TASMANIA: NEW DEVELOPMENTS 1

Norman Baker MP on the stump of a felled giant, Styx Valley [Photo: Vica Bayley]

"Twenty years of campaigning in Tasmania by The Wilderness Society had produced some important, positive steps forward but much more needs to happen if the state's natural heritage is to be saved and its economy is to benefit from a restructure the forestry industry must inevitably undergo," says TWS spokesperson Virginia Young said.

An agreement struck between the Prime Minister and Tasmania's Premier in May last year allowed some protection for parts of the Styx and Tarkine rainforests, but Ms Young said both governments have failed to capitalise on the opportunity to place Tasmania in a leading position globally to benefit from the growing nature-based tourism market. Tragically, logging and clearing of other world-class forests has accelerated as a result of a massive injection of Commonwealth and State funding to the logging industry.

Instead of a bright future, a new threat is looming. Gunns Ltd, Australia's largest export woodchipper, wants to build a chlorine-based, native forest-fed pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. It could turn out to be an ecological, social and economic disaster. This proposal is one of the biggest threats to old growth forests in Tasmania, as well as having significant impacts on air quality and the marine environment. The proposed pulp mill would involve 30-years of access to Tasmania's native forests, driving ongoing destruction of high conservation value and old growth forests. Any pulp mill in Tasmania must be 100 per cent plantation-based, totally chlorine-free and appropriately located, Ms Young said.
Paul Sheridan/Environmental Media

'Tasmania's Greens believe they can use their likely balance of power after the forthcoming state election to change the state's biggest industrial project, a hotly disputed $1.5 billion pulp mill. Timber giant Gunns Ltd is poised near a critical milestone in the approvals process for the mill on the Tamar River north of Launceston.But Greens leader Peg Putt said yesterday it was possible to vary the approval in Parliament on the premier's recommendation. "There certainly is capacity for us to influence what happens with this mill," Ms Putt said.The giant mill would consume more than 2.5 million tonnes of woodchips, some of it from native forest, to produce 800,000 tonnes of pulp and would discharge 20 billion litres of effluent into Bass Strait each year.
Source: ''Greens pledge on pulp friction' by Andrew Darby, Hobart. March 8, 2006, The Age
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Thanks to Lin Heyworth