OUR FORESTS ARE NOT IN SAFE HANDS

Peter Campbell, The Age (letter - not published), 6/3/2000

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Sherryl Garbutt's claim (Age 6/3) that she has 'release a policy statement indicating new directions for sustainable forest management' is not substantiated by fact.  The unconscionable acts of recent violence by loggers against forest protestors in the Otways and East Gippsland clearly demonstrate that the Regional Forest Agreements deliver unbalanced and inappropriate outcomes.

Unfortunately, these so-called 'agreements' are really only bureaucratic instruments to sanction unregulated woodchipping, which is destroying our forests. Woodchipping is also responsible for job losses through automation of logging and loss of tourism potential; nobody wants to visit a logged forest.

Rather than embarking on the sham 'consultation process' for the latest two agreements, they should be scrapped as they have been in Queensland.  A royal commission is urgently needed to investigate the murky activities of both Government and industry involved in the continued destruction of native forest, which is both uneconomic and unsustainable.

There is no such thing as a sustainable timber industry based on native forest; the future lies in existing plantations and industries based on them.  The real challenge is to make plantations sustainable and environmentally sound.  The question is when, not if, this should happen.

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