Save the Tarkine responds to Liberal Government’s Forests policy
The Tasmanian Liberal government’s announcement today that they will re-open logging in the 400,000 hectares of high conservation value forests protected under the Tasmanian Forests Agreement has been described as a foolish, retrograde step that only serves to re-open conflict and controversy in the Tasmanian community.
“Save the Tarkine was not a signatory to the agreement, and yet in good faith we negotiated with the ENGO signatories and made major concessions to achieve a collaborative solution to one of the longest running and most heated issues to face Tasmania,” said Save the Tarkine, Campaign Coordinator Scott Jordan.
“We made difficult concessions to forfeit conservation claims over some areas of high conservation rainforest in the Tarkine in order to see the permanent protection of the areas of the Tarkine reserved under the agreement. If the new Liberal Government wants to trash the agreement then they need to be on notice that if they won’t honour the reserves under the agreement, then they are also re-opening the conservation claims on the concessions made in the agreement”.
“We are prepared to tell the markets that the concessions we made, are no longer guaranteed”.
Save the Tarkine, while not a signatory, has voluntarily honoured the agreement since it’s signing.
“We will be writing to the members of the Legislative Council to ask them to stand against the Government on this ideologically driven agenda”.
Scott Jordan, Campaign Coordinator, Save the Tarkine
