TAKING THE ACTION ONLINE - http://taann.com.au/take-action-now/
A new campaign targeting Ta Ann Tasmania and their ongoing use of Tasmanian high conservation value (HCV) forests launches today. Taan.com.au is a partnership between Markets for Change, Huon Valley Environment Centre and The Last Stand.
In a first for the ongoing campaign to protect Tasmania’s High Conservation Value forests the website initiates a cyber action directly to the Japanese customers of Ta Ann, asking them to stop buying the end product of Tasmanian forest destruction and to look behind the glossy veneer of spin by Ta Ann and their supplier Forestry Tasmania. The aim of the campaign is for Ta Ann to move into a truly eco-friendly wood supply that does not include HCV native forests through a rapid transition to FSC-certified plantation sources.
This online arm of the campaign will be accompanied by a flyer that will be letterboxed to homes in Tasmania making it clear that it is the wood supply agreements between Ta Ann and Forestry Tasmania that lie behind the ongoing logging of HCV forest areas supposed to be under a logging moratorium as of last year. This morning conservationists participated in a protest in a logging area in the Picton Valley, with Japanese banners, calling on Ta Ann’s customers to stop selling Tasmanian forest destruction. Online pictures will bring the customers to the clearfell.
Markets for Change, Corporate Liaison Peg Putt said, “Ta Ann can choose to be part of the solution or part of the problem when it comes to Tasmania’s natural forest of high conservation value. At the moment they are holding fast to unacceptable logging of irreplaceable forests of outstanding global value and then trying to green-wash the source of their wood supply. They point to the size and age of the individual logs they mill from those forests, as if that excuses where the wood comes from – it doesn’t.”
“Customers of Ta Ann promote their wood products as eco friendly, but this is not so for as long as they accept wood from these highly controversial sources, let alone when it is misrepresented as plantation and planted forest,” Said Ms Putt.
“The people of Tasmania are being misinformed about the role of Ta Ann in driving forest destruction and our leaflet drop aims to correct that misinformation. We are pleased that this can now directly refute Ta Ann’s renewed effort to portray themselves as innocent bystanders to the logging and destruction HCV forests they just happen to use for their product.” Said Jenny Weber of The Huon Valley Envrionment Centre.
“This morning, fifteen people walked in to an area in the Picton Valley where old growth forests are being destroyed for Ta Ann. Forestry Tasmania claims in official reports that this area is a key target for Ta Ann, yet this forest has ancient rainforest species and is within 2km of one of Tasmania’s most significant indigenous cultural sites,’ Jenny Weber said.
“We are bringing the community and Ta Ann’s Japanese customers straight to the clearfell and straight through the spin with this innovative new campaign, website and cyber action."
Photos of today's action can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/taann/sets/72157629109683605/
