Forest defender arrested as activists halt work on road to climate chaos in the Styx Valley, Tasmania

2008-05-20
This morn­ing, for­est activists halt­ed work on the con­struc­tion of a new ‘road to cli­mate chaos’ in the Styx Val­ley to high­light com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns with the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of Tasmania’s ancient forests. Activists are halt­ing road­ing oper­a­tions which, if com­plet­ed, will access sig­nif­i­cant tracts of giant euca­lypt for­est in close prox­im­i­ty to the Tas­man­ian Wilder­ness World Her­itage Area bound­ary. A female activist, who had been attached to road­ing machin­ery for over 9 hours was arrest­ed this after­noon. Police arrived at the site, locat­ed near Jubilee Road in the South Styx, around 9am. The activist was cut off the machine at approx­i­mate­ly 2pm and was arrest­ed and charged by local police offi­cers.

“Once again, Forestry Tas­ma­nia is using tax­pay­ers mon­ey to smash new roads through some of our most unique and irre­place­able ecosys­tems. This road to cli­mate chaos in the South Styx will enable wood­chip­ping barons Gunns Ltd. to dev­as­tate some of the island’s most car­bon rich old growth forests” said Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokesper­son Ula Majew­s­ki.

“The Rudd Gov­ern­ment must take deci­sive action and put an imme­di­ate stop to these envi­ron­men­tal­ly crim­i­nal acts, rather than stand­ing back and endors­ing the large scale wood­chip­ping and torch­ing of some of our most pre­cious nat­ur­al her­itage. In this era of increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous cli­mate change, the destruc­tion of Tasmania’s ancient forests is a glob­al issue” said Miss Majew­s­ki.

For­est defend­ers will con­tin­ue to take peace­ful action against the con­tin­ued dec­i­ma­tion of Tasmania’s glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant old growth forests.

http://www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened
http://campflorentine@gmail.com