The Bob Brown Foundation is calling on the federal and all state and territory governments to end logging, clearing, and all other forms of native forest and woodland destruction as a proven way to curb Australia’s woeful greenhouse gas emissions.

“Protecting what’s left of this nation’s forests and woodlands is not only a fast-track to preventing the release of greenhouse gases, it protects a vital carbon store and builds resilience in our ecosystems. It can be done immediately,” Bob Brown said today.

“The wet eucalypt forests and rainforests of Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Western Australia hold as much or more carbon per hectare as the Amazon forests. These are among the most carbon-rich forests on Earth. They are also vital habitat for rare and endangered birds and animals at a time when loss of biodiversity is the twin peril with global warming which we humans have created for our beautiful planet. Action to save Australia’s forests and woodlands is instantly available: it simply means putting away the chainsaws and bringing in forest managers. We have more than enough plantations to meet our timber needs,” Brown said.

“The IPCC report is stark. We are at or over global warming tipping points. Now is not the time to give up the fight or give in to despair. We can make it less worse than it otherwise will be. It is time to adopt Antonio Gramski's advice, 'Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.' We are determined to end fossil fuel extraction and native forest logging and we won’t stop until we do," said Christine Milne.

“In the absence of government action, we call on all Australians to come to the aid of our forests and wildlife: action beats depression. We will see a lot more peaceful civil defence of the forests and woodlands if the clods in power continue to fail,” Brown said.

Bob Brown Foundation congratulates the Tasmanian Government on confirming that the rich Aboriginal heritage on the takayna / Tarkine coast, south of Sandy Cape, will be kept safe from future destruction by off road vehicles.

"The wider Tasmanian public will welcome this outcome. Most of all, saving this heritage is due to a long, defiant campaign by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. Their pride in country has won out," said Bob Brown.

“Premier Gutwein’s government should match the $10 million they are investing in ‘new and improved recreational driving opportunities across the West Coast,’ and give $10 million to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre to help manage and protect the takayna coast south of Sandy Cape. If the Government is going to compensate the off-road vehicle community then so to should the Aboriginal people be given funding to look after the globally significant takayna coast,” Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.

After nine weeks of being locked out by mining company MMG and more than seventy people arrested for defending Australia’s largest temperate rainforests, sixty four people have today participated in an ‘open day’.

Bob Brown Foundation has rejoiced as citizens drove down the contentious road and walked into the ancient threatened rainforests in Tasmania’s takayna / Tarkine.

“The public has been locked out of these public rainforests so a Chinese state-owned mining company can destroy hundreds of hectares of rainforests, eucalyptus and melaleuca forests for a heavy metals tailings waste dump,” Bob Brown Foundations Jenny Weber said.

“Today people of all ages were in awe of these threatened ancient rainforests, as we passed by tall myrtles, ferns that are hundreds of years old and ancient sassafras, flowering in winter,” Jenny Weber said.

“Elsewhere in takayna / Tarkine, twenty people visited the Que forests threatened by logging by Forestry Tasmania’s three year logging plans. Many who participated in the Que forests open day were arrested in the past nine weeks and therefore on bail conditions restricting their access to the MMG target forests,” Jenny Weber said.

“Today we send a message to MMG and Forestry Tasmania who want to destroy takayna and the Governments who are failing to grant it secure protection. We have reclaimed takayna today, we are not going anywhere and we are stronger than ever, building a movement that is calling for secure protection for one of the last wild places on Earth,” Jenny Weber said.

The Bob Brown Foundation has gained back public access into takayna’s threatened rainforests. Forestry Tasmania has advised that access is now available on Helilog Road. After two months of public road closure, the foundation will this weekend host an ‘open day’ event into the rainforests threatened by MMG’s proposed toxic metals waste dump.

“The BBF rejects claims by MMG that a paste-fill plant alternative is not viable. They would say that, wouldn’t they?

MMG’s refusal to build a paste-fill plan highlights the need for an independent assessment, including into worker safety for all the options and the company’s failure to have future-proofed their mine,” Bob Brown Foundation’s Jenny Weber said.

“Paste-fill is accepted mining best-practice, taking into account worker safety. That is why it is the option of choice for tailings disposal overseas and elsewhere in Australia as MMG has now acknowledged.

