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The Ciancio blockade was provoked when Environment Minister Sherryl Garbutt sent in logging crews after denying a peace deal Was reached in meetings she convened last year with the stakeholders.
The deal was intended to avoid forest protests by deferring logging in ecologically sensitive areas and water catchments for the 2000-1 season. Ciancio, which borders endangered cool temperate rainforest, was one such area.
Crews removed their equipment yesterday as a spokeswoman for Ms Garbutt said it was impossible to continue logging after more than 200 millimetres of rain fell on the Otways since Saturday.
The spokeswoman did not say whether logging would resume this season. Logging in the Otways normally stops at the end of summer because of the landslip risk due to waterlogged soils and dirty run-off from freshly clearfelled sites.
Conservationists who stopped logging at Ciancio within a couple of days despite a series of arrests, said the rain was an easy short-term excuse for Ms Garbutt to ignore the real issues.
The Construction, Forestry Mining and Energy Union is seeking legal advice on whether it can sue conservationists for timber workers' lost wages.
with AAP
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