| ON
TRIAL - Australia's Endangered Species Law |
 |
On 30 May 2005 Bob Brown personally
launched a daring bid in the Federal
Court to protect the endangered Swift Parrot,
Wedge-tailed Eagle and Wielangta (Broad-toothed)
Stag Beetle.
•
Get the story so far (15 Dec 2005) about Bob
Brown -v- Forestry
Tasmania at the Federal
Court (Hobart) including about the, Altered
Evidence...
ON
TRIAL... |
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THE FRAUD OF THE COMMUNITY FOREST
AGREEMENT (CFA) - A community agreement that didn't
involve the community.
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Agreement damned from
forest floor
27 June 2005
TIMBER
Workers for Forests has
released its highly critical response to the new Community
Forest Agreement. Among its chief concerns are that
the agreement will result in an increase in clearfelling
and continued waste of specialty timbers.
....... Timber Workers president Ian Johnston said
prior to the Community Forest Agreement clearfelling
and burning were specifically excluded from areas
of state forest set aside for the supply of high-quality
timbers, leaving them to be managed through low-impact
selective systems only. But the new agreement had
diluted previous Forestry Tasmania commitments, leaving
the way open for clearfelling of such areas. "The
best way of ensuring greater recovery of special species
timber is by never cutting down immature special species
trees, a practice which is currently too widespread,"
Mr Johnston said. "Funding allocated under the
new forest package to help specialty timber sawmillers
re-tool to produce more low grade eucalypt products
is simply sending us down the road to a low-grade
timber industry. "It is a short-sighted approach
that does not help customers who still require the
special species resource for craft, furniture-making
and boatbuilding." The Community Forest Agreement
advocates the use of harvest waste in wood-fired
power stations, which Mr Johnston said
would create a continuing demand for fodder........
HOBART
MERCURY...
REPORT
HERE (PDF)... |
Bob Brown legal bid
on logging
By Robyn Grace - May 30, 2005
GREENS Senator Bob Brown has taken his fight against
logging of Tasmania's forests to the Federal Court.
Senator Brown applied today for an interlocutory injunction
to stop Forestry Tasmania's operations in the Wielangta
Forest on Tasmania's east coast. ........ He said
logging contravened the Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act, which aimed to protect
Australia's wildlife. ........ "The Tasmanian
Community Forest Agreement launched on May 13 protected
848ha of Wielangta Forest but Senator Brown said it
failed to fully protect the rare species' habitats......
THE
DAILY TELEGRAPH... |
Labor puts itself out
on a limb for old forests
By Stephanie Peatling - May 24, 2005
Federal Labor's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese,
has committed the Opposition to pursuing an end to
using Tasmania's old-growth forests for woodchipping.
His pledge, made in Parliament last night, will inflame
a dispute within the party about how to handle the
troublesome Tasmanian forests issue. Mr Albanese said
history was "headed one way on these conservation
issues". "Tasmania's extraordinary natural
environment must be promoted to the world, not become
a source of discomfort," he said.......
SYDNEY
MORNING HERALD... |
Styx sham roles reversed
By CLAIRE KONKES and AAP 23 May 2005
THE campaign to save the Styx Valley from logging
was described by then deputy premier Paul Lennon as
"a con, a farce and a sham" two years ago.
But yesterday Tourism Minister Paula Wriedt described
the same valley as "a great, easily accessible
tourism asset". Some of Australia's tallest living
trees are now reserved and being included in a new
tourism initiative, she said. But instead of having
the last laugh, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown
said it was his turn to call the promotion of the
Styx for tourism a "sham". ....... "The
rest will be logged, burnt and poisoned. "The
very road that 5000 protesters walked during the rally
in 2003 will still have log trucks going down it."
........ Yesterday, the Greens launched a national
television advertising campaign to counter government
advertisements saying the forest package would end
the bitter conflict over the state's forests........
HOBART
MERCURY... |
"The very road that 5000 protesters walked
during the rally in 2003 will still have log trucks
going down it." |
Greens launch forest
ad campaign
22 May 05
The Greens have launched a defiant 2 minute TV advertisement
showing how Tasmania’s forests have been sacrificed
by the pact between Prime Minister Howard and Tasmanian
Premier Paul Lennon. The ads show forests which will
be woodchipped according to a Maydena tourist operator,
a St Helens tour guide and a Huon and Channel historian......
SENATOR
BOB BROWN... |
Greens launch anti-forestry
deal ads
Sunday 22 May 2005
The Australian Greens has launched a television advertising
campaign designed to counter the federal and state
governments' promotion of the Tasmanian forest agreement.
