Forests NSW office occupation - "One day match - SEFR vs. Forests NSW"

As part of the ‘Native Forest Logging Summer Slam –Its Just Not Cricket’ campaign, South East Forest Rescue is occupying the regional office of Forests NSW in Batemans Bay today for a ‘one dayer’. Activists have declared the building a crime scene and erected a banner identifying Forests NSW as ‘Carbon Criminals’ to highlight the link between deforestation and climate change. Activists today occupied the office of Forests NSW in Bateman's Bay and hung a sign labelling them "Climate Criminals" from the roof. The action occured on the eighth day of the anti-woodchip 'summer slam'. The campaign condemns native forest logging in South East NSW and Victoria in this, the International Year of Forests. Last week several protesters were arrested in the process of blocking logging trucks from entering the woodchip mill at Eden.
Related: Protest at Woodchip mill

Police moved protesters on today without arrest and protesters continued to play cricket outside the Forests NSW office.

The activists have challenged Forests NSW to provide them with proof of any native forest compartments on the south coast being logged according to the law. They are also demanding FNSW use truthful figures to calculate their real carbon debt.

“Forests NSW call their logging ‘carbon neutral’ but the science clearly demonstrates logging and burning forests leads to more emissions than the most intensive energy sources, including coal, oil and gas if real accounting was used, and they are losing money hand over fist.”

The South East Fibre Exports chipmill, owned by the multinational Japanese company Nippon Paper Group, made a $3.8 million dollar profit last financial year yet Forests NSW incurred a $4.1 million dollar loss before tax and a $232 million dollar loss after tax. The Productivity Commissions Native Forestry Report 2006 stated that Forests NSW did not achieve a return that exceeded the risk-free rate of return on assets, and is not operating on a commercially sustainable basis.

“The NSW native forest timber industry is in crisis and needs a complete overhaul,” said Ms Stone. “The shamelessly wasteful export woodchipping industry is on its last legs, with the collapse of overseas uncertified woodchip markets and the growth of plantation forests. The Commonwealth and State Governments have unequivocally failed our native forests. It is time to resolve the forestry crisis.”

Forest Stewardship Certification is the recognised international process for reaching consensus on an international forest convention. Japan and the EU are not accepting non-FSC certified woodchips. The uptake of FSC as the national standard for certification in Australia would create and maintain social, ecological and economic benefits for the global community.

Three of the main FSC criteria are sustainability, water supply and wood must be sourced from areas without social conflict. Unfortunately the rate of native forest logging has exceeded levels which can be permanently sustained, every water supply catchment in the south east, bar one, is being logged and there seems no end to the social conflict.

Further to meet the legislative requirements of the Federal Native Vegetation Framework, Forests NSW must work to reverse the long term decline in the quality and extent of Australia’s native vegetation cover. However the evidence that the reverse is true and that the native forest logging industry on the south coast is not ecologically sustainable is clear. This means that native forest logging on public land is a long way short of current FSC standards.

Conservationists say they are determined to protect public native forests and move all Australia’s public native forest wood production into sustainably managed plantations.

“The protection of our native forests is of urgent national and international importance in times of global climate chaos,” said Ms Stone, spokesperson of South East Forest Rescue. “We are sending a clear message to the State and Federal Governments that they must fulfil their national and international obligations as part of the International Year of the Forests, and protect our remaining carbon sinks.”

Press Release:
South East Forest Rescue
'Stoppin the Choppin'
PO Box 899 MORUYA NSW 2537

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