Mood:
energeticTopic: independent media
What wicked ways the state ALP have with their financial, access and careerism hooks in the NSW green movement. But even umbrella groups dependent on govt grants spit the dummy every so often.
Here is a letter you won't read on the unreal, sanitised so called "real dirt" blog of James Woodford based on the south coast of NSW. It was forwarded via a non signatory (ironic) being the convenor of ChipStop being Harriet Swift, an authentic regionally based (Bega) authority figure on forest conservation, former journalist, tree changer, artist with blowtorch (literally). H confirms just now that the omission was incidental and it's "a good letter".
And so it is, only it's somewhat hypocritical too, in varying degrees, given the same lead green group (former staff and board) and Jeff Angel still current mentioned in the letter, were financed by the Carr Govt to reach exactly this corrupt "resource security" outcome for industry in publicly owned forests. We know because we resigned from the board of the same Nature Conservation Council over this very issue in 2000, having been elected twice to the position. Notice this sent recently:
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:25 PMSubject: resource security and shuffling deck chairs ... Re: [chipstop] 40 NGOs ask the Premier to save the Mumbulla koalasIf and when the koalas are saved it will be at the price of other forest and other animals in the absence of broad logging industry reform. It might even be Brown Mountain in East Gippsland across the border depending on how litigation goes there. Or forest in the Upper Deua catchment which was once identified wilderness quality. Or giant brown barrels in Coolangubra. No one really knows. But it will mean shuffling the deck chairs.People will say you have to make a stand somewhere. I agree. But I know this is no lasting solution either. The loggers will move to the next forest, with quolls, Yellow Bellied Gliders etc. This is the terrible terrible consequence predicted as far back as 1991 by this text in this leaflet herewhich was the covert price NSW NCC chair and director of the TEC signed up to with 20 year logging guarrantees as per the Regional Forest Agreements. It was also implied in the peace plan agreed by select players in the 1995 state election campaign. These were pre emptive buckles by the green movement. Under duress no doubt.According to Dailan Pugh/NEFA quote in The Australian weekend magazine in 2008, only 1/4 of the forest identified by the scientific process for a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system was achieved by the NSW Govt decisions 1998-2000.Tom.
So here is the official greenie letter and below that again is a screenprint from the dirty Woodford blog waxing lyrical about in his words "one of the nation's most loved creatures" in the extinct form ..... but not on the Woodford blog when it involves loggers from the spouse's former employer (NSW State Forests as a PR officer).
Below that a speech from Harriet Swift to a public meeting at Tathra town hall earlier this month which is actually the real business free of ALP land use corruption.
[PDF file from ChipStop website]
Woodford ommission of this koala logging furore, yet he dares write about extinct koalas here:
The last word to the admirable Harriet Swift SE NSW town hall meeting last Monday night:
If this hall had a back window, in a few months or weeks from now we could look out from here and see this logging. What are we doing about it?- Harriett Swift
- SERCA reps have met with the State Minister for the Environment, local MP Mike Kelly and advisers to the federal Minister for Forestry and the Environment.
- We have approached all Japanese paper companies asking them not to buy native forest woodchips from the Eden chipmill because it cannot guarantee that they don’t come from koala habitat. 13 Australian ENGOs signed. We have a strong group of major Japanese groups approaching Nippon Paper asking for the same thing.
- A group of all the major conservation and animal welfare groups in Sydney is making a joint approach to the State Premier and Ministers. For many of these groups this will be the first time they have involved themselves in forests and logging issues.
- Those stories about the SE koalas that have been in the national media over the past couple of weeks are not just good luck. They represent an enormous amount of work by many people.
- Well over 1,000 people on Facebook have signed on to a group called Save the Mumbulla and FF koalas
- Local groups are forming to resist the logging, but – importantly, working together. I’m not one of those who sneers at people for looking after their backyards. On the contrary, I believe we have a special responsibility to. If we don’t, who will? It was logging in Tanja State forest on our boundary many years ago that first got me into the forest campaign in a serious way and I’d like to think I have given FNSW a few headaches in that time. However, as a forest campaigner I have also always been strongly opposed to arguing for my backyard at the expense of somewhere else. My local forest at the expense of the one down the road or Australia’s forests at the expense of those in some other country. It’s not an ethical message. Forests NSW always tries to force us into that paradigm and we mustn’t fall for it. They always offer what appear to be “concessions” in terms of what they call “resource neutrality.” That means the forest must yield the same amount of woodchips whether they get it from one place or another. If they make a provision for a powerful owl, it doesn’t mean less forest is logged, it just means it’s logged more intensively in the places that don’t have a powerful owl roost.
- Right now, the industry doesn’t need most of this wood. The woodchipping industry is still suffering from the GFC. In 2009 it spent most of the year on a 4 day week. For weeks at a time it was closed altogether. Its stockpiles of chips and logs were enormous. It was asking contractors to store logs in the forest rather than deliver them to the chipmill because it couldn’t store them. It had to clear bush inside the chipmill to expand its log storage area. Forests NSW has take or pay contracts with SEFE that can force them to keep on taking logs even when they don’t want them. We might even be doing them a favour if we could persuade State Forests not to take any pulplogs from these forests.
- One final thing: there has been some suggestion that we will do better if we pretend we are not greenies. I take issue with that. I am a greenie and why should I be ashamed of that? In the longer term, the more politicians realize that greenies are well informed, ethical and energetic and numerous, they’ll start to pay more attention to the environment.
