Click here to view the report. 

Tasmania’s Advocate editorial’s fundamental premise that logging of the Que River rainforest in the Tarkine is ‘not controversial’ is illiterate. The Macquarie Dictionary definition of controversial is that a matter is disputatious or debatable. A reasonable person, whatever side taken, would not deny that the logging is controversial.

In the editorial of Wednesday 6 February, the editor complains that most of the people arrested are from outside the region: this old complaint would have seen the Franklin River flooded. It is also a rebuff to other Tasmanians or Australians going into the Advocate’s region. There is no follow-up logic that Brittons should be selling the Tarkine-derived timber locally, but not exporting it to the same places the defenders come from.

The editor’s claim that Bob Brown Foundation opposes ‘any and all economic activity’ in the Tarkine would do well in the People’s Daily. The Advocate front-paged our initial call for World Heritage nomination for the Tarkine, double-page spread out Tarkine Trails guide for visitors and has covered the many BBF events which have drawn hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors to the region. Witness BBF’s current Tarkine-advocating art display at Hobart’s Long Gallery. The Advocate has also run our lengthy effort to establish the Trans Tarkine Track, a $20 million tourism venture.

The editorial lambasts the idea that felling the rainforest trees is ‘somehow against the climate’. Not ‘somehow’ but obviously. Razing such trees (see the pictures of the logging in progress) is razing natural carbon banks, with only a fraction of the carbon ending in whatever decorative use in Hobart they are destined to fulfil.

‘Yet the fact is this could not be a better example of sustainable forest practices.’ Sustainable economics, according to the Macquarie Dictionary, is ‘an economic system that can remain in place over an indefinite period without causing any adverse effects on the environment’. The Advocate claim fails this test.

‘... just 60 trees set to be logged out of an estimated 25,000.’ Sustainable Timbers Tasmania says 100. After they all sit down and sort out that discrepancy, they might again look at the photos showing this destruction involves many more trees. And where has logger Shawn Britton or the radical Advocate editor been over recent decades as both environmentalists and forest experts have railed against Sus. Timbers Tasmania incinerating millions of tonnes of rainforest wood as an unwanted byproduct of eucalypt clearfelling? Their silence was their consent.

‘It will also, as has been long-standing practice, be regenerated through the planting of more native trees.’ Really? Let’s have the Advocate show its readers this longstanding practice of replanting trees in so-called selective rainforest logging coupes.

‘Most importantly, conservation groups signed off on the coupe being made available for selective special timber harvesting under the Tasmanian Forest Agreement.’ BBF didn’t and the editor knows it.

In its spray, the Advocate even has a go at the Liberals. Let’s hope they sort themselves out.

‘Claims by the professional protesters of forests "being trashed" are utter rubbish.’ This tub-thumper final claim is that the rainforest trees which have been growing for centuries in the Tarkine and have now been chainsawed down, had their branches removed, and are on their way to be decorative timber on the ceiling of a secret Hobart building, were not ‘trashed’. Just as the the Sun will not come up in the morning, and the Dali Lama is not a Buddhist, and the Advocate editorial is not riddled with mistakes.

Bob Brown

2018-2019 Annual Review coming soon. Subscribe to our email updates to be the first to be notified of its release. Sign-up here.

Gautam Adani seems set to get the final go-ahead for his coal mine in Queensland though Prime Minister Scott Morrison, heeding advice that the word ‘Adani’ was poison, never used it during the election campaign.

Morrison’s performance was as impressive as Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray’s in 1982. Gray barely mentioned the Gordon-below-Franklin dam in winning the state election but quickly ordered the bulldozers into the Franklin River valley.

Post-election Morrison wants to burn for us, in particular, more coal, oil, and gas. He also wants to log and burn more Australian forests which would otherwise be absorbing carbon. His ambitions face opposition.

His post-election gloat ignores the climate emergency, already affecting Australia, which will catch up with him and his government in the years ahead.

While Canavan ignores the emergency (The Australian, 6 June) I am working with many others to head it off and that includes opposing Gautam Adani’s coal mine while Canavan prepares to subsidise it.

Media release from Magic Dirt:

"The environment and the preservation of the natural world has always been something Magic Dirt have felt very strongly about. Now more than ever, with the unmistakeable and frightening symptoms of climate change and global warming affecting our everyday lives, the band want to come out with a clear, decisive statement.

We’ve had a long relationship with Bob Brown and we want to do something to help his amazing conservation work so we are proud to put on our first club show back in Melbourne as a benefit show for the Bob Brown Foundation. We especially want to support his latest campaign, the Stop Adani Convoy, which is shaping up to be Australia’s biggest ever environmental protest. We’ve curated a great line up featuring a whole host of awesome local bands.

The show is happening on April 24th at The Curtin in Melbourne with a sister show happening on May 4th at the Republic Bar in Hobart, as a nod to Bob’s home state of Tasmania."

Tickets are on sale now! Just click on the links below or go to www.johncurtinhotel.com or www.republicbar.com

Please read this ABC article and send it to your friends. After decades of campaigning by thousands of environmentally committed People against logging, mining, dams, highways and real estate carve-ups, nationals parks in every state and territory are now being thrown to the wolves of profit.

The price includes loss of wildness, intrusion by helicopter (servicing and client delivery) noise, light pollution and wildlife disruption. The men profiting from this public loss NEVER lifted a finger to protect these areas and, in many cases, actively opposed conservationists who spent years of their lives freely working to save them as national parks.

Please support the folk in your state or territory now gearing up to protect wild and beautiful places and wildlife from this insidious money-driven new threat.

- Bob Brown

Read the full article here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-03/queensland-tourism-perceived-conflict-of-interest-managed/10851100

Read Bob's full story in The Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/25/beautiful-and-tragic-the-saga-of-wukalina?CMP=share_btn_link&fbclid=IwAR3SEFUwFm_c5oorC1dsBwyPspuetQhcPLhPI69_dGbAHu9wSKHKdkJNXTk

Our community gathering with Bob Brown in the Belfast Coastal Reserve yesterday, from the air.
Too precious to be turned into a commercial racehorse training track.
The Tarerer whale looking spectacular. 
This is the site where upwards of 800 Aboriginal people would gather, pre-colonisation, when a whale would beach.
Come on Labor, come on Liberal, come on independents, it’s time to commit and do the right thing. 
Do not change the planning laws. 
Stand with the community on the right side of history and with what is legal. 
It’s also the lore of the land.
We shall not be moved. 
We will never allow it on our Public Commons.

Thanks to Colleen Hughson @First Ladies Productions for filming the celebration and editing of the video footage.
Thanks also to Robin Maguire for kindly supplying action footage