Here in the ancient Tasmanian forest, the world's tallest hardwood trees rise 250 feet from the valley floor. These are the Eucalyptus regnans—the king of the eucalyptus—and some have been growing for more than 400 years.

Now, many of the enormous trees in Australia's southernmost state are being clear-cut, turned into wood chips and shipped to Japan for cardboard. The logging of the old-growth trees has turned this valley, with its giant tree ferns and carpet of green moss, into a battleground in the fight to save the world's rain forests.

Tasmanian officials argue that the state is doing a good job of protecting its forests and that 40 percent of the state is set aside in preserves. That includes nearly 16,000 acres of old-growth E. regnans, enough to guarantee the species' survival, they say.

But environmentalists decry the use of old-growth hardwood to make paper products and call clear-cutting of the ancient forest on public land destructive and wasteful.

Environmentalists also question logging practices in Tasmania, including dropping napalm-like jelly from helicopters to incinerate timber left behind on the forest floor, and spreading poison carrots to kill native possums and wallabies that come to eat new growth in cleared areas.

"Everyone around the country is experiencing shock and horror and revulsion about what is happening to Tasmania's forests and wildlife," said Geoff Law of Tasmania's Wilderness Society, a leader of the campaign against logging the Styx Valley. "A public resource is being squandered, and the return to the public is minimal."

For the last five months, activists from four continents have been trying to save a stand of eucalyptus by living near the top of one of the tallest trees—a 277-foot colossus that is 400 years old.

In a campaign organized by Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society, as many as six protesters at a time occupy three platforms lashed to the tree 230 feet above ground. Dubbed the "Global Rescue Station," the camp is equipped with solar power, a satellite phone, laptop computers, and a month's worth of food. The activists reach the platforms by rope.

Forestry Tasmania, the state forestry agency, says it will avoid confrontation with the protesters and hopes they will eventually tire of living in a tree. Officials say the regnans remain targeted for logging.

"It is a production area," said Kim Creak, Forestry Tasmania's general manager of operations. "That in itself is a nice tree. But there are hundreds of trees like it... in reserves, in fact, more than required by international standards for preservation of the gene pool."

Tasmania, an island about the size of West Virginia, lies 150 miles south of mainland Australia. More than 20 percent of the state, endowed with heavy rainfall and stunning mountain scenery, is protected as a Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. To Creak, it would be irresponsible to lock up Tasmania's forests and put more pressure on developing countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, where out-of-control logging is devastating tropical rain forests. Tasmania, where the government can regulate logging and replanting, should contribute to the global supply of wood products, he says.

The Styx Valley protest, Creak charged, is motivated by efforts to influence upcoming elections.

"We always reckon peaceful protests are fine," Creak said. "You can go into the forest and sit in a treetop and protest until the cows come home. We think their message is wrong, and it's a bit of theater. They are presenting a very narrow picture to a gullible public."

Australia's environmental movement originated in Tasmania in the 1970s with an unsuccessful campaign to block construction of a dam.

Soon after, Tasmania became the first place in the world where Green Party candidates ran for office, eventually winning dozens of seats in Australia at the local, state and federal levels. But today, Tasmania's population of 500,000 remains polarized between supporters of the logging industry and environmentalists who want to preserve more wilderness.

Now Green Party leaders are trying to make a federal issue out of logging the Styx. In January, a national survey conducted by the Newspoll market research firm found that 85 percent of Australians favored government intervention to protect Tasmania's old-growth forests from wood chipping.

Sen. Bob Brown of Tasmania, the Green Party leader, contends that the state government is bankrolling the destruction of the forest by the private logging company Gunns Ltd.

"We grow the trees for 400 or 500 years and get less than 1 percent of the enterprise," Brown said. "The Tasmanian government is subsidizing the cutting of these forests. It's a tremendous waste of a magnificent resource."

Cartoon & Commentary
by JOHN JONIK 

Mindfully.org 10may04

That is, if HEMP were grown as extensively as it should...if prohibitions were removed in lands where it is insanely illegal...there could be more than enough fiber to supply all the cardboard "needs" imaginable.

• Hemp fibers are stronger than tree fiber. Therefore any hemp cardboard or paper can be recycled four times more.
  Hemp requires no pesticides, thus reducing pollution everywhere.

• Hemp requires no chlorine bleaching...this making the waste usable as compost...unlike bleached paper products which are toxic waste, producers of dioxin, one of the 12 worst industrial pollutants.

• Hemp can produce many spin-off industries...such as paper, cardboard, building paneling, soaps, foods, livestock feed, plastics (non toxic), insulation, fabrics, oils, fuel and so forth. No tree can match this usefulness.

• Hemp can, in some climates, produce up to four crops a year...while it takes some 400 years to produce a Tasmanian style Eucalyptus...and a thousand years to produce some Redwoods and Sequoias elsewhere.

• Hemp agriculture can save farmlands from sprawl by making them economically viable.

• Hemp would reduce "need" for oil...thus decreasing "need" to go to "war" to kill Iraqis, etc., for THEIR oil.

• Hemp can provide poor areas with a valuable crop.

• Hemp restores soils damaged by modern pesticide intensive etc farming techniques.

• Hemp needs very little water...unlike cotton (which also happens to be one of the top pesticide using crops).

• Logging workers MUST be educated about the alternative of hemp jobs...that will not poison or kill them or destroy forever parts of their and their children's own ecosystem.

Tasmanian eucalyptus trees are falling because we do not have a strong movement to implement hemp agriculture and products industries. Some on the left avoid the topic because they fear being painted as "pot heads" or "hippies" or whatnot. Ouch. For this truly pathetic excuse, we lose irreplaceable forests and CONTINUE to have ourselves poisoned and robbed by the petrochemical and resource thieving industries.

One thing Tasmanian activists might do is to reveal any links legislators and judges and other authorities may have with industries that compete with hemp...or that benefit by theft of public natural resources. This must include insurance firms (with investments in certain industries) and with banks and other investor groups.

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