Gunns’ pulp mill: We’re not out of the woods yet

Five years ago this December, Gunns Limited announced plans to build a pulp mill fuelled by Tasmania's native forests in what is widely seen as the worst site possible, the Tamar Valley.

Carbon dense old-growth trees in the upper Florentine, coupe FO44A. This coupe was logged in the summer and autumn of 2009. Photo: Geoff Law

For five years, committed people across Tasmania have urged a more sustainable solution.

They have insisted that it is critically important to protect our dwindling natural world by providing habitat for our plants and animals, and safeguarding our climate. They know the ranks of world forest producers – like Scandinavia, New Zealand and parts of North America are using more sustainable methods. They want a bright future for their families with clean-green jobs in farming, tourism, forestry and fishing they can be proud of.

Sadly, Gunns has put its short-term interests above them. Litigation has made some people feel intimidated and bullied; others scared into silence. All the while, as jobs in our timber industry decrease.

Today, five years later, the destructive mill has yet to start consuming native forests, belching noxious air pollution into the Tamar Valley, or discharging effluent into the Bass Strait. This is a credit to most Tasmanians.

But we're not out of the woods yet. The threat is still hanging over Tasmania's forests, with the pulp mill site cleared and ready for action. 

Beautiful areas like the Tarkine and the Weld Valley are being felled today by Gunns. Approval of the mill will give Gunns a license to destroy even more precious native forest.  In so doing, huge amounts of carbon will be released, further damaging our vulnerable climate at the worst possible time.

In late August, Wilderness Society campaigners met with Gunns. We made it clear to Gunns that there are four vital steps they need to take to resolve this situation in the way that’s best for Tasmania’s workers, wildlife and climate:

• Stop the current polluting pulp mill proposa;
• Quit logging Tasmania’s high conservation value forests;
• Abandon punishing legal action against people who have had the courage to speak out about Gunns’ environmentally destructive practices; and
  
• Consider the more constructive solutions available, like plantation-based projects that don’t use polluting processes and reforms to how plantations are managed.

Potential investors such as Swedish pulp company Södra have made it clear that Gunns’ proposed mill is second rate.  Södra have publicly stated they are only willing to finance the mill if it uses plantation trees, which are sustainably managed, not native forests. They’ll only accept a credible accreditation process through the globally-recognised Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. And they aren’t interested in Gunns’ old-fashioned chlorine bleaching processes, but prefer world's best practice — totally chlorine-free technology.

The Wilderness Society is determined to find a win-win solution to this long-running struggle.  Native forests can be protected, timber workers can be looked after and the industry can make the transition into an internationally competitive, plantation-based model that all Tasmanians can be proud of.  

We’re determined to make Gunns see sense.  Surely Gunns and their investors do not need another five years to accept that Australians won’t tolerate a ‘worst practice’ pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.

Paul Oosting
Pulp mill and corporate campaigner
The Wilderness Society

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• Watch the ABC's '7:30 Report' on Tasmania's carbon storing forests >>