Australia: Update on Direct Action versus logger’s violent escalation
Constant rain clatters against the burned-out shell of a recently
vandalised car, tiny tents flap violently in the biting wind and a
piercing early morning whistle signals the daily visit of the local
police force. Valerie Thompson, 36, has just descended from a tree-top
canopy hanging precariously 50m in the air. She’s been suspended above
the Upper Florentine Valley forests in southern Tasmania for 12 hours
straight and is happy to report to the sergeant that the night was
violence-free.
Moments after the policeman leaves she’s greeted by a
“f..king greenie ferals” from a car-load of men driving past on the
main road. She responds with a laugh, places a kettle on an open fire
and embraces her two-year-old daughter, Hope. This is the front line
of a battle for a remote piece of wilderness surrounded on three sides
by World Heritage areas and containing eucalypt trees that stand up to
80m high For the past two years, environmental activists have held an
around-the-clock vigil at the entrance of an estimated 10km of planned
logging roads that will be used to open up a series of new coupes. The
activists, from grassroots environment group Still Wild Still
Threatened, expect police to try evicting them forcibly from “Camp
Florentine” to allow logging machinery through. In preparation they
keep watch at the front of their camp, as well as rotating people
through the tree canopies and taking turns locking themselves on to
cars buried in the ground.
It’s a 24-hour display of resistance, a
co-ordinated operation to prevent any demolition work being started
under the cover of dark. “If we’re not here these ancient eucalypt
forests will be exploited predominantly for woodchips and it will
destroy the World Heritage values of the area,” says Thompson. “There
are a lot more people starting to realise that this is not forestry,
but just land degradation that is costing potential tourism jobs and
releasing tonnes of stored carbon dioxide into the air at a time when
we need to be tackling climate change.” It is believed the state
government-owned corporation Forestry Tasmania will ask police to
remove the protesters within the next six months so it can access an
estimated 200ha of the Florentine forest that contains important
sources of Tasmania’s special species timbers, such as myrtle and
sassafras. However, it is not Camp Florentine itself that is causing
angst inside the logging industry. Random direct actions by the
activists inside nearby active logging coupes are frustrating forestry
contractors to the point where confrontations are turning ugly. In
October, a video was posted on the internet allegedly showing forestry
contractors using sledgehammers to smash the windows of a car that had
been buried into the road to prevent logging machinery getting past.
Two protesters were locked in the car at the time of the attack and
one was allegedly dragged out and kicked in the head. It is the first
time such violence has been caught on video in the region and it made
headlines across the country. Three forestry workers were later
charged with assault, and four protesters with trespass. Police are
investigating another serious incident that occurred two days later
when a group of men arrived at Camp Florentine and allegedly
firebombed two of the activists’ cars and an information booth.
Tempers flared again on December 16 when Still Wild Still Threatened
activists brought Gunns’ woodchip mill at Triabunna to a standstill in
protest at what they labeled the federal Government’s weak response on
carbon reduction targets. The protest, in which activists chained
themselves to a conveyer belt and other machinery, left more than 30
fully laden log trucks and their drivers stranded for seven hours,
with an estimated cost to the industry of $300,000-$500,000.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24865691-30417,00.html
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
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