AUSTRALIA: Protesters charged after halting Marengo forest logging
© 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
August 16, 2001
Three people have been charged after a Police Rescue Squad removed an anti-logging protester who chained himself to an excavator in northern New South Wales.
About 20 protesters are at the site in the Marengo state forest.
Police say part of the arm of the excavator had to be removed to free the man from an array of chains and clamps holding him to the machinery.
The North East Forest Alliance says it is trying to stop logging of an old growth forest.
The Marengo forest is what is left of a larger forest partly dedicated to adjoining reserves including the Guy Fawkes National Park.
The rest was made available for logging in the North East Forests Agreement.
Its Hastings River mouse, a marsupial once thought to locally extinct, is being studied - with radio tracking collars on 20 of the small animals.
State Forests says the logging is not in the mouse's habitat.
It says the operation will resume once the protesters are out.
The forest is closed to the public.