Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 13 April 2021
Logging industry still struggling to justify native forest destruction
Amid Tasmania’s state election, the native forest industry and its Government cronies are still rehashing the same embarrassing justifications to keep destroying native forests.
“Their poll, released today, uses a loaded and misleading set of questions, failing to separate plantations, from which most Tasmanian wood comes, from the thoroughly unpopular native forest logging industry which provides less than 1% of the jobs in Tasmania,” Bob Brown said.
“Nevertheless this poll, if they believe it, would indicate the Greens have much more than a quota in Franklin and are in the running for a seat in Braddon,” Bob Brown said.
“This poll flies in the face of a much bigger survey of rural and regional Australia done by the logging industry in 2018, showing a two-thirds majority wants logging of native forests to stop,” Bob Brown said. (see below)
“Meanwhile the Liberal Government is reheating failed anti-protest laws because a few logging corporations have Premier Gutwein dancing on their string,” Jenny Weber said.
“Habitat of the critically endangered Swift Parrot is being destroyed, as witnessed in the Denison valley today where the road to Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Lake Skinner has a ‘closed’ sign to allow for native forest logging. This is the Tasmania we live in where Premier Gutwein prefers native forest logging at the expense of the taxpayer and World Heritage values,” Jenny Weber said.
Respondents said native logging was similar to mining activities. Imaged courtesy ABC News: Stephanie Anderson.
ABC: Native forest logging support low in regional Australia, leaked report shows.
A secret study has found more than two thirds of people surveyed in regional Australia disapprove of native forest logging.
The leaked Forest Wood and Products Australia (FWPA)-commissioned study found 65 per cent of the rural-based respondents said native forest logging was unacceptable.
The study used data from the 2016 Regional Wellbeing survey of 13,302 people, with showed more than 11,500 rural and regional Australians responded to questions about “acceptability of forestry-related activities”.
It showed the majority of those people thought native logging was similar to unsustainable mining operations.
The study — Community Perceptions of Australia’s Forest, Wood and Paper Industries: Implications for Social License to Operate — was dated August 2018.
Just 17 per cent those in the bush supported logging in native forests. There was a much higher acceptance of plantation logging, with 43 per cent of regional residents surveyed who said this practice was tolerable.
