The Age (letter) 9/6/97
Jill Redwood (5/6) persists with her wild unsubstantiable claims -- facts shouldn't be allowed to spoil a sensational story.
The woodchip price she cited, of 20 cents a tonne, is for royalties only. That is just a part of the charge of which the minimum rate is $5. 1 suspect Ms Redwood of trying to mislead the public on this issue. Woodchips come from otherwise unusable harvesting residues, with $70 million worth still burnt in Victoria each year. Just as inaccurate are her tiger quoll and sooty owl assertions, when 200 years of logging has not made extinct a single species of fauna or flora - as 40 public inquiries have concluded.
With much of Daintree and all of tall forests on Fraser Island, World Heritage areas, both logged for over 100 years - as have parts or all of most national parks - all noted for their "high conservation values", why is Ms Redwood spreading such misinformation?
The tragedy for Australia is that media acceptance of sensational outbursts such as these, about management of our forests, without regard for easily discernible, facts, has lost us at least $15 billion investment.
Even more billions of dollars that could have generated 70,000 direct and indirectly dependent jobs, $5 billion of residues burnt (denying $500 million to states' revenues) plus the opportunity to eliminate a $3 billion annual import bill and trebling of exports have been passed up.
All without a single provable benefit for our forests and their inhabitants.