An introduction.
Welcome to SOS (Save Our State), a web site coming to you from Southern Tasmania, Australia.
Tasmania is home to forests, which have changed little in tens of thousands of years. We are blessed with some of the world's cleanest air, the tallest flowering plants in the world (the Eucalyptus regnans), a native pine-tree species that lives for millennia (the Huon Pine), and some of the most amazing wildlife and wilderness anywhere in the world!
Unfortunately, like so many other places, we haven't had Governments to match the splendour of our majestic surroundings. Despite obvious alternatives, successive Tasmanian governments appear obsessed with squandering such natural heritage for short-term gain. They do this by selling our special forests to giant woodchip corporations, for the packaging and paper industry. They are also using some of the proceeds from the sale of a publicly owned telephone company to facilitate plantation forestry companies which clear-fell huge tracts of native forests to make way for single species timber plantations.
It’s as if these governments want our State turned into little more than an industrial forestry zone. This is happening against the clear wishes of most Tasmanians, who want something better for their special place, and who see more value in an intact environment and a strong sense of community.
Read on and, for the planet's sake, we know you will join us in trying to turn back this tide of environmental madness.
Please send a strong message to our state politicians, with the email links provided, and feel free to contact us with your thoughts and suggestions!
In 2000, the Tasmanian Government was given one of the clearest messages possible that the population were sick and tired of the “big, dumb and dirty” woodchipping industry, which has for so long given nothing but environmental devastation and economic poverty to Tasmania, not to mention massive job shedding in the timber industry.
This resounding anti-woodchipping message was delivered via the Government's own ill-fated “Tasmania Together” forums held around the State last year. Far from taking on board the people's verdict as he promised, the Premier has virtually buried the Tasmania Together process, presumably because it told him what he didn't want to hear, and hot on the heels of its finding, his deputy announced plans for the Southwood-Huon project.
What is the Southwood-Huon project?
Southwood is an “Integrated Timber Processing Centre” according to its proponent Forestry Tasmania. It is proposed for an area 12 kilometers to the West of a hamlet called Judbury in Southern Tasmania. It will cost 100 million dollars to be made investment ready and will process around 800,000 tonnes of timber annually, taken from adjacent native and old growth forests, and also from plantation timber currently being established on recently clearfelled areas.
Southwood, despite being called “A Timber Technopark” by its backers, has woodchipping as its core business. It’s another woodchip mill!!
Don't just take our word for it. Forestry Tasmania's own information says that 300,000 tonnes of timber from Southwood will be export woodchips, and a further 300,000 tonnes will be woodchipped and incinerated in a woodfired power station which will power the woodchip mill. In other words, 75% of the output of Southwood will be woodchips!
No wonder thinking people all over Tasmania are infuriated with this project.
We hope this web site will inform and empower you to help change the 1950s thinking of our so called leaders, who keep pushing industries like woodchipping at the expense of already established clean and clever alternatives.
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SOS
Plantation
Forestry: A brief history
Plantation Forestry: Howard’s illogical “answer” to global warming.
Last year's Climate Change conference in The Hague highlighted how Governments like ours have now resorted to “carbon trading” which is to say that instead of stopping land clearing and reducing fossil fuel dependence, they are now promoting tree plantations as “carbon sinks” as a way of meeting the already watered down greenhouse reduction targets set at the Kyoto Summit held in 1997.
In short, our Governments argue they don't need to cut fossil fuel emissions or land clearing (the 2 big greenhouse producers) because they're establishing massive plantations to “soak up” the carbon dioxide emissions from heavy industry and land clearing. The big fossil fuel and forest industries must be very supportive of such an argument!
The 2020 Vision Strategy: A Cheat’s Charter?
To promote “carbon trading” Governments have given us the document called “Plantations for Australia-The 2020 Vision” which is the blueprint for the massive campaign of plantation forestry now sweeping the nation.
The “2020 Vision” has its main goal of trebling of Australia's plantation area by the year 2020, to more than 3 million hectares, which means planting around 90,000 hectares per year. It is a joint initiative of three major forest industry associations, along with Commonwealth, State and territory governments.
The 2020 Vision: The Juggernaut Doctrine?
The partnerships in this “2020 Vision” strategy obviously mean business, because there's a very disturbing sentence in the “Summary” section at the very beginning of the document, which says;
“The (2020 Vision) strategy aims to remove legislative, technical, commercial and cultural impediments to plantation establishment”. Stanton R, Plantations for Australia- the 2020 vision. International Forestry Review 1999; 1 (3); 189-193.
Such a statement can only be read as meaning that nothing can stand in the way of this strategy, not even the people's rights, expressed through democratic institutions forming legislation on their behalf!
Weakness in the "2020 Vision" Plantation Argument
Closer examination of this plantation strategy reveals some important weaknesses, and inconsistencies.
A
Remedy Ignored.
It's
proven that only reductions in fossil fuel emissions and destructive land
clearing activities will begin to harness the greenhouse gas problem. Falling
short of addressing these twin causes will be seen by many as merely window
dressing.
Australian Governments are showing no leadership in fighting one of our Planet's most pressings problems, and appear to only have 2020 vision for seeing a way out of doing what's right!