I am writing this in our autumn, once Tasmania's most beautiful season. But the pure china-blue skies are now nicotine scummed, as the smoke from the burning of an old growth forest floats over Hobart in a dense pall and the city is lit by an eerie orange glow, an inescapable reminder that not far distant the total destruction of ancient forests—like no others in the world—is accelerating.
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland, a land whose great primeval forests astonished nineteenth century European explorers with their incomparable beauty, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is now being played out.
Recent calls emanating from Britain to boycott Tasmanian goods and tourism are not going to end old growth logging. But in an Australian election year, when the fate of Tasmania's forests is emerging as a major election issue, they form part of the growing chorus of international condemnation that demonstrates to Australians that these forests are not just a natural resource, but globally significant wild lands.
In Tasmania, rainforest unique in the world is being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. Forests of the tallest hardwood trees in the world, eucalyptus regnans, are being reduced to mud and ash.
The monocultural tree plantations with which old growth forests are replaced are soaking up so much groundwater that rivers are drying up. 1080 poison is laid to kill off native animals that threaten to graze the plantation seedlings. The indiscriminate slaughter that results sees not only possums, wallabies, and kangaroos die in slow agony, but other species—including wombats, bettongs, and potaroos—killed in large numbers in spite of being officially protected species, some of which are rare.
The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish—the largest in the world—is now in doubt because of logging. Scientists warn that numerous insect species still unrecorded are disappearing in the conflagration. Local communities discover their water supplies contaminated with atrazine run off.
This 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 woodchip exporter in the world.
Why is this happening? Because one company, a monopoly called Gunns, the largest logging company in Australia, is making record profits selling these forests as woodchips, which will in turn be made into paper and cardboard.
But the woodchippers greed now destroys not only Tamania’s globally significant natural heritage, but distorts its parliament, deforms its polity, cows its media, and stunts its society.
The extremely close personal relationship leading Tasmanian politicians enjoy with Gunns goes beyond the sizeable electoral donations given to both major parties, to a political sensibility that willingly altered the state's electoral system, under a Liberal-Labor deal in 1997, to minimise Green representation. It goes beyond the extensive network of corporate and government spin doctors; beyond the alternate buying and cowing of Tasmanian media, to a culture of bullying, cronyism and threats.
Because of the forest battle, a subtle fear has entered Tasmanian public life; it stifles dissent, avoids truth, 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 struggling, impoverished rural communities. Most wealth made out of woodchips flows out of the state: less than 15% of Gunns profits stay in Tasmania. Tasmania remains the poorest Australian state. Contrary to the government's routine claim that 10,000 jobs would be lost if old growth logging ends, John Gay, Gunns managing director, recently admitted only 480 Gunns jobs were at stake.
Yet the ongoing giving away of such an extraordinary public resource now threatens 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. There is growing concern in all these industries at the relentless damage being done to the Tasmania's name by images of smouldering forest coupes.
Since woodchipping began thirty-two years ago Tasmanians have watched as one more extraordinary place after another of their country has been sacrificed to the woodchippers' insatiable greed. Beautiful places, holy places, lost not only to them, but forever.
Tasmanians have lived the woodchippers' deceit all their lives and borne dumb witness to their great lie that delivers wealth to a handful elsewhere, poverty to many of them, and death to their future. They overwhelmingly want the practice of old growth logging ended, Wilderness Society polling showing that 69% of Tasmanians are opposed to the practice.
But with both major 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 in an ever more ubiquitous, bland world the destruction of one more unique piece of our natural world, while regrettable, is at times such as these 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, of that between truth and power.
Gunter Grass, writing of Tasmania's forests, has described their destruction as another aspect of the same attitude that led to bookburning by the Nazis. Could it be that in this strange time, when all our skies appear to be darkening, it is about recognising in the great forests of Tasmania a symbol of hope for us all?
This article was first published on The Guardian opinion pages on Wednesday, April 21.
The Guardian link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1197324,00.html
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think?
If you bounce,
tuffinlindsay@hotmail.com
Friday, April 23, 2004