 August, 2010
Complete forest industry overhaul
Coming to a state near you!
Australia’s forest conservation groups are holding a Day of Action across six states and territories today. They are calling for the protection of our native forests and for legislation to ban the burning of native forests to produce electricity.
In the midst of the election campaign, conservationists are calling on both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott to announce policy interventions that will resolve the forest crisis once and for all.
In Melbourne, forest protection groups are occupying the roof and storefront of a major Officeworks building. Banners are unfurled over the rooftop billboards, targeting the Reflex Paper brand for its ongoing logging of Victoria’s native forests.
Forest Activists in koala suits have captured the Forestry Office in South East NSW, unfurled banners and there is an activist in a koala suit perched in a tree. In Tasmania, activists will undertake a large-scale protest again burning forests for power from 12 noon.
In New South Wales, conservationists in threatened species animal suits are cycling from the Tea Gardens Woodchip mill to the woodchip-export seaport in Newcastle.
Activists in Perth, Brisbane (King George Square) and the ACT have unfurled banners at high profile public locations, and await police attendance.
” Australia’s timber industry is in crisis and needs a complete overhaul”, says Melbourne based Friends of the Earth forest campaigner Lauren Caulfield. “The shamelessly wasteful export woodchipping industry is on its last legs, with the collapse of overseas woodchip markets and the growth of plantation forests. It is time to resolve the forestry crisis.”
“As the market for native forests woodchips declines, some cynical logging industry sectors are trying to switch to burning our forests for electricity,” added Conservation Council WA campaigns coordinator Louise Morris. “Since 2000, the WA native forest logging industry has been subsidised by taxpayers to the tune of $7 million a year. WA could save money as well as our forests by ending native forest logging now.”
WA South Coast Environment Group chairperson Jess Beckerling echoed, “What Australia’s native forests really don’t need is another waste-based industry masquerading as a green alternative to coal and a sustainable employer.”
A recent major US Government study found that burning wood for energy releases more carbon dioixide into the atmosphere per unit of energy than fossil fuels (oil, coal, or natural gas).
“The Commonwealth Renewable Energy legislation has unequivocally failed our native forests”, says Ed Hill from Still Wild Still Threatened in Tasmania. “Nonsensically, the legislation deems burning wood to be ‘carbon neutral’, and awards Renewable Energy Certificates to native forest furnaces. But the science clearly demonstrates burning forests will actually lead to more emissions than the most intensive energy sources – including coal”
Today’s actions demonstrate the determination of conservationists nation-wide to protect native forests and move all Australia’s wood production into sustainably managed tree crops (‘plantations’).
Still Wild Still Threatened is a grassroots community organisation campaigning for the immediate protection of Tasmania’s ancient forests and the creation of an equitable and environmentally sustainable forestry industry in Tasmania.
www.stillwildstillthreatened.org
[email protected]
Ed Hill
