Logging to be halved in Gippsland

VicForests will not award 8 of the 16 logging contracts from the latest tender process because of market conditions. A Central Gippsland contractor says at least 7 forest contractors will lose their businesses and about 40 forest workers and drivers will lose their jobs. It will also be difficult to sell millions of dollars of …

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Harvey Norman: Breaking the chain!

Harvey Norman’s chain of forest destruction broken by activists across Australia. Four arrests, four massive actions. Check out this amazing new film from The Last Stand.   On Wednesday 24 August, almost 50 activists took action at four sites across Australia to protest Harvey Norman’s sale of wood products sourced from native forest destruction. Four …

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Felling forests for paper… to felling forests for power

The NSW Eden woodchip mill exports over a million tonnes of woodchips every year. East Gippsland’s forests account for almost half of this. The declining export woodchip industry is now transitioning – from rendering our forests into tiny chips to make pulp and paper products, to now making tiny fuel pellets to power furnaces. In …

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Carbon Reduction package – a good start

The carbon pricing scheme announced on the 10th July 2011 ends plans to burn native forest wood ‘waste’ for electricity, as it is not regarded as ‘renewable’. Without the carbon credits for the electricity produced, these planned projects will be economically unviable. Thanks to all those people who wrote and emailed to the government. It …

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Baillieu to protect loggers above threatened species

(Forest Flogging Guarantee Act?) Driven by our Brown Mountain win a year ago, the Baillieu government is planning to rewrite the 23 year old environmental law that was to protect threatened species – to allow better protection of the logging industry. The deliberate inaction and disregard of the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act by the …

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Latest logging audit spin

How can an audit that has found environmental breaches on almost all the coupes checked possibly end up with a result of 93% compliance?The latest audit of logging in Victoria’s forests will leave many environmentalists convinced that these Audits are totally worthless exercises that have done nothing to protect biodiversity in our forests. One of …

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CSIRO – Forests are key carbon soaks

This is exciting! As one forest campaigner said – formally recognising the carbon potential of forests is a “game changer”. What we have been saying for years has finally been shown to be right by the CSIRO. The world’s intact forests absorb about 1/3rd of our carbon emissions every year. This makes forests the most …

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Biomass burning

Forests have come out well in this Energy Future scheme (called the Carbon Tax) thanks to the public and a deal done by the Greens to exclude burning forests for power to be termed ‘renewable energy’. Several of these plans for forest furnaces now won’t be able to claim Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). This will …

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New Biodiversity Fund Announced

As part of the new Clean Energy Future Package, the Government has announced that it will provide funding of $946 million over the first six years for landholders to undertake projects that establish, restore, protect or manage biodiverse carbon stores. The Fund will support restoration and management of biodiverse carbon stores including:• reforestation and revegetation …

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Environmentalism: The Way Forward

Below is summary of an address given by Clive Hamilton in March 2011 in Melbourne. It gives a very astute overview of what we really need to do to bring about change.After almost 30 years of working at the forest campaign, and still seeing our remnants of magnificent old growth forest turned into a brew …

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