Comments on: Arrests as Tasmania’s old growth forest heads to the chainsaw

By: jchercelf

jchercelf — Fri, 15 May 2009 04:15:01 +0000

As Juliette states - rainforests are carbon sinks - your home gardens and lawn are living, respiring users of sun and CO2 - they nurse our souls in these tough times - we may eat some of them - and when dug in they return carbon to the soil. I think all that is true - that is why watering your garden should take precedence over washing your car. My car is filthy and I’m waiting for a downpour when I park it outside or a regular service when it is cleaned by others.

By: Juliette Hughes Norwood

Juliette Hughes Norwood — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:57:06 +0000

Matt’s comparison of cleared forest to a paddock of wheat stubble is telling. He says he has no emotional response to it. In fact he has no rational response to it because such a comparison betrays his ignorance of the enormous ecological significance of biodiverse systems such as Tasmanian old growth.
We need rainforests. They are carbon sinks. We need to stop clearfelling them. Planting them over with monoculture cash-crop plantation trees will not replace the countless interrelated species cleared, burnt and poisoned by greedy “emotionless” people who are in fact experiencing plenty of emotion. But it’s not the kind of emotion that is helping the perilous situation all humans now find ourselves in.
We have a brief window of about a hundred months to avert catastrophic climate change. Stopping felling old-growth forest is an essential part of this. Forest clearing puts more carbon annually into the atmosphere than all our transport (air, sea, road..). It doesn’t create long-term safe employment, it destroys water catchments and pollutes the air. It is actually irrational not to feel concern about this.
People with ideas such as Matt’s are only hindering the effort to save not just forests, but life itself all over the earth.

By: jchercelf

jchercelf — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:08:29 +0000

Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Survive
Author: Jared Diamond 2005 wrote this well-researched book about just that. One chapter remains in my mind. In the the mid last millenium a very wise Japanese Emperor decided to stop the profligate harvest of trees in their tiny country. They have survived. He goes on to say that we sell our old growth wood-chips for aus$100 / tonne to Japan for paper making etc. They do make beautiful paper but…
As you know easter Island failed - there are no native trees left. But the Malcolm Fraser Statues rolled to the shore on the last of the logs - remain.
Who will stop this rape of forests in our country?

By: nicolino

nicolino — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:23:46 +0000

I suggest we let a delegation from the Indonesian Parliament come down and suggest we find alternatives to clear felling our forests. After all we did it to them.
Such hypocracy is all too prevalent in Australia and it’s dealings both nationally and internationally.

By: Mark Duffett

Mark Duffett — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:44:49 +0000

Juliette, you need to read what Matt said more carefully. You can write about “vivid, lived experience” until the cows come home. But someone such as myself, who sees cleared forest as the functional equivalent of stubble in a wheat paddock (and with just as little ecological significance) won’t have their opinion changed one iota by any amount of emoting about “carved”, “mess”, “destruction” and 500-year-old trees.

Meanwhile, how can anyone who is ‘confused’ (Matt’s term) do anything but remain so when Dodd offers not a word of evidence for his contention that the Upper Florentine is “extraordinary” and “remarkable”, or that this is a “deep and profound” battle?

As for “public dissent” being “silenced” (Ailie Bruins), give me a break. How much coverage can a gathering of 300 people expect? 300 out of a population of 200,000 plus in southern Tasmania actually might well be an accurate numerical indication of dissent in proportional terms, but in no other sense can such a pathetic congregation ‘represent middle class Tasmania’.

By: John Maddock

John Maddock — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:18:46 +0000

Andrew Dodd accurately noted that the woodchip log heap in the coupe he was reporting from was bigger than the sawlog heap, clearly giving the lie to the industry’s claim that the old growth forests are needed for saw logs and veneer logs - the Gunns veneer mill at Boyer closed over a year ago.

Although he mentioned myrtles and blackheart sassy, he neglected to report on celery top pine. This very slow-growing rainforest tree (typically 400 years to maturity) is second only to Huon pine as a boat building timber, yet Forestry Tasmania routinely burns it. This is because the volume of timber being felled in the clearfelling of old growth forests exceeds the demand.

