Paradise lost - with napalm
In the UK, The Guardian is reporting Paradise lost - with napalm.
To Australia’s shame, loggers are being allowed to destroy Tasmania’s extraordinary primeval forest.
Rainforest is being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. The world’s tallest hardwood trees, eucalyptus regnans, are being reduced to mud and ash. And the monocultural plantations that replace the old growths soak up so much groundwater that rivers are drying up.
Compound 1080, a lethal poison, is laid to kill off native animals that might graze plantation seedlings. In the resulting slaughter, wallabies, kangaroos, possums, and protected species such as wombats, bettongs and potoroos, die in slow agony.
The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish - the largest in the world - is in doubt because of logging. Scientists warn that numerous insect species still unrecorded are disappearing in the conflagration. Local people are finding their water contaminated with atrazine, a potent weedkiller.
Logging is an industry driven solely by greed. It prospers with government support and subsidies, and it is accelerating its rate of destruction, so that Tasmania is now the largest hardwood chip exporter in the world. And Gunns, the largest logging company in Australia with a monopoly in Tasmania, is making record profits selling these forests as woodchips, which are in turn made into paper and cardboard.
But the woodchippers are destroying not only Tasmania’s natural heritage, but also its parliament, its polity, its media and its society. The close relationship which leading Tasmanian politicians enjoy with Gunns, goes beyond sizeable donations to both major parties; it has given rise to a political culture of bullying, cronyism and threats, a culture that allowed the state’s electoral system, under a 1997 Liberal-Labour deal, to be altered to minimise Green representation.
It’s not mentioned in the full article but we know from personal experience that Gunns Limited has been doing the rounds trying to sell carbon credits. So far, no-one we deal with has accepted any from such an obviously tainted company. Carbon Planet’s NGACs are sourced from projects that expand native forests and we certainly have not, and would not touch any of Gunns’ products. — DS
Technorati Tags: business, climate change, disrupted nature, forests, global warming, Gunns Limited, politics, Tasmania
