Howard secretly promised a $4 million gift to a forestry union group just three days before the last election. This explains why the loggers, with encouragement from the union, rejected an $800 million forest jobs package offered by Mark Latham, for the $70 million package offered by Howard. This and the jubilant response by loggers …
Howard secretly promised a $4 million gift to a forestry union group just three days before the last election. This explains why the loggers, with encouragement from the union, rejected an $800 million forest jobs package offered by Mark Latham, for the $70 million package offered by Howard. This and the jubilant response by loggers …
Bob Humphries, owner of the big Cann River sawmill, is sore over new prices for logs and wants the government to reduce royalty prices to below cost price . He says demand for native forest timber is falling and they can’t get as much for sawn timber any more. After decades of receiving welfare in …
In 2003 it was the Snowy River National Park. Now in 2005 it’s the Errinundra National Park that has been illegally logged. Lazy or incompetent Government foresters have this time marked a logging coupe boundary inside the National Park. Large old trees were felled and the surrounding understorey bulldozed. All up the area destroyed was …
The Australian Environment Foundation fell flat on its face right from the start. Even the gullible and tame journalists from rural media didn’t swallow their lines. A well-known woodchipping industry supporter and lobbyist, Kirsten Gentle, launched a US style front group on World Environment Day. The attempt to mimic a highly respected national environment group, …
While the people of New Orleans were still being rescued ten days after cyclone Katrina, and thousands of bodies still remained to be identified, our own Mr Bracks made a very considered, significant and irresponsible decision. After a two year process negotiating with the private owners of Hazelwood, he has allowed the developed world’s dirtiest …
The largest paper mill in Australia is based in Gippsland and is planning to expand – with the government’s full blessing and financial assistance. It will need an additional 200,000 m3 of eucalypt pulpwood. But where will it come from? PaperlinX, maker of Reflex copy paper, was formally known as APM, Amcor and is now …
After Mitsubishi announced it was considering not buying chips from old growth forests, Nippon (the company that buys East Gippsland’s woodchips) announced it was also reviewing its policy on taking old growth woodchips. Tasmania’s logging industry group, FIAT, claims that Mitsubishi had been “influenced by the economic vandalism and treachery of extremist environmental groups”. Old …
If a private land owner was to destroy native vegetation without a permit, they would be fined and forced to rehabilitate up to 15 times the same area that was destroyed. This is now part of the Native Vegetation Management Framework drawn up by The Department of Sustainability and Environment. But the department which is …
The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE – what a misnomer!) approved the logging of a mapped and protected Superb Parrot Special Protection Zone. The 30 hectares logged at Grinters Ridge in the Barmah Forests was about 60% of the SPZ and about 15% of the total habitat that the bird has left. This parrot …
