Forest and climate activists shut down Gunns’ Triabunna mill woodchip mill, Tasmania

2008-12-16
Sev­en activists were charged with tres­pass today after shut­ting down Gunns’ Tri­abun­na mill for over sev­en hours this morn­ing. Fif­teen peo­ple occu­pied the wood­chip mill at 4:45am, with sev­en activists attach­ing them­selves to a con­vey­or belt and oth­er machin­ery.

FIFTEEN FOREST AND CLIMATE ACTIVISTS SHUT DOWN TRIABUNNA WOODCHIP MILL, TASMANIA2008-12-16
Sev­en activists were charged with tres­pass today after shut­ting down Gunns’ Tri­abun­na mill for over sev­en hours this morn­ing. Fif­teen peo­ple occu­pied the wood­chip mill at 4:45am, with sev­en activists attach­ing them­selves to a con­vey­or belt and oth­er machin­ery.

“The Car­bon Pol­lu­tion Reduc­tion Scheme White Paper makes it plain that the Fed­er­al ALP is not com­mit­ted to ‘seri­ous and cred­i­ble’ emis­sions reduc­tions. There is a fail­ure by pol­i­cy mak­ers to grasp that we are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency – the poli­cies pro­posed by the White Paper will result in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Tas­ma­ni­a’s unique alpine ecosys­tems, the col­lapse of the Bar­ri­er Reef, and the sali­na­tion of Kakadu,” Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre spokesper­son said.

“Tar­gets of a 5% reduc­tion by 2020 are piti­ful and inter­na­tion­al­ly humil­i­at­ing. The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­men­t’s increased assis­tance to large emit­ters pro­vides a clear demon­stra­tion that their pri­or­i­ties lie with heav­i­ly pol­lut­ing big busi­ness, and not with Aus­trali­a’s peo­ple and nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment,” War­rick Jor­dan said.

“In Tas­ma­nia, the log­ging, burn­ing and wood­chip­ping of old growth for­est releas­es mas­sive quan­ti­ties of car­bon. Gunns Lim­it­ed is the dri­ver of this gross­ly irre­spon­si­ble and moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble sit­u­a­tion,” Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokesper­son said.

“Gunns hides this immense cli­mate crime behind offi­cial car­bon account­ing fig­ures which exclude the log­ging of native for­est. Tas­ma­ni­a’s old growth forests are glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant as unique ecosys­tems and car­bon stores, and their pro­tec­tion can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in Aus­tralia tak­ing real cli­mate action,” SWST

“The Tas­man­ian Gov­ern­ment has pub­licly expressed a will to address cli­mate change. If the Bartlett gov­ern­ment is seri­ous about address­ing cli­mate change then it will leg­is­late an end to old growth log­ging” con­clud­ed SWST.