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State of Emergency: Tasmania's Southern Forests
Tasmania's publicly owned ancient forests are still being destroyed by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns Ltd. This short film shows 6 months of non violent direct action in Tasmania's Southern Forests between November 07 and April 08.
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| Video information | |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Little Bear |
| Directed by | Little Bear |
| Contact | write the producer |
| Home page | more info |
| Produced | 2008/06/22 |
| Duration | 7 minutes 12 seconds |
Full description
Tasmania's Southern Forests contain some of Australia's most spectacularecological and cultural treasures. The world's tallest flowering plants, wild rivers, ancient rainforests, and the southernmost site of human habitation on the planet during the last ice age all exist within these forests.
Strong pressure from conservationists has resulted in significant areas being protected, notably the establishment and expansion of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in 1982 and 1989 respectively. Large tracts of the Southern Forests, however, remain under direct threat from logging, and, to a lesser extent, mining.
In 2006, a group of grassroots environmental activists representing forests and communities in Southern Tasmania joined together in recognition of the continuing threat to these ancient forests. Since this time, the Still Wild, Still Threatened (SWST) campaign for Tasmania's Southern Forests has garnered significant attention and dramatically raised the public profile of forests such as the Styx, Weld, and Upper Florentine.
Still Wild, Still Threatened represents communities and individuals in the Huon and Derwent Valley's, encompassing large rural areas and Tasmania's capital city, Hobart. The Huon Valley Environment Centre and Camp Florentine, organisations committed to public education, political and corporate lobbying, and frontline direct action, are the key drivers of SWST.
Iconic forests such as the Styx, Weld, Florentine, Picton, Middle Huon, Gordon, and Esperance are located adjacent to the World Heritage Area, sharing the same values and ecosystems as the protected area. This has been recognised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, The National Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, The World Heritage Commission, and numerous government scientists. Despite this recognition, wholesale clearfelling of these ancient forests continues, in order to service the Japanese woodchip market.
Other iconic forest areas such as those in the Arve, Kermandie, Little Denison, and Tyenna Valleys are also suffering the same fate. The destruction of these forests will double if construction is completed of Gunns Limited's Pulp Mill in Northern Tasmania. Gunns Ltd., headed up by CEO John Gay, is the monopoly woodchipper in Tasmania, and is responsible for subverting Tasmania's democracy, attempted bribery of politicians, wholesale forest destruction, and decimation of a once healthy industry.
Still Wild Still Threatened has supported a successful blockade of the Upper Florentine Valley, resulting in a moratorium which ended at last year's federal election. Since then, the blockade has been set up again and is going strong after almost 2 years. SWST has also supported direct action in the Weld, Styx, Gordon, Picton, Arve, Little Denison and Kermandie forests, as well as in Northern Tasmania and Hobart. As a result of this direct action forest defenders have been targeted by the government forest monopoly Forestry Tasmania, Tasmanian Police, and Gunns Ltd, with tactics such as suing, seeking injunctions against activists to prevent them from protesting, and spurious criminal charges.
This short film highlights some of the actions taken by Tasmanian forest defenders between Spring 07 and Autumn 08 against the continued decimation of Tasmania's world class forests. Forest actions in the Styx, Weld, Upper Florentine, Little Denison and Arve Valleys are documented here as well as a number of 'town actions' held in Hobart. These include a log truck lock on in the middle of Hobart which coincided with Malcolm Turnbull's approval of the pulp mill, a satirical 'birthday party' on Parliament Lawns which marked the 10th anniversary of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement along with 10 more years of old growth forest destruction, a woodchip funeral procession ending at Forestry Tasmania, and a cricket match outside Parliament House umpired by John Gay (CEO of Gunns) and battled out between climate criminals Paul Lennon (former premier of Tasmania), Evan Rolley (former head of Forestry Tasmania and more recently, the most powerful public servant in Tas until Lennon resigned) and Peter Garrett (Federal Minister for the Environment) amongst others and an all star team of Tasmania's old growth forests, including the Weld, Styx and Upper Florentine. State of Emergency also depicts Giant Garrett, Giant Wong and Giant Rudd's tour of Tasmania's southern forests as well the long running blockade in the Upper Florentine Valley.
For more information on the destruction of Tasmania's ancient forests and the campaign to save them, go to www.huon.org, www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened, www.coolforests.org, www.nativeforest.net.
