The logging industry and its lobbyists have been using ‘creative spin’ for years to cover up the destruction of wildlife, the cost to tax-payers, environmental damage, water loss and so on. The below are just a small sample of their many deliberately erroneous claims which are designed to confuse or placate the public. “Greenies tell lies” was their all time classic as a giant log truck sticker.
The logging industry and its lobbyists have been using ‘creative spin’ for years to cover up the destruction of wildlife, the cost to tax-payers, environmental damage, water loss and so on. The below are just a small sample of their many deliberately erroneous claims which are designed to confuse or placate the public. “Greenies tell lies” was their all time classic as a giant log truck sticker.
WHEN is an environment group no longer an environment group? Seems an odd question to ask in a rural paper, but stick with me. Planet Ark, famous for encouraging us to recycle greetings cards to save trees, is set to endorse clearfell logging of native forest. The Australian Forestry Standard – an alternative logging certification …
The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has caved into Australia’s forest practitioners by amending a Green Star Rating Scheme that will endorse timber from destructive clearfelling operations in old growth forests, said the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) today. “The GBCA has given in to extreme pressure from representatives of state government forestry agencies and …
After discussions between green groups and the certifying agents of the Forest Stewardship Council in mid 2009 – supposedly the most reputable forest certifying body in the world, VicForests were thankfully refused endorsement by the FSC. Certifying logging – should we ever endorse native forest logging? In 2007 the logging industry was desperately grabbing for …
The logging industry is desperately grabbing for a lifeline as they slowly sink on the global wood market The price of the Aussie dollar and a global glut of plantation woodchips are both undermining the profits of Australia’s native forest logging industry. Most buyers want some sort of eco-certification to keep their customers assured. So …
The latest porky to come from the makers of Reflex paper, is that their product is now 100% forest sensitive, in fact it’s so eco-friendly it is bursting with endangered species. Australia’s biggest paper company, PaperlinX in the Latrobe Valley, is congratulating itself for this bodgie eco-label given by the normally reliable Forest Stewardship Council …
Scruffy scruplesReaders will be aware of government and logging industry attempts to give wood products that come from destructive clearfelled areas a green tick of approval. This is to con both domestic and overseas buyers that the timber they purchase is from nicely logged forests. To achieve this, they invented the Australian Forestry Standard or …
The Australian accreditation body, Standards Australia, has been asked by national environment groups to reject a loggers-own brand of ‘world’s best practice logging’ certification. They call it the Australian Forestry Standard or AFS. The logging industry wants to formalise its destructive operations by having the label formally accepted by a standards body. The ‘standards’ that …
The latest bundle of propaganda to come from VicForests, in mid August, announced the new Sustainable Forest Management System Project for Forest Certification. Don’t all those big words sound impressive? Sadly, its just another expensive publicity fraud. Haven’t the Government propagandists and spin-doctors realised yet that the word Sustainable is way past its use by …
In early November, the logging industry launched a new self-certified standard of logging in Australia. It claims its practices are now acceptable on a global scale. Australian Forestry Standard Their self-certification scheme (invented by the industry for the industry) is called the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS). An equally dubious international group called the Program for …
Another ex-ACF President, Philip Toyne, has moved on from being a consultant to the industry to becoming a board member of Australia’s second-largest sawmilling and plantation company. Toyne’s past employer, Neville Smiths Timber at Heyfield in Gippsland, paid him for two years to sell their native forest wood as eco-friendly and convince government officials with …