The Tasmanian Government
is spending more than $2 million promoting the benefits
of the Community Forest Agreement signed with Prime
Minister John Howard. Greens Senator Bob
Brown says that in a two-minute ad shown last week,
Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon claimed iconic giant
trees in the Styx Valley had been protected. He says
in reality, much of the state's high conservation
value forests such as parts of the Styx and Weld valleys
will still be logged. Senator Brown has paid $5,000
for television advertisements to continue the fight
to save the forests.......
ABC
ONLINE... |
Rainforests still not
out of the woods
May 20, 2005
John Howard thinks he has solved the logging problem
in Tasmania. But a battle for the old eucalypts still
looms large, writes Andrew Darby. .......Howard, wearing
his 1997 APEC summit leather jacket, embossed with
his name and title, hurried down the uncertain footing
of a muddy little track through the stand with the
Tasmanian Premier, Paul Lennon, last Friday. For the
cameras, Howard and Lennon walked up the track again
together. Lifting their heads to gaze up at the trunks
of nearby trees, they pointed, chatted and, after
a few minutes, left. Neither saw Icarus Dream further
down the track. Nor did they pause to contemplate
other named individuals that would have needed a little
light scrambling to reach. Instead, the pictures were
taken on the track among smaller trees and the giants
were left behind, to let the breeze sigh in their
distant heads. ........ If that short walk for the
cameras gave the impression that Howard was saving
the Andromeda trees, it was wrong. This stand was
long ago set aside in a forest reserve. But, despite
these trees' global scale, they will not be in a national
park, nor have world heritage status sought. Logging
will continue nearby. Instead, they will be included
in an expanded 336-hectare forest reserve with other
very tall eucalypts, such as Gandalf's Staff. On it,
protesters set up their Global Rescue Station in 2003-04,
swaying 65 metres high as the latest battle to protect
Tasmania's old growth forests gained strength. The
outcome of this contest brought Howard to the Styx.
......... Environmentalists warned then that many
of the trees Howard promised to protect would never
have been logged. Last Friday he drove off from the
Styx before journalists were finally given details
of the package that had been negotiated with the Tasmanian
Government since the election. A total of 120,000
hectares of old growth was protected, and only 58,000
hectares of that was in formal reserves. The rest
was in "informal reserves", much of it in
streamsides, steep slopes and skylines that could
never be cut under forest management rules. Titled
the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, it had grown
to become a $250 million industry restructuring package
that included controversial plans to permit the use
of wood waste as "biofuel". ........ But
these "old-growth" reserves include scrubby,
dry coastal forests and melaleuca swamps, as well
as myrtle rainforest. Many of these trees remain outside
national park- or world heritage-level protection,
and the battle over the iconic trees of Tasmania -
the tall old-growth eucalypts - continues. .........
"We were gutted the Howard Government did nothing
to protect the area," said Adam Burling, of the
Huon Valley Environment Centre. "In November
we will be going back in to set up camp again."
The Greens' leader, Bob Brown, was unequivocal. "This
announcement means that the fight goes on."
SYDNEY
MORNING HERALD... |
Beware the PM in green
clothing
By Martin Flanagan - May 18, 2005
Howard's reinvention as an environmental hero should
fool no one, writes Martin Flanagan.
....... The fate of the Tasmanian old-growth forests
shows what happens when big business, the unions and
the two major parties find a common thread of interest.
Beyond those identified last week by Mr Howard as
extreme Greens, there is no opposition. Individuals
who speak out risk writs. If further evidence was
needed of the imbalance of the situation it was John
Howard making, with impunity, the claim that he was
an environmentalist. My brother Richard wrote a novel,
Gould's Book of Fish, in which characters on the west
coast of Tasmania turn into sea creatures. John Howard's
transformation into an environmentalist while on the
island is scarcely less fantastic. ....... Wake up,
Australia.
MELBOURNE
AGE... |
|
| TAXPAYERS FUNDING
THE ONE SIDED FORESTRY SPIN |
Forests deal hard sell
By CHARLES WATERHOUSE - 16 May 2005
THE hard sell of the new agreement on Tasmanian forests
has begun, with a commercial television campaign starting
last night. ...... The two governments have put aside
$2.2 million for advertising
and information campaigns, with the first
phase to cost $500,000 to $600,000. Mr Lennon gave
a two-minute address immediately following the commercial
TV news in Tasmania last night and this is being supported
by full-page advertisements in Tasmanian and national
newspapers, as well as Melbourne and Sydney papers.
...... Greens Tasmanian leader Peg Putt said the advertising
hard sell, likely to give a highly skewed view of
the forests deal, came hot on the heels of community
controversy about the use of taxpayer money to sell
the pulp mill in Tasmania........
