Doubts over paper giant’s rainforest pledge

You might have read that world’s biggest and most notorious pulp and paper company, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), state it will no longer log virgin rainforest.. Conservationists are rightly suspicious though. APP has entrusted the monitoring of their environmental pledge to a group called the Forest Trust, which appears to be a consultant contracted …

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Doubts over paper giant’s rainforest pledge

Conservationists say they are suspicious of an announcement by one of the world’s biggest pulp and paper companies, which says it will no longer log virgin rainforest. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is the world’s third largest company pulp and paper company and sells its products in 65 countries, including Australia. In Indonesia alone, where …

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DSE – prosecuting while being prosecuted

It reads like a silly Monty Python sketch, but this absurdity is real. On 6th August the Department of Sustainability and Environment was to be in court prosecuting VicForests for criminally logging rainforests at Murrungowar in East Gippsland. In a curious paradox, EEG served papers on DSE for not adhering to rainforest protection laws just …

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VicForests excused for illegal logging

VicForests wiped out 8 ha of protected rainforest some time ago. In a first, the Department of Sustainability and Environment prosecuted them. However, after many adjournments of the case, on August 6th (2012) a behind the scenes deal was done instead. After such a heinous crime, we were imagining VicForests being marched off in leg …

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VicForests – serial defendants to environmental cases

VicForests is becoming a familiar defendant in the Victorian Supreme Court. In late 2010 the Court found it guilty of intending to illegally log an old growth forest near Brown Mountain that supports protected rare and endangered wildlife. Now they are again in the same court defending their actions to destroy Victoria’s faunal emblem, the …

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Illegal rainforest logging case to be heard in April.

Environment East Gippsland had a win today as the Supreme Court decided that its rainforest logging case can go to trial after Easter, with VicForests not able to log the site in the meantime. “VicForests was about to log illegally in a protected National Rainforest Site of Significance. We started this Court proceeding to stop …

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Rainforest court case set for November

EEG has again been forced to sue VicForests in the Supreme Court over their logging of a protected rainforest buffer at Cobb Hill on the Errinundra Plateua. All National Rainforest Sites of Significance are protected under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act. These areas must be protected by law. The case was set to be …

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Foresters still confused over a rainforest

The fifth EPA audit of logging has been released recently and shows that DSE/VicForests is still incapable of ensuring full compliance with the Code of Practice. The report checked logging done at 41 logging coupes during the 2006/7 financial year and its findings include:More than 10% of coupes had fires that escaped outside the logging …

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Rainforest case – logging ban extended to January

In December, VicForests sent logging contractors into a very controversial stand of forests – a National Rainforest Site of Significance. Our appeals to VicForest and DSE to pull logging machines out of course were ignored, and police arrested people protesting at the site. The law states that areas designated as Sites of Significance for rainforests …

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Rainforest protection fails again

Last Easter, three EEG members entered a beautiful rainforest and old growth area in the Bonang River catchment on the Errinundra Plateau. It was being logged. They found what they considered illegal logging of a buffer, which should have been protecting the rainforest in the gully. Morally, a chainsaw should never have come near the …

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