Wilderness Society Voluntteers have spent the past week hanging lights and tinsel from the upper branches of the tree in the valley of the Styx River, about 100 kilometres north of Hobart. The tree is a "beacon of hope" for Tasmania's threatened forests, said Greens Senator Bob Brown, who made his name in the 1980s as a wilderness campaigner.
"It is scandalous that such a beautiful tree, between 300 and 500 years old, will not be here next Christmas because the whole valley will be razed from end to end," Senator Brown said.
"What makes it worse, more than 90 per cent of the wood will go out as woochips, while the rainforest species that are left will be bulldozed and firebombed to enable plantations to go in." Tasmanla is a stronghold of tall, old-growth Eucalyptus regnans, the tallest hardwood trees in the world, and the tallest trees in the southern hemisphere. The forests are home to native wildlife including owls, possums, gliders, bats, hawks, eagles and cockatoos.
The world's previous tallest Christmas tree was a 67-metre specimen that had been cut down and decorated in Seattle, Washington, the United States, in 1950. This year's tallest Christmas tree is in Grace, Washington, and is less than half the Tasmanian specimen at 37 metres.
The Tasmanian tree will be lit until Christmas Eve, with free tours
to the area organised by the Wilderness Society from Hobart.