HOBART
MERCURY...
The Bullshit Gets Worse!!
By Gordon Craven NEWS TASMANIA - 16 May 2005
In the latest obscenity of taxpayer funded government
spin on television (Sunday night) about the Tasmanian
Forests Outcome, Paul Lennon boasts he has forged
a new protection deal for the forests with the Federal
Government.
Protected from who, I ask?
Its a bit like a Mafia protection racket where the
thug demands money for protection from the activities
of that same thug. Paul Lennon claims to be the saviour
of Tasmania’s forests by “protecting them”,
when it's his own activities and his own Tasmanian
Government that puts them in peril in the first place.
SUBMIT YOUR NEWS OR RESPONSE... |
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Dismay: Howard-Lennon Package Abandons
Protection
Monday, 16 May 2005
Tasmanian Greens Dismay As Howard-Lennon Package Abandons
Promised Levels Of Forest Protection.
The Tasmanian Greens today are upset that although the Howard-Lennon
forests package rips off the name of the Greens’ Forest
Transition Strategy, “Tasmania’s Forests: the
Way Forward”, it fails to deliver promised levels of
forest protection in Tasmania’s outstanding forests
whilst spending a massive $220 million of taxpayers money
which could have been used to achieve a much better outcome.
...... “The spin on making
a virtue of not logging Crown land never allocated to logging
in the first place shows the level of deception involved
in selling this package.” No Additional
Areas for Specialty Timbers Management/Beekeeping “There
is not a single extra hectare set aside for specialty timbers
management.”
Land clearing
“The recommended targets to restrain landclearing from
the government expert advisory group CARSAG have not been
taken up, but instead an incentive for ramped up forest
destruction in the next few years has come into play.”
End to Clearfelling
“Forget romantic notions of old-style selection logging,
the plan is to move to clump clearfelling.”
1080 Backdown
“Howard’s promise to end the use of 1080 on private
land has vanished.”
Forest Furnaces
“Forest furnaces burning native forest for electricity
get the go ahead although all other states on the eastern
seaboard have ruled them out as an environmental travesty.”
$2.2 million Snow Job
“Over $2 million of taxpayers money is to be spent
on a massive green wash promoting this disappointing outcome
for our forests as something desirable.”
SCOOP
NEW ZEALAND... OR TASMANIAN
GREENS... |
| NEGOTIATIONS... TASSIE
STYLE |
|
Tarkine activist
says fight "far from over"
By KIRSTY EADE Sunday, 15 May 2005
`This has been done
in-house, there's been a closed-door policy
in terms of the conservation movement'
TARKINE National Coalition foundation member
Peter Sims believes the Federal Government's
Forestry Package is a step forward for the Tarkine
but predicts the conservation fight in Tasmania
is far from over. ....... "This has been
done in-house, there's been a closed-door policy
in terms of the conservation movement,"
he said. "Like with the RFA the conservationists
and the Aboriginal community were excluded,
it seems that they have learnt nothing from
the mistakes made in the RFA." He said
those to miss out most were those in the North-East.
"I think the people in the North- East
and particularly those in the Great Western
Tier region will really be crying," Mr
Sims said.......
LAUNCESTON
EXAMINER... |
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State's battle of the forests not
over yet
By CLAIRE KONKES - 15 May 2005
.......A true effort to reconcile the differences
between the forestry industry and conservationists
would have included genuine negotiation. Instead,
the package was delivered to the Wilderness Society
on the morning of the announcement. "This package
was made with the industry in mind, not us,"
he said. "They've gone and done it with no two-way
consultation and said `here it is, you should be happy
with it, now stop your whingeing'."....... Within
hours of receiving the maps, the discrepancies began
to show, with Mr Howard appearing to have "double
dipped" to make up the 148,000ha offered, Mr
Bayley said......
SUNDAY
TASMANIAN... |
| Forest Reserve
Outcomes - courtesy Wilderness Society and other stakeholders
not invited to the party or the negotiations. |
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| HISTORY,
HERITAGE & CULTURAL CONSERVATION... TASSIE STYLE |
Anger High Over Logging
Planned at Tasmanian Historic Site
CANBERRA, Australia, May 4, 2005
Australian conservationists and elected Greens are
furious over a logging road that is being cut by a
timber company into one of Australia’s most important
cultural landscapes. The site, on the North East Peninsula
of Recherche
Bay was the location of one of the first recorded
meetings between Europeans and Aborigines. It took
place more than 200 years ago on the state of Tasmania's
southern tip.....
