This update is a summary based on converstions I've had, and is a vague, general overview. For more specific information, see the websites by the groups directly involved. Some can be found on my links page
For updates from actions around Australia, including anti-nuclear protests in the desert, check out www.lockon.org
Wood-fired power stations ar the latest, sickest news on the forest scene. They have been proposed in East Gippsland and Western New South Wales that I know of, and plan to burn woodchips for electrical power. The myth that "we only woodchip the waste" is being propogate again, with the added line that "the forests grow back", which therefore makes burning native forest a source of "renewable energy"!
The truth is that the massive quantities of woodchips are only wasted when forest is clearfelled. This type of logging bulldozers down all of the forest, leaving only a few seed and so-called habitat trees. The crowns and stumps are always left behind, only reasonably straght tyree-trunks are ever loaded onto the lg trucks to go to the chip mill. Perfectly good millable logs are often deliberately smashed by the log-loader to down-grade them into woodchip logs.
The financial reality is that it costs timber mills more money to mill timbr than chip it, that the mills don't get paid for the sawn timber until it is sold, where woodchips are bought instantly. Mos timber mills cannot make a living from sawn timber, but rely on regular sales of woodchips to pay the bills.
A lot of the tree-fellers are not unionised, but the mill workers are. This explains why the CFMEU lobbies for more clearfelling and woodchipping, while most tree-fellers actually would prefer selective logging for timber. Conservationists and tree-fellers actually have a lot in common, in that they all want clearfelling stopped.
While the number of trees that grow back is usuall more than what is cut down, it is the bio-diversity and habitat values f the foest that never grow back. Habitat hollows develop in trees after 150 years, and will never develop in forests logged in 80 year cycles.
Clearing forests and burning them for power is firing both barrells at the ozone layer. It is a sick concept that this is being called "renewable energy", or "green power". The extra money being paid by people on the power bills for renewable energy should be soing into solar, wind or hydro power - true renewable energy - but could ctually end up fnding the construction of these wood-fired power stations.
Victorian forest news
Tasmanian forest news
New South Wales forest news
Queensland forest news
Fort Goolengook is the latest evolution of the long running Goolengook blockade in East Gippsland. The blockade is blocking Goolengook Road, preventing the bulldozers from trashing more of Goolengook's lush, beautiful forests.
The Government has recently introduced legislation that makes it illegal to block a forestry road or to construct any obstacle on a forestry road. Previously the only law was that it was illegal to "obstruct a legal forestry operation", so this new legislation means it is now also illegal to blockade illegal logging!
The Japanese multi-national powered woodchip industry has become increasingly self-regulated, and there are many examples of logging breaches - such as logging over the National Park boundaries. Some of the forest being logged includes old-growth forests, rainforests, threatened species habitat, rare flora communities and combinations of these values. The process which approved logging in these forests was the Regional Forest Agreement. In East Gippsland, this process was unanimously opposed by Conservation groups, and even had the Government Department's own scientists speaking out against it. The politicians and foresters who approved the plan were not biologists, they had not been to Goolengook, they did not even read the scientific report on the forest.
In the Otways, a deal is being struck to have a significnt part of the forest placed in a moratorium, on the condition that blockades do not happen this summer. This has been made possible by the closure of one of the Colac mills, which reduced the quota of timber required.
Instead of direct action, an extensive fauna survey campaign is proposed, focusing on trying to locate habitat of the Spotted-tailed Quoll. The Quoll has been listed as Critically Endangered in the Otways, due to habitat destructin of laying of poisoned baits. The baits were intended to kill foxes and feral dogs, but are suspected of killing the Quolls as well. Proof is that Quolls are now only known to exist in areas that have not been baited.
The Central Highlands, north-east from Melbourne, is where Amcor have a pulp mill, and is alsobeing clearfelled for woodchips. There are extensive Pine Plantations there, which are the scene of un-regulated clearfelling. Numerous breachs of the Code of Practce have been documented there, such as felling too close to water courses, but the Government stil insists that self-regulatin is ok, and logging of State Forest is following that model.
Direct ACtion has been proposed for some native forest in the Central Highlands this summer, but in the past has never attracted sufficient numbers. Possibly wih the Otways goign quiet, welll hear some noise in the highlands.