Loggers destroy Tasmania's primeval forest with napalm
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I am writing this in our autumn, once Tasmania's most beautiful
season. But the china-blue skies are now nicotine scummed, as smoke
from the burning of old-growth forest floats over Hobart, an
inescapable reminder that the destruction of ancient woodland - like
no other in the world - is accelerating.
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests
astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological
tragedy is being played out.
Recent calls from Britain to boycott Tasmanian goods and tourism are
not going to end logging. But in an Australian election year, with the
forests emerging as a major issue, they form part of a chorus of
international condemnation that shows Australians that the forests are
not just a natural resource, but are globally significant wild lands.
Rainforest is being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. The
world's tallest hardwood trees, eucalyptus regnans, are being reduced
to mud and ash. And the monocultural plantations that replace the old
growths soak up so much groundwater that rivers are drying up.
Compound 1080, a lethal poison, is laid to kill off native animals
that might graze plantation seedlings. In the resulting slaughter,
wallabies, kangaroos, possums, and protected species such as wombats,
bettongs and potoroos, die in slow agony.
The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian
freshwater crayfish - the largest in the world - is in doubt because
of logging. Scientists warn that numerous insect species still
unrecorded are disappearing in the conflagration. Local people are
finding their water contaminated with atrazine, a potent weedkiller.
Logging is an industry driven solely by greed. It prospers with
government support and subsidies, and it is accelerating its rate of
destruction, so that Tasmania is now the largest hardwood chip
exporter in the world. And Gunns, the largest logging company in
Australia with a monopoly in Tasmania, is making record profits
selling these forests as woodchips, which are in turn made into paper
and cardboard.
But the woodchippers are destroying not only Tasmania's natural
heritage, but also its parliament, its polity, its media and its
society. The close relationship which leading Tasmanian politicians
enjoy with Gunns, goes beyond sizeable donations to both major
parties; it has given rise to a political culture of bullying,
cronyism and threats, a culture that allowed the state's electoral
system, under a 1997 Liberal-Labour deal, to be altered to minimise
Green representation.
Because of the forest battle, a subtle fear has entered Tasmanian
public life; it stifles dissent and is conducive to the abuse of
power. To question or to comment is to invite the possibility of
ostracism and unemployment.
The reality, relentlessly denied with lies, is that logging old growth
brings neither wealth nor jobs to impoverished rural communities. Most
wealth made out of woodchips flows out of the state; less than 15% of
Gunns' profits stay in Tasmania, which remains the poorest Australian
state. Contrary to the government's claim that 10,000 jobs depend on
old-growth logging, John Gay, Gunns' managing director, recently
admitted that only 480 jobs were at stake.
However, the giving away of such an extraordinary resource does
threaten Tasmania's broader economic prospects. Key industries in
which job growth is concentrated, such as tourism and fine foods and
wines, trade as much on the island's pristine image as they do on the
products they sell, and there is growing concern at the damage being
done to Tasmania's name by images of smouldering forest.
Since woodchipping began 32 years ago, Tasmanians have watched as one
extraordinary place after another has been sacrificed. Beautiful
places, holy places, lost not only to them, but for ever. They
overwhelmingly want the practice of old-growth logging ended -
Wilderness Society polls show that 69% of Tasmanians are opposed to
the practice.
But with both major political parties in Tasmania as one in their
rigid support of Gunns and old-growth logging, Tasmanians cannot stop
this coalition of greed and power from within their island. Change can
only be brought about by the Australian government, and it will only
act when the issue becomes one of inescapable national shame.
Of course it can be argued that the destruction of one more unique
piece of our natural world, while regrettable, is small change next to
the horror of Madrid, or the tragedy of Iraq. But in the lineaments of
the struggle in a distant island, it is possible to see a larger
battle, the same battle the world over - that between truth and
power.
Günter Grass, writing of Tasmania's forests, has described their
destruction as an aspect of the same attitude that led to Nazi book-
burnings. Could it be that, when all our skies appear to be darkening,
the great forests of Tasmania are a symbol of hope for us all?