ENVIRONMENTAL
NEWS SERVICE... |
Folly in the forest
By SIMON BEVILACQUA - 24 April 2005
FORMER Forestry
Tasmania archeologist Anne McConnell says logging
Recherche
Bay could be comparable with the destruction of
Afghanistan's Buddha statues. The fact is, she said,
nobody really knows. "The cultural heritage values
have not yet been adequately assessed," Ms McConnell
said. Taliban militants were internationally condemned
for blowing up the massive stone Buddhas at Bamiyan
in Afghanistan. The carvings, cut into sandstone cliffs,
were the world's largest Buddhist sculptures. One
was 55 metres high. The colossal rock statues were
destroyed by mortars, dynamite, tanks, anti-aircraft
weapons and rockets. The north-east peninsula at Recherche
Bay, on Tasmania's southern tip, will not be under
military fire. It will be hit by bulldozers, chainsaws
and fire. The Tasmanian Government allowed road construction
through a wildlife sanctuary to enable timber giant
Gunns
to log land owned by Launceston brothers David and
Robert Vernon. "Governments worldwide were appalled
at the Taliban's wanton destruction of the Buddha
statues at Bamiyan," Ms McConnell said. "Are
we to stand by and see another place with potentially
international heritage values, this time in Tasmania,
be wantonly destroyed?" Ms McConnell has 25 years'
experience in heritage management, including seven
years as senior archeologist with Forestry
Tasmania.......
HOBART
MERCURY... |
Recherche Bay on world
stage
By SIMON BEVILACQUA - 8 May 2005
A UNIVERSITY of Tasmania researcher will speak about
the Recherche
Bay historic site at a conference in Europe next
month......
SUNDAY
TASMANIAN...
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Show-stopper scene in
a tense drama
By SIMON BEVILACQUA - 1 May 2005
DAVID Wenham was speechless after flying over Tasmania's
Recherche
Bay last week. The Australian actor is not usually
lost for words. ....... Private landowners David and
Robert Vernon entered a contract with timber giant
Gunns
to log the bay's north-east peninsula.....
SUNDAY
TASMANIAN... |
Call to save historic
site
By SIMON BEVILACQUA - 17 April 2005
RECHERCHE Bay is one of Australia's
most significant sites, says the man known
as the father of Australian archeology. Prof John
Mulvaney says the picturesque bay on Tasmania's southern
tip should be preserved as a living monument to some
of the most important moments in history. Prof Mulvaney,
79, has been studying Australia's pre-European and
early European history for half a century.....
SUNDAY
TASMANIAN... |
French, black contact
traced
By SIMON BEVILACQUA 17 April 2005
HISTORIC French artefacts could be buried in Aboriginal
middens at Recherche
Bay, says the father of Australian archeology.
........ Brothers David and Robert Vernon have pushed
ahead with logging plans despite pleas from historians,
academics, environmentalists and local business people.
Tourism, Parks and Heritage department head Scott
Gadd has written to the federal Environment Department
advising that loggers would
keep an eye out for historic features.
If new features were noticed, work would stop and
the contractor would notify the forest practices officer,
he said. Prof Mulvaney said this was "stupidity".
"These people [loggers] aren't trained in this
area, how are they going to recognise what is of significance?"
he said.....
SUNDAY
TASMANIAN... |
| • THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL
SURVEYING... TASSIE STYLE |
Dozer drivers
judge archaeological worth
12 April 2005
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown has accused
the Tasmanian Government of leaving the archaeological
assessment of the historic Recherche
Bay site to the bulldozer drivers who will
be working in the area......
ABC
ONLINE... |
History spotter
role for loggers
By MICHELLE PAINE - 13 April 2005
THE State Government will rely on logging contractors
to notify authorities of "any new historic
features" they find at Recherche
Bay, says Greens senator Bob Brown. ......
Senator Brown said: "Here we've got a heritage
site of state, national and international significance
which is going to be surveyed on the blade of
the bulldozer." He said the State Government
expected workers to spot and understand archaeological
sites. "This flies against international
practice which Australia is signed up to,"
Senator Brown said. "It's an extraordinarily
reckless attitude of the Tasmanian Government
and shows an enormous disdain towards Tasmania's
heritage, both Aboriginal and European heritage.".......
HOBART
MERCURY... |
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| • THE CLEARFELL
CON |
Tasmanian Government
poised to launch forest con job:
12 February 2004
Environment groups have combined today to alert
the public to the imminent launch of Forestry
Tasmania's new method for logging high conservation
forests. Forestry has
labelled this new form of logging 'selective
logging', but the facts indicate
that it is actually strip clearfelling.
The Government's agenda is to push logging into
high conservation forests that should not be
logged at all under the guise of 'selective
logging'.......
