Don Henry Canberra Times
Tasmania’s iconic forests are again under serious threat. Gunns Ltd, the company pushing for a new pulp mill in Bell Bay, has now launched a legal writ against 13 environmental activists who they claim have damaged the company. It is the latest salvo in a bitter saga that has left Tasmania divided between those who envision the state as having a prosperous sustainable future and those clinging to the old tenets of rampant exploitation of its old growth forests regardless of the cost to future generations. Whatever the merits of the legal case, Gunns and its investors should be asking themselves how they have managed to aggrieve a major segment of Tasmania’s community, to the extent that people are willing to put their personal security and finances on the line to stop the company’s logging operations. Tasmania sits at a crucial crossroad in determining how its future will look. Following Garrett’s decision not to consider key modules of the pulp mill’s Environmental Impact Management Plan until at least 2011, Gunns Ltd is now disingenuously claiming to have a green light to push ahead with the project. In reality, the new delay provides a much needed window of opportunity for Tasmania to deeply reconsider its future. Tasmania is at a threshold of two possible futures. One would lock in forest destruction with its resultant pollution and carbon depletion, and bitter community division. The other would embrace the potential to build sustainable industries in the state and ensure its natural environment remains one of Australia’s most valued natural icons. Read more here
