Tasmania on the verge of opening up pristine forest for logging

Climate Connections | Aug 23, 2014 | Jay Burney

While we struggle with an often loosing battle to save one little parcel after another, sometimes one tree at a time, Tasmania is about to open up 1.5 million hectares of ancient forest to logging interests. Of course it’s all about the jobs isn’t it?  Or is it about the profitability of an industry that for generations has been hell-bent on destroying every last centimeter of intact ecosystem so that the bottom line of that commodification business can tout another hollow economic  success in the equally hollow international marketplace of the rapacious . Hollow that is if you are serious about mitigating the impacts of climate change.  Exceedingly hollow if you pretend to care about the fundamental quality of biodiversity and the undeniable and explicit value of intact ecosystems such as the old growth Tasmanian forests. Life on earth, including yours and mine, depend on not doing this. Can you hear the jobs argument ringing in your brain?

So here it goes- say goodbye to one million five hundred thousand hectares of forest preserve so that the old growth nature can be commodified and the wealth that supports our biospheric health can be dropped into the pockets of a few enfranchised “stakeholders”.  Oh, want to protest this? Tasmania is introducing tough new anti protest laws targeted at anti-logging demonstrators.

Say goodbye to Tasmanian forests.
Photo by Rob Blakey/Bob Brown Foundation