We call on MMG to release all its reports, unredacted, into the paste-fill option as well as all alternative options. We also call on MMG to open its facilities at Rosebery to independent assessment. MMG’s closed shop, as when it refused entry for scientists into the rainforest in June, must be opened.

There must be a rigorous, independent, and expert assessment by the government. If the government doesn’t do it, we will notwithstanding the obstacles. Leaving it to MMG, which reasonably has its decisions influenced by costs and profits, is not in the Tasmanian public’s best interests," said Ms Weber.

“The proposed waste dump would destroy more than 180ha of undisturbed old growth rainforest, as well as other mixed forest and heathlands at McKimmie Creek. This proposed waste dump would destroy high caliber rainforest and negatively impact threatened species - the Masked Owl, the Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Tasmanian devil, and the spotted-tail quoll.

MMG is putting the environment last. The real danger here is to climate and biodiversity in an age where global warnings are telling us 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction, many within decades unless biodiversity loss is reduced.

This weekend we will reclaim these public forests and help the public see what is threatened by this proposal,” Jenny Weber said.

At a meeting with Premier Peter Gutwein this afternoon, the Bob Brown Foundation explained why returning mine waste underground is the best option for MMG and its Rosebery mine.

In an open letter to the Premier, BBF Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said, “this ‘paste-fill’ option would be world’s best practice and would avoid destroying part of takayna/Tarkine rainforest and its wildlife.”

“It would increase jobs at the mine, both in constructing the necessary paste plant and infrastructure required to take the paste back underground,”  Jenny Weber said.

Ms Weber who was accompanied by former State and Federal Greens MP Bob Brown, said “We have asked the Premier to come and see the threatened rainforest as well as the takayna/Tarkine coastline and the route of our proposed Trans Tarkine track, another big job creator for the West Coast.”

“takayna is Australia’s largest temperate rainforest and would be a brilliant job creating National Park and World Heritage Area if the state government nominated it for listing.  It is a world class stronghold for an array of rare and endangered birds, mammals, and invertebrates,”  Jenny Weber said.

Letter here

The Bob Brown Foundation has asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate the legality of China-based mining giant MMG’s eight weeks of works on a tailings dam in Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest without the necessary approvals from the federal Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley. On Monday minister Ley notified MMG that she required an environment impact assessment of its plans to dump toxic wastes in the forest for the next 40 years before it could proceed.

Yesterday, following a letter to MMG from the BBF’s legal representative, Hobart solicitor Roland Browne, MMG stopped work and began removing heavy machinery from the contentious forest. Sixty-nine peaceful protesters have been arrested for slowing MMG’s earth-moving machinery.

“We believe MMG’s work on this destructive toxic dump proposal has been illegal from the outset, so we have asked the AFP to investigate. Investigations are already underway by Ms Ley’s departmental officers,” BBF Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said in Hobart today. “We want the ROAD CLOSED signs which Forestry Tasmania put there for MMG to be removed so the public, which owns the rainforest, can walk in and see it for themselves. This is part of the takayna rainforest for people to enjoy, not destroy.”

The Morrison government’s inquirer into Commonwealth environment laws called for a green ‘cop on the beat’. MMG’s invasion of the takayna rainforest, which is crucial wildlife habitat, shows why Samuels was right and Ley should not have rejected his recommendation out of hand,” Weber said.

Australian Rugby legend David Pocock is calling on Australians to defend Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest from a toxic waste dump.

Advertisements featuring Pocock’s call will air on Sky TV, Tasmanian commercial TV on Channel 7 and online on Youtube, Facebook , The Guardian.

The Beijing-based mining corporation MMG has been road building into the rainforest to build a tailings dam for its Rosebery mine in northwest Tasmania.  Yesterday the company announced a halt to the road building after Bob Brown Foundation issued a legal letter to MMG.

MMG has alternative options outside the takayna rainforest. However, the mining corporation intends to proceed with plans for heavy metals waste dump at this site despite the high-conservation values of the area, the ancient remnant rainforest ideal habitat for up to eight threatened species.

