BY VIV MILEY & ALEX BAINBRIDGE
Neil Smith was fined $7000 on October 27 for his part in a 1998 forest protest against the logging of virgin forest at Kooparoona Niara, also known as the Great Western Tiers. Smith was known at the time by the nickname Hector the Protector and his "crime" consisted of sitting in a tree with a laptop computer and mobile phone publishing information about the campaign on the internet.
Hector the Protector is one of several protesters from this campaign to have had large fines imposed on them. One of the protesters spent a month in jail for refusing to pay a $3000 fine. This is an indication of the depth of feeling expressed by those for and against the export woodchip industry.
The forest industry disputes accusations by environmentalists that industry activities are damaging to the environment. Thus Forestry Tasmania's glossy promotional material claims that it is engaged in ecologically sustainable forest management.
However, Forestry Tasmania doesn't have a passive attitude to environmentalists. On November 18, at its instigation, the government announced that The Wilderness Society (TWS) would be banned from promoting self-drive tours to the Styx Valley because of "concern" for tourists' safety.
Environmentalists are not fooled by Forestry Tasmania "pro-environment" statements. They are familiar with its long history of lies and distortions about the environmental consequences of the timber industry and its supposed economic merits.
In early 1995, there was a huge outpouring of protest in many cities against wood-chipping of old-growth forests. The federal Labor government at the time was led by Paul Keating. It responded to the protests by devising a "national forest policy". The policy's key element was for Regional Forest Agreements (RFA) to be drawn up between state and federal governments.
RFAs were supposed to establish long-term guidelines for the forestry industry, ostensibly based on scientific research and conservation principles "balanced" against industry profitability. The Tasmanian government became one of the first state governments to sign an RFA with the federal government in 1997. Some forest areas were protected in the RFA but many of these were not of high conservation value and the industry is now able to export an unlimited amount of woodchips.
The RFA was never able to achieve a consensus between the forest industry and environmentalists. The clash of interests between a profit-hungry industry and the imperative of ecological sustainability was irreconcilable and led to new forest battles.
Three of the biggest forest battles being fought in Tasmania at the moment are the campaigns against the Southwood woodchip mill, against the logging of the Styx Valley and against the massive increase in ecologically unsound timber plantations.
Southwood
The Southwood project is a development proposal for a woodchip mill and wood-fired power station in the southern forests near Judbury. Southwood project managers repeatedly use the excuse that the project is still "only a proposal" to avoid giving specific answers to crucial questions about truck movements and emissions from the power station.
However, the "proposal" status of the project has not stopped the construction of roads and a bridge that have no use other than as part of the Southwood development. The government has also welcomed an expression of interest from Korean company Kortas to invest in the project.
Several aspects of the proposal are worrying.
Firstly, despite official hype about how the rotary veneer mill will contribute to local "value-adding" and "down-stream processing", the woodchip mill is the centrepiece of the project and it is expected to consume at least 300,000 tonnes of timber per year. The veneer mill is not due to be constructed until the second stage of the project and may never be constructed.
Secondly, the wood-fired power station will consume an additional 300,000 tonnes of timber per year. There is still no reliable information available about emissions from the power station and how and where electricity would be fed into the state's grid. Given that Hobart and Launceston already suffer air pollution problems from domestic wood-fired heaters, it is likely that a wood-fired power station would cause unacceptable pollution in the Huon Valley.
A third worry is the related proposal to build an industrial port at Electrona near Northwest Bay. Northwest Bay is "one of the cleanest and clearest bays close to Hobart" according to a forthcoming publication of the Concerned Residents of the Upper Huon. It says "... frequent [visits by] woodchip and timber ships, as well as wood dust from woodchip piles would pose a serious threat to the marine ecology of Northwest Bay .... Big ships can introduce marine pests lurking in their ballast water, stir up sediment thereby making the waters murky and less able to support fragile marine life."
The Styx valley, another of the major battle grounds between environmental groups and the timber industry, is home to the world's tallest species of hardwood tree, the eucalyptus regnans. These trees are second only in height to the famous coastal redwoods of California. The regnans are what make the Styx valley so important to both environmentalists and loggers.
According to a Forestry Tasmania fact sheet, "in wood production terms, the Styx State forests have an estimated market value of some $270 million".
