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The state forest under Drovers Lookout on the edge of the Atherton Tablelands has been closed to logging for more than a decade, its rich canopy of rainforest trees bordering farmland and old logging tracks that link the forest to the small community of Herberton.
It is the heart of the wet tropics region in far north Queensland, where 100-yearold trees stand side by side with the saplings and vines of younger vegetation. In the surrounding district, the valleys and green rolling hills of dairy farms and fruit orchards defy the knowledge that, before the coming of Europeans, all this was rainforest.
About midnight on New Year's Eve, the forest under Drovers Lookout, known simply as Lot 194 on Plath Road, was allegedly plundered in what is believed to be one of the largest illegal logging operations in the wet tropics since it was World Heritage listed in 1988.
In February, a timber cutter from Ravenshoe, a small community to the west of Cairns on the Atherton Tablelands, was charged under Queensland's criminal code with stealing timber and the unlawful possession of heavy equipment. Brett Dempsey, 30, is due to reappear in May for committal proceedings, and may also face charges under the Forestry Act and the Wet Tropics Management Plan, with penalties for interfering with forest products ranging up to $225,000 or two years' imprisonment.
Although there have been demarcation disputes in the past over where the World Heritage forest begins and ends, the charges have horrified rangers who have worked in the region for years. Authorities have likened the alleged theft of the timber to tree poaching, with the Wet Tropics Management Authority expressing outrage that a decade after the campaign to protect the rainforest was fought and won, the trees have allegedly been felled with abandon.
Among the species allegedly felled were Queensland maple, silk wood, silky oak and black walnut - all valuable cabinet woods. Their total commercial value has been placed at more than $34,000. Of particular concern for forest rangers is that the alleged perpetrator was from within the timber industry, which during the past decade has had to work hard to restructure.
Ravenshoe and the small timber communities in the surrounding district were at the forefront of the bitter divisions that affected far north Queensland at the time of the forestry debate; it was in Ravenshoe where the then environment minister Graham Richardson was confronted by angry timber workers when he toured the area. Studies conducted at the time of World Heritage listing estimated 540 jobs would be lost from the industry once logging was banned, with the flow-on affecting another 500 jobs in the region.
Tor Hundloe, chair of the WTMA, was at the front line when the forestry debate raged. He is both saddened and angered by the charges. He believes most people now accept that World Heritage listing was for the best.
"The community was obviously divided as news records would show," he says. "Conservationists of course were in favour and some people in the tourism industry saw the opportunities for new eco-tourism. People in the larger cities, such as Cairns and Townsville, weren't overly perturbed but it was in the smaller communities where it was going to cause impact if there was not compensation." Hundloe, who is also the director of the Environment Management Centre at the University of Queensland, says it was decided early on that eco-tourism would provide the key. He recalls $75 million was set aside over five years towards the restructuring of the industry: "In a nutshell, our conclusions were that nature would be worth 10 times what logging was to the regional economy." The predictions have proved right, he says, with the rainforests of north Queensland bringing in $750 million a year in tourism dollars. With that in mind, any desecration of the wet tropics is not only a crime but a public relations disaster.
Russell Watkinson, executive director of the WTMA, says it takes at least 40 to 50 years for canopy cover to regenerate. Any smaller saplings damaged by falling timber may not survive and heavy rain in the wet season may cause extensive erosion to the remaining rainforest.
Mick Devery, principal policy officer for Queensland's Department of Natural Resources, says the department is examining whether further charges could be laid under state and commonwealth legislation.
"It's a comparative thing. We certainly do have much larger instances of forest products being destroyed with tree clearing and so on," he says. "But this charge is significant in the fact that it is listed rainforest, in a World Heritage area, where there is no harvesting of timber whatsoever."
The fear of rangers who routinely patrol the area is that the trust that has been built up with the timber community during the past decade has diminished. Laurence May, the ranger who first: made the allegations, says he was heartened to know that much of the information received during the inquiries came from the industry. Many timber workers were horrified by the charges, May says, and are fearful that the action will give everyone a bad name.
"There will be suspicion and besmirchment of those rainforest timbers.
Timber people know all about this," he says. "It is like an infection that
runs through the industry. No one is trusting anyone, so this has been
bad."
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