BY PETER DEERSON
MELBOURNE — If you aren't aware of the continuing violence being meted out to anti-logging protesters in the East Gippsland forests, don't be too embarrassed — it's been easy enough to miss — one or two brief mentions hidden deep in the Age.
The Errinundra forests in East Gippsland, near the NSW border, are by far the largest areas of pristine rainforest in Victoria. Cool and warm temperate rainforests merge here, creating ecosystems that are found nowhere else. Botanist David Bellamy once commented that if there was one area of temperate rainforest he could save, this would be it.
Some parts of the forest are already protected in national parks. As Parks Victoria's own Explorer's Guide notes, the park has "some of the oldest vegetation in the state. Patches of rainforest are of a kind found only in East Gippsland ... Errinundra Plateau also has remnants of some of the world's best mixed forest — emergent eucalypts over a dense understorey of rainforest."
Substantial areas are not protected, however, including the spectacular old-growth mountain areas in the region of the Goolengook River. In the early '90s, against strong environmental opposition, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) and the logging industry identified a number of areas of rainforest as coupes available for clear-felling.
Before the destruction could begin, however, a group of determined activists set up a blockade on the logging road into the forest. The last time the blockade was successfully busted up was World Environment Day (June 5) 1997. It survived an onslaught by 40 logging industry thugs in February 2000, despite serious injuries and major destruction of activists' equipment — some of those loggers charged are to face court shortly.
Now the DNRE and the loggers have again declared war on the activists, and the forest. On March 5 a force of 50 police and DNRE officers smashed the fort and arrested a number of people, violently in many cases. They then erected steel barriers well down the road to ensure no further vehicles of any kind could proceed without permits. They created 25 kilometre exclusion zones, and blocked all possible access points to everything but the logging crews, which have since been working flat out to clear the coupes.
The whole area continues to swarm with police and DNRE officers, who are using sniffer dogs and infrared triangulation equipment to locate and arrest anyone who dares to enter the forest. Despite this, further courageous Gandhian-style attempts have been made by protesters to stop the loggers, and more arrests continue, accompanied by more violence against people and property.
The central issues in this dispute — who has rights over land and why, and what measures are acceptable by public authorities to enforce the exploitation of land — are relevant all over the world.
So who owns the forests? Does anybody? Perhaps the best claim for ownership goes to the Indigenous people — and tribal elders of the Errinundra forests are vocal in their outrage at the present destruction. But it's quixotic to identify the remnants of the disbanded tribes as "owners". The area is classed as state forest, and these lands should be managed for the general good — this is a situation of stewardship.
The timing of the well-planned attack on the blockade is particularly disturbing. Premier Steve Bracks' state government has just admitted gross errors in the DNRE estimates of sustainable areas for timber logging, and Bracks has agreed to reduce logging by 40% overall. Conservation minister Sherryl Garbutt's authorisation of the present onslaught appears to be an attempt to give a sop logging contractors, woodchip companies and the forest union, angry about the proposed reduction.
If the anti-logging activists attempting to protect Errinundra were involved in similar protests against the devastation of rainforests in Brazil or Indonesia, they would have been given the respect and admiration that they undoubtedly deserve, for daring to stand up to powerful vested interests.
The activists' beliefs about the importance of the forests are shared by growing numbers "mainstream" groups and individuals — from environmental scientists (including those within the DNRE) to the Australian Greens and even some within the forestry industry. A recent survey indicated that 80% of Australians believed that old-growth forests should not be logged.
It is frightening that the processes of ordinary democracy have been abrogated in these attacks — frightening not simply because of the continued demonstration of contempt for the public by powerful corporate interests (something we're all familiar with), but for the readiness of the government to use violence callously in support of these corporate ends.
From Green Left Weekly, April 10, 2002.
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