Code Green demands exit from BenLomond

Code Green media statement August 25th 2011 10 members of environmental community group CODE GREEN have blockaded a logging coupe in East Ben Lomond in Tasmania’s northeast. Tasmania Police and Forestry Tasmania are on-site and have instated a 4.5 km radius exclusion zone. The protesters have been directed to leave the exclusion zone and nine members of the demonstration have complied. A protester is still suspended from a tree-sit thirty metres up a Black Peppermint Gum attached to three machines. He is willing to be arrested to highlight irreversible damage in what is already already agreed upon additions to the National Parks in Tasmania’s northeast.

The coupe designated as TY025E is in the 430,000ha highlighted for immediate protection in the IGA (Intergovernmental Agreement) of August 7, 2011 signed by the Federal and State governments. It is adjacent to the edge of the Ben Lomond National Park.

The peaceful nonviolent campaigners have locked up three machines in the coupe but are willing to release a machine in order to ensure a cleanup and hasty exit from the coupe. Upon completion of the cleanup and public declaration of an exit from the coupe by Forestry Tasmania, the rest of the machines will be released.

“The Tyne Valley should have been protected on March 15 of this year. Five months on and the bulldozers are still in this coupe clearing what has been identified by both the State and Federal Governments as being of high conservation value and earmarked for urgent protection,” said CODE GREEN spokesperson Ali Alishah.

“Tasmania is in limbo and the government needs to show true leadership and hasten the implementation of the protection of 572,000ha of Tasmania’s high conservation value native forests starting with an immediate end to all logging within 430,000ha as identified by the signatories to the Intergovernmental Agreement of August 7, 2011, and the signatories to the Statement of Principles Agreement of October 19, 2010,” said Mr. Alishah.

“CODE GREEN cannot tolerate logging on the border of a national park that should have ceased five months ago and will soon be declared illegal. We understand that it is Forestry Tasmania that is responsible for scheduling of coupes and not the contractors themselves and hence have agreed to free half the machines to allow a cleanup of the coupe to occur upon the public declaration by Forestry Tasmania of an exit from the coupe. After the cleanup is complete and the exit is underway we will release the rest of the machines,” said Mr. Alishah.