Tasmanian Forest Activists Twice Violently Attacked by Loggers — solution to whole conflict proposed by activists

For­est activists attacked in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley, Tassie
22 Octo­ber 2008
On Mon­day morn­ing a for­est activist was repeat­ed­ly kicked in the head by vio­lent, out of con­trol log­gers in the Flo­ren­tine Val­ley, the site of a protest against old-growth log­ging.

A peace­ful action by con­ser­va­tion­ists in the Upper Flo­ren­tine was tar­get­ed by vio­lent log­ging con­trac­tors, with one activist kicked in the head and block­ade infra­struc­ture attacked with a sledge­ham­mer, seri­ous­ly endan­ger­ing two activists. This occurred while a Forestry Tas­ma­nia employ­ee watched on.

The group blocked the road for three hours until about 9.30am (AEDT) when a con­trac­tor attacked the vehi­cle with a sledge­ham­mer, she said.

“The con­trac­tor set upon the car with a sledge­ham­mer and then dragged the activist out from the car and kicked him in the head while he was lying on the ground,” Ms Majew­s­ki said.

She said the vic­tim, who escaped seri­ous injury, was a 22-year-old male activist who unlocked his arm from the road dur­ing the sledge­ham­mer attack.

“Mem­bers of the Tas­man­ian com­mu­ni­ty engaged in legit­i­mate peace­ful protest in defence of ancient forests should not be sub­ject­ed to this kind of vio­lence, nor should it be con­doned by Forestry Tas­ma­nia employ­ees” said Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokeper­son Ula Majew­s­ki.

“Due to the car­bon-stor­age val­ue of this for­est, the con­tentious nature of this log­ging oper­a­tion and today’s vio­lence, Still Wild Still Threat­ened requests an imme­di­ate ces­sa­tion of log­ging in coupe FO042E” Ula Majew­s­ki said.

“Vio­lence of this kind is per­pe­trat­ed by a small minor­i­ty of log­ging con­trac­tors. Con­trac­tors such as Howell’s Log­ging should focus their anger on those who are endan­ger­ing their liveli­hoods, such as Forestry Tas­ma­nia and Gunns Lim­it­ed, who con­tin­ue to dam­age Tas­man­ian com­mu­ni­ties and forests with an unsus­tain­able, wood­chip based indus­try” Ula Majew­s­ki said.

“Activists will be pur­su­ing this mat­ter with the police” said Miss Majew­s­ki.

On Sat­ur­day the camp will cel­e­brate their sec­ond year try­ing to halt log­ging of old-growth forests in the Upper Flo­ren­tine val­ley, about 120 kilo­me­tres west of Hobart.

The rain­for­est val­ley is sur­round­ed on three sides by the Tas­man­ian Wilder­ness World Her­itage Area. The Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature has iden­ti­fied the Upper Flo­ren­tine as hav­ing poten­tial World Her­itage val­ue.

Ula Majew­s­ki, a spokes­woman for the group Still Wild, Still Threat­ened, said attempts to save the for­est were reach­ing a crit­i­cal point, with plans to dri­ve a 10-kilo­me­tre log­ging road into the val­ley this sum­mer.

“That would open the entire area up for log­ging,” Ms Majew­s­ki said.

Video (same video also here)

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Camp­site fire­bombed by log­gers

24 Octo­ber 2008
Three car loads of men arrived at the group’s camp­site late last night, Still Wild Still Threat­ened mem­ber Ula Majew­s­ki said. “A num­ber of unknown indi­vid­u­als arrived at Camp Flo­ren­tine around 11.30pm and used jer­ry cans of petrol to set the two vehi­cles on fire,” Ms Majew­s­ki said today. “A for­est activist who was sleep­ing in the vicin­i­ty of the vehi­cles was wok­en by shout­ing and loud smash­ing.

“A for­est infor­ma­tion booth pro­vid­ed for tourists was also set on fire and a gas cook­er inside explod­ed,” she said.

The inci­dent was report­ed to police after some of the activists had to walk out of the for­est because their cars had been destroyed in the attack. Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokes­woman Ula Majew­s­ki said her group had used a “drag­on” to block a road used by log truck dri­vers and forestry work­ers. With a “drag­on” a car is dri­ven over a device dug into the road and an activist, using a hole in the floor of the vehi­cle, locks an arm onto the device, she said.

The attack in the Flo­ren­tine Val­ley, 120km west of Hobart, fol­lows a vio­lent clash between forestry work­ers and activists at a road block in the same area on Tues­day. Activists had dis­rupt­ed log­ging in the area for a day last week using a tree-sit­ter, alleged­ly cost­ing con­trac­tors an esti­mat­ed $10,000 in lost rev­enue.

The camp has swelled with sup­port­ers to the Strath­gor­don Rd site in sol­i­dar­i­ty the pro­test­ers. The camp­site, where five peo­ple were sleep­ing, blocks a for­est road to an area marked for log­ging.

http://www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened

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Tas­man­ian for­est activists pro­pose a solu­tion

Still Wild Still Threat­ened and the Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre are propos­ing a solu­tion to the pro­tract­ed debate over con­tentious forestry oper­a­tions in old growth and high con­ser­va­tion val­ue areas of the South­ern Forests.

