Gunns Limited: Australia's Biggest Destroyer of Native Forests
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Gunns
Gunns is the biggest native-forest logging company in Australia and the biggest hardwood-chip company in the world.
Gunns receives the overwhelming majority of logs destined for sawmills and woodchip mills from Tasmania. It owns all four export-woodchip mills in Tasmania. It exports more woodchips from Tasmania than are exported from all mainland states combined. Gunns exports nearly four million tonnes of native-forest woodchips each year.
Gunns also has plans to build a massive native-forest fed, polluting pulp mill in northern Tasmania. This mill will be 80% based on native forests at start-up, and will destroy iconic forests in the Great Western Tiers, North East Highlands, Ben Lomond, Blue Tier and the Eastern Tiers.
The vast majority of the logging operations on public land in Tasmania consist of clearfelling and burning.
Gunns owns over two thirds of the eucalypt sawmilling industry in Tasmania, and two major eucalypt veneer mills.
Gunns has also cleared many thousands of hectares of native forest, including rainforest, on its private land. After these forests are chipped, the land is converted to plantations.
Gunns uses 1080 poison on private land to kill wallabies and possums that browse on the seedlings established in place of the cleared forests. The poisoned carrots also kill other wildlife (‘non-target’ species) such as bettongs, quolls and owls.
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Woodchipping
Gunns derives most of its profits from export woodchipping. Export woodchipping accounts for over 90% of the oldgrowth logs extracted from logged forests on public land.
Gunns owns two woodchip mills at Bell Bay (north of Launceston), one at Hampshire (south of Burnie), and one at Triabunna (East Coast). The Hampshire mill generates the woodchips that are piled on the wharf at Burnie. Many of these are rainforest woodchips (predominantly myrtle).
The woodchips are sold to paper-making companies in north Asia – mostly in Japan. Gunns’ customers include Mitsubishi, Nippon and Oji.
In 2000, woodchipping in Tasmania reached record levels, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. However, since 2001, (when Gunns became a virtual woodchip monopoly in Tasmania), Gunns has vetoed the publication of data on woodchipping (for ‘business-confidentiality’ reasons).
The pulp mill will not end the lunacy of export woodchipping. Woodchip exports will continue at unsustainable levels. Total chipping and pulping will be nearly seven million tonnes per annum (currently approximately 3.5 million tonnes per annum).
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Sawmilling and veneer
According to Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, it is Gunns’ demand for sawlogs and veneer-logs that drives new roads and logging into previously untouched valleys. This is destroying wilderness and oldgrowth forests in famous areas such as the South-West wilderness (Weld, Picton, Huon, Florentine, Upper Derwent); the Styx Valley of the Giants; the Great Western Tiers; the Tarkine; the North-East Highlands; and proposed extensions to the Ben Lomond National Park.
These logs are transported to sawmills at Western Junction (near Launceston), Austins Ferry (north of Hobart) and Smithton.
Approximately 70% of all logs transported to sawmills are eventually woodchipped – as ‘sawmill residues’.
Gunns also has two veneer mills – one at Somerset (near Burnie) and the other next door to the Boyer newsprint mill (near Hobart). Demand for solid, pale logs for veneer is destroying some of the last stands of oldgrowth Eucalyptus regnans – the tallest flowering plant on Earth. In 1996, less than 13% of original regnans was left as oldgrowth. That figure is probably now about 10%. Clearfelling operations are wiping out stands of E. regnans and replacing them with regeneration and plantations. Such operations are eroding the magnificent stands in the Styx and Florentine valleys – the world’s last strongholds of oldgrowth E. regnans.
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Logging steep slopes
Demand for big, straight trees for sawlogs and veneer is also driving logging operations on to steep slopes, especially in the Styx Valley and North-East Highlands. This is carried out using ‘cable logging’ – a means of clearing slopes that would otherwise be too steep to log.
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Illegal logging
In August 2002, Gunns was found to have illegally logged an area of private forest near Middleton, south of Hobart. The Kingborough Council is investigating taking legal action against Gunns; the Huon council gave retrospective approval for the logging (which straddled the boundary of the Huon and Kingborough municipalities).
Gunns was also convicted and fined a record $50,000 for breaching the Forest Practices Code and causing major damage to a stream in a road-widening operation on the Tasman Peninsula in December 2001.
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Gunns’ private land
Gunns is Tasmania’s biggest private land-owner, with over 130,000 hectares. Most of this is located in the Surrey Hills block in north-west Tasmania (south of Burnie).
This 90,000-hectare tract has been largely cleared and converted to eucalypt plantations. Clearing operations are continuing, in both eucalypt forests and rainforest. The trees are fed into the Hampshire woodchip mill where they are chipped and then piled on the wharf at Burnie awaiting export.
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Other private land
Gunns is also a destroyer of native forests on other private land, by means of joint ventures or other commercial arrangements with owners of native forests. The resulting destruction of scenery, use of 1080 poison (with impacts both on native wildlife and domestic pets), use of herbicides, and adverse impacts on water supplies have enraged local landowners and residents all over Tasmania.
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Board members
Some of the members of Gunns’ board have very controversial backgrounds in relation to dealings with the environment, environmentalists or issues around environmentalists, including:
Robin Gray
Former Tasmanian premier, Gray attempted to dam the Franklin, log the Lemonthyme forest and other areas now in the World Heritage Area, and build the Wesley Vale pulpmill. He was severely criticised by the Carter Royal Commission, which investigated the 1989 parliamentary bribery scandal.
David McQuestin
McQuestin was charged and pleaded guilty to breaches of the Tasmanian Companies Code in relation to the 1989 parliamentary bribery affair. The conviction and sentence imposed by the Magistrate were quashed on appeal, although McQuestin was also criticised by the Royal Commission investigating the scandal. David McQuestin is still on the board of Gunns, making him one of the longest serving directors of a major company in Australia.
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For more information, please contact:
Paul Oosting
Pulp Mill Campaigner
Workphone: (03) 63 31 74 88
Mobile: 0409 963 734
Created: 22 Feb 2003 | Last updated: 02 May 2007
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