THE
WILDERNESS SOCIETY... |
RECHERCHE BAY
Selective Logging is Virtual Clearfell
.....The Tasmanian Greens have exposed that
controversial so-called ‘selective’
logging planned for the North East Peninsula
of Recherche
Bay is virtually clearfelling, with only
12 – 14m2/hectare to be retained according
to specialist planning advice released by the
Forest
Practices Board.......
GREENWEEK...
(4 April 2005 PDF) |
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| • MORE... |
Recherche Bay
..... Much publicity has been given to the logging
of a portionof the northern peninsula of Recherche
Bay. When my father bought the property
in about 1948 he was interested in a portion
of it that contained very straight trees suitable
for jetty piling, which was in vogue at the
time. ....... I must say that my father would
be horrified if the bulk of this land was to
be cleared of the beautiful trees that have
grown there......
TASMANIAN
TIMES... |
March for history
By MICHELLE PAINE - 18 April 2005
ABOUT 1000 people marched to save Recherche
Bay yesterday ....... Logging of the site
would be marked forever as vandalism, said John
Mulvaney, considered the father of Australian
archeology. ....... Wilderness Society co-ordinator
Geoff Law said people were "again forced
to confront the contradiction between the way
Tasmania presents itself to the world and the
grim reality on the ground"......
HOBART
MERCURY... |
| From
the NATIONAL TRUST.... |
Significance of
Place
These sites of the only identified
relics of the French exploration
of Tasmania, prior to European settlement,
are of national significance to
Australia and France. They provide
evidence of the enormous scientific
interest these hitherto uncharted
lands held for Europeans in the
late 18th century....... |
Description of
Threat
These sites form part of a complex
forested landscape which is slated
for destruction. Although the identified
French sites themselves may not
be destroyed, present logging proposals
propose leaving only remnants of
forest around designated sites.
This would destroy the remarkable
nature of this wooded landscape
which presents almost identically
from the water as it did to the
French scientists 200 years ago..... |
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| NATIONAL
TRUST... (PDF) |
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|
Recherche Bay
Two hundred and ten years ago, French explorers completed
some of the first major scientific events in Australia’s
history. Today the site of their work is still isolated
and remains in its beautiful natural state. But the
private landowners have sought permission to clear
fell the surrounding forest, and that has triggered
a war of words between the loggers and some of Australia’s
most respected archaeologists. At the heart of this
battle are the questions of how we should protect
Australia’s scientific heritage........
ABC
CATALYST on Recherche Bay... |
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TASMANIAN
LOG TRUCK ROAD KILL NIGHTMARE - THE MORNING AFTER
Some of Tasmania's shocking cruelty to
its native wildlife feeding at night is exposed. These
morning after pictures are taken on just one short
stretch of the Gordon River Road that is subject to
considerable nightly log truck traffic from places
like the Styx Valley. Many log trucks travel swiftly
throughout the night in order to keep up their busy
schedule together with concealing the vastness of
vandalism in the Tasmanian forests and their illegal
overloading (see
illegal overloading story in April 05 edition).
The carcasses of this strategy are left rotting in
the next morning's daylight to tell their ghastly
tale. |
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WARNING
- FULL SIZE IMAGES MAY SHOCK
please zoom using your own discretion
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Below are 2 newspaper
roadkill stories from the Launceston Examiner.
As usual,
statistics gathered from Tasmanian Government
departments NEGLECT TO ACCOUNT FOR OR CONSIDER
the substantiial log trucks factor.
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Attitudes must
change to solve Tasmania's roadkill problem
By Fran Voss 17 April 2005
Grim end: A bennett's wallaby on the side of
the Bass Highway. Hundreds of thousands of animals
are killed on Tasmanian roads every year......
Tourists to the State are still expressing their
horror and disgust at the high number of mutilated
animal corpses they see. The Parks
and Wildlife Service estimates that more
than one million vertebrate animals are killed
each year on the State's roads and the number
is increasing. ....... A Roadkill
Collective set up in 2000 to look at ways of
reducing the toll is in recess.......
LAUNCESTON
EXAMINER... (17 April 2005) |
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•
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TASMANIA, THE
ROADKILL STATE - Roadkill a tourist turn-off
LIBBY SUTHERLAND of AAP filed this national
story, Sunday, 16 March 2003
TASMANIA, THE ROADKILL STATE. COME TO TASMANIA
and see the wildlife - squashed flat and flyblown
in the middle of the road....... Anecdotal evidence
collected by State Parks
and Wildlife staff suggested about one
million mammals perished on Tasmanian roads
each year, she said........
LAUNCESTON
EXAMINER... (16 March 2003) |
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