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December 11, 2003
From the 1950s-to the 1970s Tasmania was once ruled by a Hydro Commission that wanted to dam its wild rivers to generate electricity. Today Tasmania is ruled by the Forestry industry backed by Forestry Tasmania. As with the Styx Valley, over 90% of the Tarkine forest logged by Gunns Limited ends up as woodchips, and is exported to Japanese paper companies including Oji, Nippon and Mitsubishi.
The public in the Island state have shown consistent and overwhelming opposition to the clearfelling of native forests and to the desecration of giant trees such as El Grande and those in the Styx. Public opinion holds that Tasmania’s forest resource is being sold short, with far too much being exported unprocessed as either woodchips or whole logs.
Despite this clear felling of native rain forest is out of control. The pro-business Bacon Labour Government is complicit in the ecological destruction of native forest by the woodchipping industry.
Why ecological destruction? Two thirds of the area logged is clearfelled and burnt - usually for conversion to plantations---from napalming.
 This photo is of a regeneration burn following clearfell logging in north-western Tasmania’s Tarkine area. You can see the helicopter in the centre of the photo with the “heli-torch”, an incendiary device that drops thousands of ping-pong balls of napalm on the mangled remains of the forest. Approximately 15,000 ha of forest is treated this way in Tasmania every year.
The monoculture (radiata pine or Eucalptus nitens) is sustained by a heavy program of fertilisers and pesticides that contaminates the island's water resources, and kills possums, wallabies, kangaroos, wombats, bettongs and potaroos.
Writing in The Bulletin (subscription required) Richard Flanagan says that:
"The battle for the forests in Tasmania is as much about free speech and democracy---about a people's right to exercise some control over their destiny, about their desire to have a better, freer society---as it is about wild lands. The fate of the forests long ago ceased to be a green issue in Tasmania, and has come to be seen as an issue about Tasmania's future; an issue that has joined in opposition a myriad of ordinary Tasmanians of all political persuasions and backgrounds."
Why so? Because the woodschippers are not only destroying Tasmania's natural heritage.Their contempt for liberal democracy has seen them corrupt the political process, distort the process of state parliament, deform the polity, cowed the media and stunted Tasmanian society.
This is what happens in the Third World. The destruction in Tasmania is probably worse than what is happening in Third World.
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