Chipping away the forest's future

Wednesday, October 19, 1994 - 10:00

Chipping away the forest's future

By Zanny Begg

Timber giant Boral's export woodchipping licence was renewed on October 11. The licence allows Boral to export a further 500,000 tonnes of woodchips from native forests in NSW.

Following earlier controversy, Boral was operating on an interim three-month licence pending advice from the federal environment minister, John Faulkner. The decision by resources minister David Beddall to renew the licence has angered conservationists, who feel woodchipping should be phased out.

Kevin Parker, national campaigns coordinator for the Wilderness Society, is concerned about how little information the public was given about the licence. "There is something really funny going on", he told Green Left Weekly.

"Beddall's office is being really secretive. The licence has been granted but the public has not been informed about which forests will be affected, which guidelines are being followed or the nature of the licence. Five hundred thousand tonnes of forest are being trashed, and we aren't being informed about it."

No information had been made public about the licence although Parker had received a guarantee from Beddall's office that information would be made available.

Eleven thousand people have signed a petition against woodchipping, and several people have been on hunger strikes across NSW in an attempt to save the forests.

"The ALP's environmental credentials are in tatters", said Parker. "We've had the decision on mining at the ALP National Conference, we have had the Hinchinbrook development in Queensland, and we now have a 500,000 tonne licence coming out of our native forests in NSW. We keep getting rhetoric, but they are not acting on it. Ripples of anger are going through the entire conservation movement."

Environmental reports by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and an independent report by the NSW Department of Conservation and Land Management point out that the areas within Boral's licence application are of high conservation value and worth preserving. Wild Cattle Creek state forest may be logged under the new licence, an area renowned for its 1000-year-old trees and koala population.

In the next seven weeks, nine more woodchip licences are coming up for review.