Forty conservationists halt logging in East Gippsland

Victorian Central Highlands banner action, 20-1-13

As logging of spectacular native forest continues in East Gippsland, Victoria, forty conservationists have today staged a walk-in protest at one of the logging sites on Mount Jersey.

“It is a travesty that only last year these forests were identified as special habitat for endangered wildlife, yet today they are still being logged for woodchips”, said Victorian Forest Campaigner for the Wilderness Society, Amelia Young.

“As a result of logging for Japanese paper giant, Nippon Paper, there are now tree stumps eleven metres in circumference where magnificent trees very recently towered over the landscape here on Mount Jersey.”

Last week foresty Minister Peter Walsh announced some changes to forest exclusion zones.

“Minister Walsh’s public exclusion zones are in fact logging zones. They are about providing secrecy to a taxpayer funded logging industry that continues to turn Victoria’s magnificent forests into copy paper.”

The proposed changes seek to make it more difficult for the public to scrutinise VicForests’ tax-payer subsidised logging.

“Minister Walsh’s forest exclusion zones blatantly target volunteer conservationists who, after surveying logging on public land, have over the years exposed numerous logging breaches and instances of unlawful logging, including in the well-known Brown Mountain court case.”

“Today’s protest activity in far East Gippsland shows that volunteer conservationists won’t be deterred from defending Victoria’s publicly owned forest from woodchipping,” concluded Ms Young.