Last month I salvaged in excess of 25 tonnes of celery top from coupe TN021B, adjacent to the National Park reserve. The size of the logs varied from about 200mm diameter at the small end to about 400mm - a very useful size for c.t.p.

For this timber, (which FT described as “out of specification” or “outspec”) I was charged the princely sum of $15.29 per tonne - including GST!

The firebreaks around the coupe had been formed (but not around the stream-side reserve in the centre of the coupe) the met. instrument stands were in place and if the weather had been suitable, the coupe would have been burned, the c.t.p along with it.

This utter waste of a finite resource is a disgrace, expected only in a third-world regime.

Several years ago, FT conducted a trial of selective logging on a coupe called Warra 8G. The trial showed that a wet forest could be selectively harvested profitably, safely and with a satisfactory regrowth of eucs. As far as I can ascertain, the report has not been published.

To read independent reports on the way our heavily subsidised industry operates in Tasmania, I recommend a visit to the website of Timber Workers For Forests Inc. . click on “Research”.

By: Ailie Bruins

Ailie Bruins — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:40:22 +0000

Such a pity that the media no longer give this important issue any coverage. What has happened to the public’s right to know about our government’s activities. How can we claim to live in a democracy with free speech when our ‘free press’ and its news is dominated by government media minders and their press releases; and public dissent, like the protesters in the Upper Florentine, is silenced by omission.

By: Juliette Hughes Norwood

Juliette Hughes Norwood — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:02:22 +0000

The carnage that goes on in Australian old growth forests is mostly well-hidden because of legislation that restricts the public’s access to the public land that is being ravaged for profit. When it reaches the press, the forestry industry PR machine rolls out, aided amply by the politicians whose support it lobbies with a success that is astonishing given that most Australians don’t want to see our native forests clearfelled for a measly few hundred jobs and a few avaricious businessmen.
It’s good that Geoff Law is bringing it the the public’s attention. This vandalistic madness has gone far enough. It makes no economic or environmental sense.
And the ‘balance’ demanded by such commentators as Matt Dalziel only muddies the debate: it’s the same kind of “balance” demanded by climate change deniers and creationists.
We need more of the kind of clarity and vivid, lived experience that the Dodd article conveys.
Enough spin: just stop the destruction and the corruption that enables it.

By: Mark Duffett

Mark Duffett — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:09:08 +0000

What Matt Dalziel said. Crikey could do with a regular Tasmanian correspondent, supplementing Greg Barns - I hereby nominate Matt to replace Andrew Dodd, even though you could characterise me as one of those who ‘oppose the article from a distinct set of values’.

By: matt dalziel

matt dalziel — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:40:27 +0000

Dear Andrew; are you an active participant, or an impartial observer? One minute you are standing with the press, the next you are barely avoiding arrest. Please tell me your role here so I can judge your role accordingly. This is either a sloppy piece of work or a deliberately misleading one. Claiming that the mainstream media portrays green activists as ferals does not mean that there is a screaming need for equal (and opposite) bias to achieve balance. If true, it means that those responsible should be held to account. Please also make up your mind- should Protesters be honoured with a big P, or are they just protesters?

For once I would like to read a subtle, well considered story on a protest that portrayed the ugliness and lies on both sides; the redefinition of specific terms and selective use of statistics that mean that any public forum on forestry is simply name calling using mutually unintelligible languages. There is no debate on forestry in this state; but that’s what I’m looking for- a story that shames all of us into an alternative course of action and makes us consider our own values and choices rather than simply attacking those of others.

Dear Crikey, I thought you were above publishing work in the style of the impartial observer but peppering it with value laden adjectives. Why are you passing this off as journalism? I support an end to logging in the Florentine, but feel that articles such as this do the cause a disservice. Those who agree with the article will continue to feel righteously outraged; those who are confused about the issue will remain so, and those who oppose it from a distinct set of values will see no reason to change. Nothing achieved, unless you count disappointment from a reader at your lowering standards.