“Still Wild Still Threat­ened and the Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre are propos­ing a Tas­man­ian and Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment dri­ven solu­tion to con­tentious log­ging and road­ing oper­a­tions in the South­ern Forests. We are call­ing on all stake­hold­ers to adopt a con­sid­ered and ratio­nal approach to bring­ing this pro­longed for­est debate to a fair and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble con­clu­sion,” said Still Wild Still Threat­ened Spokesper­son Ula Majew­s­ki.

“Our organ­i­sa­tions are pre­pared to cease all in-for­est peace­ful direct action that restricts log­ging and road­ing oper­a­tions, con­tin­gent on a mora­to­ri­um on all forestry oper­a­tions in old growth and high con­ser­va­tion val­ue areas of the South­ern Forests, and the cre­ation of an inde­pen­dent­ly medi­at­ed dia­logue that aims to resolve the for­est issue,” said Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre Spokesper­son Adam Burl­ing.

The con­di­tions of this pro­posed solu­tion are:

1. SWST and the HVEC will com­mit to a ces­sa­tion of all in-for­est peace­ful direct action that restricts

log­ging and road­ing oper­a­tions in the South­ern Forests

2. The Tas­man­ian and Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments will com­mit to a mora­to­ri­um on all forestry, log­ging and road­ing oper­a­tions in old growth and high con­ser­va­tion val­ue areas of the South­ern Forests;^1

3. An inde­pen­dent­ly medi­at­ed dia­logue will be under­tak­en, dri­ven by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Depart­ment of Pre­mier and Cab­i­net and the Office of the Prime Min­is­ter, and attend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the rel­e­vant min­istries, includ­ing cli­mate change, and rel­e­vant con­ser­va­tion groups and indus­try stake­hold­ers. This dia­logue will aim to resolve the long run­ning for­est debate in Tas­ma­nia in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able man­ner;

4. That the above com­mit­ments remain in force for a peri­od of six months, with exten­sions grant­ed if dia­logue is ongo­ing;

5. That com­mu­ni­ty events con­tin­ue unhin­dered in the South­ern Forests, and for­est activists are able to main­tain a pres­ence in areas such as the site of Camp Flo­ren­tine.

“The Tas­man­ian com­mu­ni­ty deserves bet­ter than to see the con­tin­ued log­ging of our pre­cious remain­ing car­bon dense ancient forests, such as the Styx, Weld, and Upper Flo­ren­tine. And it deserves bet­ter than to see a for­est indus­try that exists on gov­ern­ment hand­outs and mar­gin­alis­es local oper­a­tors. We urge pol­i­cy mak­ers to con­sid­er this unique pro­pos­al,” Adam Burl­ing said.

“We will be for­mal­ly con­tact­ing Pre­mier Bartlett and Prime Min­is­ter Rudd about this today and are seek­ing a response by Tues­day 11^th Novem­ber,” said Ula Majew­s­ki.

UNITED ENVIRONMENT GROUPS TAKE TASMANIAN FOREST SOLUTION TO THE FEDERAL CABINET

Envi­ron­ment groups work­ing towards an end to the con­flict over for­est man­age­ment in Tas­ma­nia took a unit­ed posi­tion to meet­ings with four Fed­er­al Cab­i­net min­is­ters last night in Launce­s­ton.
Meet­ings were pos­i­tive and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers are con­fi­dent this will mark the start of a con­struc­tive work­ing rela­tion­ship that could see the long-over­due deliv­ery of envi­ron­men­tal, social and eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty to the strug­gling Tas­man­ian tim­ber indus­try.
“We are hope­ful requests to the Fed­er­al Cab­i­net and Tas­man­ian Pre­mier Bartlett to engage in mean­ing­ful dia­logue and par­tic­i­pate in the solu­tion to this long-run­ning dis­pute will bear fruit” said Dr Phill Pullinger, Direc­tor of Envi­ron­ment Tas­ma­nia.
“Col­lec­tive­ly, we call on Tas­man­ian Min­is­ter David Llewellyn to take a more open and con­struc­tive approach than that so far dis­played, and help bring the Pre­mier to the table and start talk­ing about a pos­i­tive way for­ward,” said Vica Bay­ley, spokesper­son for The Wilder­ness Soci­ety.

Recent rev­e­la­tions that for­est con­trac­tors want assis­tance to exit the indus­try, and that sawlogs are in over-sup­ply, show that now is the time for a res­o­lu­tion to this con­flict.
The Aus­tralian (4/11/08) reports, “In Tas­ma­nia, hard-hit for­est con­trac­tors are seek­ing a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed exit pack­age to allow them to leave the indus­try “with dig­ni­ty”.

“Forestry Tas­ma­nia is not the appro­pri­ate body to nego­ti­ate this con­flict. Only Pre­mier Bartlett can, by join­ing with fed­er­al lead­ers and help­ing to steer for­est con­flict to an ami­ca­ble clo­sure” said Jen­ny Weber, spokesper­son for the Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre.

“Envi­ron­ment groups sup­port a respon­si­ble for­est indus­try in Tas­ma­nia and are unit­ed in the belief that there can be a res­o­lu­tion to the debate that could deliv­er win-win out­comes for our forests and for­est-depen­dent com­mu­ni­ties,” said Ula Majew­s­ki, spokesper­son for Still Wild Still Threat­ened.