Forestry Tasmania has recently released its three-year plan to log 1200 ha of the Styx. Of the 22 proposed logging coupes within the Styx, 15 are in old-growth areas (almost 800 ha) and seven are within re-growth areas (400 ha). From this 74% of all old growth logs will go direct to woodchip mills and only 2% will go to veneer mills. The regnans have already been extensively logged throughout the state for the manufacture of newsprint, sawlogs, veneer and woodchips for export.
TWS points out that the Styx is one of the last strongholds of the regnans, and that only 13% of the original old-growth forests still exist in the state.
Plantations
At first glance it seems paradoxical that environmentalists are campaigning against a massive expansion of plantations in Tasmania. The RFA package included millions of dollars of incentives for the expansion of plantations. Plantations are claimed, by the federal government, to be "carbon sinks" which can contribute to reducing global warming.
Enough plantations already exist to cater for domestic needs for timber and many plantations in other countries will be ready for harvest in the next decade. Instead of reducing the destruction of old-growth forests and meeting timber needs from existing plantations, the government is sponsoring a program whereby the industry destroys more old-growth forest in order to create more plantations. The resulting plantations, which attract tax incentives, are monocultures which are baited with 1080 poison to kill possums and wallabies.
Despite claims by the industry to the contrary, Tasmania's forest industry is not sustainable. Every year in Tasmania over 22,000 ha of native forests are logged, 9000 ha of which is old-growth. Most of this is used for woodchips. Tasmania exports a greater volume of woodchips than all other states combined. The remainder is used for sawlogs or veneer.
According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, as little as 4% of some logging coupes are suitable for sawlogs. This is because old-growth forests contain large numbers of trees with hollow or rotten centres, the ideal habitat for native animals such as bats, pygmy possums, owls, black cockatoos and gliders. The logging of these trees means the destruction of their natural habitat.
Tasmania also has the highest percentage rate for land clearing of any state, with 0.295% of the land area being cleared every year. The most common method of clearing is by clear-felling and burning, which involves cutting down virtually every tree within a one kilometre square area, burning the remains and then re-seeding from the air. Over half the areas cleared are replaced with plantations or non-forest use, such as agriculture.
Industry claims of sustainability are designed to protect the valuable profits they generate. While Forestry Tasmania's claim of a $1 billion per year "contribution" to the Tasmanian economy is probably exaggerated, the stakes for the companies involved are high. Forestry Tasmania itself made a $13.4 million record profit in the last financial year (an increase of $9 million). This is small biscuits compared to the gigantic profits of woodchipping companies like North Forest Products, Gunns and Boral.
Tactics for the movement
The biggest challenge for the environment movement is to break down the division among working people between those who prefer to save the environment and those identifying with forest industry workers. The media and the government effectively promote the idea that workers must choose between jobs or the environment and that the best that can be hoped for is some kind of "balance". Government and the industry thus play environmentalists off against unionists.
Unfortunately, neither the main the forestry division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) nor TWS have succeeded in avoiding this trap. The acting state secretary of the CFMEU was unavailable for interview for this article and didn't return calls to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳.
The CFMEU supports the pretensions to "sustainability" made by the forest industry bosses and does not adequately represent the interests of its members either industrially or by challenging the lies about sustainability which are peddled by the forestry bosses.
While some progress has been made by the environment movement in reaching out to workers, forest campaigners are still more likely to argue that "workers would lose their jobs anyway" (due to restructuring or the eventual dying out of the industry) than to argue for a guarantee of jobs and livelihoods for timber workers.
Another argument of forest campaigners is that eco-tourism would employ more people than forestry, ignoring the fact that tourism jobs tend to be casual or part-time, poorly unionised and have poor working conditions. Workers cannot afford to trust the tourism market for jobs any more than environmentalists can trust the market to guarantee sustainability.
Until this division among progressive forces can be healed, both the environment and workers' movements will be weakened. The environment movement, in particular, needs to actively defend the rights of timber workers against their bosses if it is to broaden its base of support and achieve its aims. A platform of demands should include guaranteed jobs for timber workers and retraining on full pay for those who leave the industry, as well as calls to protect old-growth forests. The profit motive should not be allowed to destroy forest ecosystems and hence the timber industry should be nationalised and put under the control of timber workers and environmental experts.
Despite weaknesses in the movement, ecological sustainability is an issue that is dear to the hearts of ordinary people, and forest campaigns will continue to spring up while forests still need defending.
[The authors are members of the Democratic Socialist Party's Hobart branch.]