Tasmania’s forests defense groups ramp up protest action

25 July
Tas­man­ian Still Wild Still Threat­ened activists scaled Par­lia­ment House in Can­ber­ra yes­ter­day in protest at Sunday’s Heads of Agree­ment sign­ing and have pledged to con­tin­ue action.

25 July
Tas­man­ian Still Wild Still Threat­ened activists scaled Par­lia­ment House in Can­ber­ra yes­ter­day in protest at Sunday’s Heads of Agree­ment sign­ing and have pledged to con­tin­ue action.

Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre also vowed to con­tin­ue non-vio­lent actions yes­ter­day, includ­ing ille­gal­ly board­ing wood­chip ships, chain­ing pro­test­ers to forestry equip­ment, block­ing roads with tripods, and com­mu­ni­ty walk-ins.

Envi­ron­ment cen­tre spokes­woman Jen­ny Weber said the agree­ment failed to offer imme­di­ate pro­tec­tion to high con­ser­va­tion areas because ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the final 430,000ha would take months. Ms Weber said it also fell well short of pro­tect­ing the ini­tial 572,000ha that con­ser­va­tion groups iden­ti­fied as high-con­ser­va­tion-val­ue forests.

“We will be main­tain­ing our vig­i­lance and will con­tin­ue to engage in non-vio­lent action until the forests are pro­tect­ed as promised,” she said.