Fw: CLIMATE/FORESTS ALERT: Protest Australia's Ancient Forest Logging and Climate Change Eco-Hypocrisy

[Guest guest]

ACTION ALERT PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

 

Protest Australia's Ancient Forest Logging and Climate Change

Eco-Hypocrisy

 

By Climate Ark & Forests.org, projects of Ecological Internet

http://www.climateark.org/ and http://forests.org/

August 25, 2007

 

TAKE ACTION

Dramatic efforts required to stop the expansion of Tasmanian

old-growth forest logging by construction of a massive new paper

pulp mill by Gunns Ltd

http://www.climateark.org/action/alert.asp?id=tasmania

 

Tasmania, Australia's woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd. is poised to

be granted fast track approval by the Tasmanian government to

build a massive chemical pulp mill in northern Tasmania. This

forest-hungry pulp mill will be a disaster for Australia's

ancient forests, climate, wildlife and future. If built, the

US$1.4 billion project would need four million tonnes of logs a

year. It would double Gunns' current rate of clearcutting in

Tasmania's native forests. It will also dump thousands of tonnes

of poisonous effluent into Bass Strait every day, threatening

marine life, tourism and the fishing industry. For way too long

Tasmania's ancient forests - some containing massive eucalyptus

trees - have been clearcut to produce paper pulp, mostly for the

Japanese market... Continued markets for paper pulp from ancient

forest liquidation depend upon this disastrous pulp mill being

forced through the Australian legal system... the impact of this

massive pulp mill on Tasmania's ancient native forests, much

less regional and global climate, have not been considered.

Additionally Minister Turnbull has acknowledged there is

insufficient data available to assess the impacts of 64,000

tonnes a day of poisonous waste being released into Bass

Strait... (the) Gunns had already signed a contract with

construction firm John Holland to start building the pulp mill

" in the first week of September " ... At a time when Australia's

federal government is proposing funding ancient forest

protection and conservation internationally as a measure to a

combat climate change, it is hypocritical and repulsive that

Australia continues industrially clearing its own native

forests. Australia's ancient forests will still be logged, even

clearcut, for throw away consumer products; even as the

Australian government calls upon less developed and poor nations

to protect their forests for the climate.

 

TAKE ACTION NOW:

http://www.climateark.org/action/alert.asp?id=tasmania

 

DISCUSS ALERT:

http://www.climateark.org/blog/2007/08/protest_australias_ancient_for.asp