Australians Organize Walks Against Woodchips
10/5/99
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Title: Australians Organize Walks Against Woodchips
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 5, 1999
SYDNEY, Australia, October 5, 1999 (ENS) - A series of walks across
Australia is being organized by community conservation groups to show
public opposition to the woodchipping of native forests.
Walks Against Woodchips are currently being held along the southeast
coast of Australia and are supported by many community conservation
and forest conservation groups. The message being broadcast is to
just say no to woodchipping.
The timber industry has rejected claims that the country's hardwood
forests are mainly logged for woodchips and sold only for cents.
The executive director of the Victorian Association of Forest
Industries, Graeme Gooding, said in February that woodchips play "a
contributory but not dominant role in the timber industry."
In 1997-98 in East Gippsland, one of the most contentious regions,
the ratio of saw-log sales to residual-wood sales was two to one.
Sales of saw log were 286,000 cubic metres compared to 145,000 cubic
metres for residual wood. In 1996-97, the ratio was a closer to 1.3
to 1.
The timber industry maintains that when an area was logged, trees and
parts of trees not suited to saw-log production are used for
woodchips rather than being burnt as waste.
But conservation activists say whole forests are being chipped. They
are demanding an immediate end to the export woodchipping of
Australia's high conservation value forests; an end to the clearance
of native forests for plantation establishment; and the transfer of
operations into Australia's existing and well-established plantation
estates.
The Boycott Woodchipping Campaign was formed in 1996 by a broad range
of Australia's environment groups campaigning to protect forests,
including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Conservation
Council of Western Australia, Environment Victoria, Friends of the
Earth, Native Forest Network, Nature Conservation Council of New
South Wales, Otway Ranges Environment Network, and The Wilderness
Society.
Walks for East Gippsland, South East New South Wales, and the New
South Wales Southern region will take place during the school
holidays from October 2 through 10. The walks will jointly end at
Eden's Daishowa chip mill.
The Sydney walk began from First Fleet Park, Circular Quay the
morning of October 2. The Victorian, East Gippsland leg started on
Monday. A Tasmanian walk is planned for January 2000.