Boycott Woodchipping Campaign
Boral Ltd Corporate Profile
Technical changes subsequent to 1945 including increased tractor logging and chainsaw use, together with the post-war housing boom, led to a rapid expansion of logging in Australia. Heavy machinery and no environmental guidelines led to severe impacts on soil and water quality. By the 1960s the timber industry's failure to manage the sawlog resource had begun to cause concern, but there were no real changes. Towards the end of the decade an ominous development occurred. In order to establish regeneration at an affordable cost, the practice of "clearfalling" for export pulpwood was introduced. The rationale for this intensification of destruction was that it maintained affordable sawlog supplies due to the easy regeneration practices of clearfell and burn. Export woodchipping was born 33
The 1970s was a decade of virtually unregulated clearfelling for export woodchips, which witnessed the wholesale destruction of entire areas. Today, large areas of recognised high conservation value forests still remain inadequately protected, such as those listed on the Federal Register of the National Estate.
Years after the advent of woodchipping, the industry finally produced an Environmental Impact Statement on its operations. The "EIS On Tasmanian Woodchip Exports Beyond 1988 , compiled by the woodchip industry, including Forest Resources, was found to be deficient by environment groups:
"The Tasmanian Woodchip EIS should be expected to provide all the information necessary to make decisions on the future course of the export woodchip industry and assess the impact of such on the environment. Unfortunately it fails to do so."34
This view was echoed by the Australian Heritage Commission:
"No information from any environmental monitoring programs [has] been provided for the reader to make their own assessment of such impacts on the environment."35
The Forest Practices Code was introduced in Tasmania in the late 'eighties as an attempt by government and industry to place some constraints on environmental damage caused by logging operations. Unfortunately, much of the Code is voluntary, and certain breaches are not subject to prosecution. This is the case with maintenance of "visual management areas". Boral has not always fully implemented visual management prescriptions, clearfelling native forests for plantation establishment in highly visible areas. The most blatant disregard of the FPC is to be found in the north east of the state. Billycock Hill, situated adjacent to the north east's main tourist route, has been clearfelled down to the road, and in the eyes of one observer "looks like a giant blackboard in the landscape". Billycock Hill is one of several highly visible clearfell coupes visible to tourists from the road.36
Boral's logging activities in Tasmania are not easily monitored. Located mainly on private land and usually behind locked gates, access is restricted. Timber Harvest Plans are virtually unavailable, and requests for copies are sometimes denied. Furthermore, it is even more difficult to apply the Forest Practices Code on private land than in State Forests. Lake Ina is a large area of high elevation Eucalyptus delegatensis forest situated adjacent to the Central Plateau World Heritage Area. It is an area of outstanding high conservation value which remained listed as an area of conservation priority throughout the infamous Commonwealth/State process that led to the "deferred forest areas", when it was returned to the industry. Due to the high altitude of the forest, it does not regenerate easily after logging. Forest Resources has extracted significant volumes of pulpwood from the region.38
In order to continue rates of logging that in our opinion were already unsustainable, the industry began to expand into areas that were previously inaccessible or economically unfeasible due to their steep nature. This was made possible through the practice of cable logging, a system that uses a series of cables connected to one central machine to drag logs upslope for loading.
Cable logging has become a blight on the landscape. From 1980 to 1990 cable logging machines in Tasmania increased from four to nineteen.39 Huge areas were - and continue to be - devastated by these machines.
By 1989 the conservation movement had become aware of the mounting destruction, and became involved in attempts to control cable logging, via the media and through the Forests and Forest Industry Council (created as a result the Green Independents gaining balance of power). Eventually, some controls on cable logging in steep country were tacked on to the state's Draft Forest Practices Code, depending on the erodibility of sites. While the environment groups urged that cable logging on stable sites should not occur over 50% (26°) this was watered down to 70% (38°) by the Forest Task Force on Steep Country Logging.40
Cable logging on behalf of Boral continues throughout the state and include the Scamander, Lake River and Rattler Range areas. The Rattler Range, located adjacent to the Mt Victoria Forest Reserve south east of Ringarooma in the north east of the state, has been subjected to particularly intensive cable logging operations.38
Boral's sawmilling operations on public land are sourced from old growth forests in both northern and southern Tasmania as well as wilderness adjacent to national parks and proposed extensions to the Western Tasmania World Heritage Area. These proposed extensions have been identified as having World Heritage values by the Australian Heritage Commission (December 1987), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (May 1989 and December 1990), and the Tasmanian Department of Parks, Wildlife and Heritage (June 1990).17
Logging operations designed to feed Boral's sawmill are a driving force for new roads and devastation in Tasmania's South West, especially in the Huon, Picton and Weld valleys. Conservationists have been fighting to protect these areas for the last 10 years and have been subjected to physical violence (including shots being fired at Australian Greens' leader Bob Brown) and the fire-bombing of conservationists' cars at the East Picton in 1992.17
Forestry Tasmania (now corporatised) claims that its logging operations are "sawlog driven." That is, the logging of these areas is occurring for the 10% of the trees that become sawn timber, rather than for the 90% for woodchip exports. Either way, for every cubic metre of sawn timber produced, ten times as much becomes woodchips.17
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