70 stop old growth logging in 3 East Gippsland Coupes

2007-12-06
Today 70 con­ser­va­tion­ists stopped log­ging in three coupes in East Gipp­s­land, Vic­to­ria. The protest is in response to unfilled elec­tion promis­es to pro­tect old growth forests made by the Bracks/Brumby gov­ern­ment over a year ago. Four have attached them­selves to machin­ery halt­ing clear-felling oper­a­tions.

2007-12-06
Today 70 con­ser­va­tion­ists stopped log­ging in three coupes in East Gipp­s­land, Vic­to­ria. The protest is in response to unfilled elec­tion promis­es to pro­tect old growth forests made by the Bracks/Brumby gov­ern­ment over a year ago. Four have attached them­selves to machin­ery halt­ing clear-felling oper­a­tions.

Activists stopped oper­a­tions in Black Cut­tings, Aspen Bat­tery Track and Goon­garah Catch­ment. Cur­rent­ly two peo­ple are locked on to machi­nary in both Aspen Bat­tery Track and Black Cut­tings. Oth­er activists are black waller­by­ing (run­ning around) the coupes avoid­ing Depart­ment of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Envi­ron­ment (DSE) offi­cers. 20 peo­ple were asked to leave Goon­garah Catch­ment and com­plied with that direc­tion, avoid­ing arrest.

“We are here today to hold politi­cians to account to ful­fil elec­tion promis­es. It is out­ra­geous that the Bracks/Brumby gov­ern­ment have not yet put these areas into reserves. Brum­by needs to act now and solves this issue.” said Mark Tylor spokesper­sons for the group.

Only two per­cent of Victoria’s old growth forests remains. These crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant areas are home to many endan­gered species, includ­ing sooty owl, pow­er­ful owl and long foot­ed potoroo.

“Forestry caus­es a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of Australia’s green­house gas emis­sions. If Labor is seri­ous about tak­ing real action to pre­vent dan­ger­ous cli­mate change they must com­mit to end­ing log­ging of high con­ser­va­tion forests now.”

“The gov­ern­ment needs to stop pan­der­ing to the multi­na­tion­al wood­chip indus­try, and have the courage to do what the sci­ence tells us is nec­es­sary to pro­tect the future sur­vival of all Aus­tralians and the plan­et” con­clud­ed James Ludd.