This week, the federal Minister for the Environment notified MMG that its proposed tailings dam cannot proceed without a full environmental impact assessment. Nevertheless, MMG increased the heavy machinery working on its access roads up until Wednesday afternoon the 14th of July

David Pocock visited the protest site set up by the Bob Brown Foundation where seventy one people have been arrested in non-violent direct action. Pocock says: 

“The takayna rainforest is awe-inspiring and something we should celebrate as Australians. takayna/the Tarkine is one of the last tracts of old-growth rainforest in the world and one of Australia’s richest Aboriginal cultural landscapes and home to a number of endangered species, including the iconic Tasmanian devil. In 2021 we should be protecting all our remaining old-growth forests like takayna. 

The mining company has alternatives. They don’t need to cut down old-growth forest - many of these trees were standing when the first Europeans arrived on these shores. This isn’t a case of Nature or jobs - there are alternatives available. 

Hundreds of people from different walks of life have come to takayna to say no to this waste dump. Nonviolent direct action has a long history in this country as a way of building a better society for all Australians, and I believe future generations will thank the people who are putting their bodies and civil liberties on the line to save the remaining wilderness we have in Australia. There are few things more Australian than places like takayna or the Great Barrier Reef - we must do what we can to protect them.” 

Bob Brown Foundation’s forest defenders will usher MMG’s machines out of the takayna/Tarkine rainforests this morning. That is, unless MMG defies yesterday’s notice by the federal Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, that an environmental impact assessment is required before work on its proposed toxic waste dump can proceed.

“Citizens are on site in takayna, attached to machines, but ready to step aside if the miner does the right thing and takes its machines out. Chinese state-owned MMG will be thumbing its nose at the Morrison government if it doesn’t remove its machines from takayna/Tarkine this morning.  It has options outside this rainforest. Yesterday, Ms Ley decided the miner’s proposed heavy metals tailings waste dump is a controlled action under the EPBC Act.  The project’s huge impact on the environment now requires her assessment and approval before it can proceed,” BBF’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.
 
“It would spark a national environmental showdown if MMG defied the Minister by continuing to build its access road to build the tailings dam,” Jenny Weber said.

"I'm scared that when I am my parent's age I'll be living on an unrecognisable planet, left only with the memory of forests long dead, having to explain to my own children what they meant and why they're gone. That's why I'm here today,"  said Clare Jacobson,
20, Tour guide.

"This action is important to me because I don't feel represented. The students I have experience climate anxiety and frustration at the lack of action. We are calling for this land to be handed back to indigenous Australians,"  said Thomas Friend, 34, Teacher

Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley’s declaration that MMG’s proposed toxic waste dump in the takayna / Tarkine rainforest is a ‘controlled action’, requiring an environmental impact assessment, means its bulldozers should get out of the Tarkine immediately, Bob Brown said today.

“MMG’s heavy machinery should never have been allowed into such a magnificent rainforest and wildlife area. We contend that it was not lawful and today’s decision by the Minister for the Environment confirms that opinion. MMG’s maverick behaviour has led to the needless arrest of nearly 70 good people making a stand for one of Australia’s environment gems where the state and federal governments failed. Ms Ley should be charging MMG for pre-empting her decision in such an arrogant and outrageous fashion.”

“We will have forest defenders on site tomorrow morning but they will stand aside for MMG’s bulldozers if they are reversing out of takayna / Tarkine,” BBF Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said.

“The Minister should have cleared the air properly and made a definitive decision that this tailings dam does not belong in the rainforests of takayna / Tarkine when there are several options for MMG nearer the mine and outside this priceless area,” she said.

Bob Brown Foundation’s campaign against Chinese state-owned mining company MMG's plans for a toxic tailings dam that would flatten Tarkine rainforest now enters week 8. After sixty-four arrests the groundswell of opposition just keeps building.

In two locations at the contentious site, three citizens are facing arrest for calling on MMG to remove their machines and exit takayna/Tarkine. Jill Pierce and Craig Brown have been arrested for sitting on the access road and Jane Wilson is attached to an excavator that is building new roads into the threatened rainforests.

"We are here to peacefully protest against the destruction of this beautiful temperate rainforest which is home to endangered species and ancient trees. As Tasmanians, we feel fortunate to still have such spectacular wilderness. We want takayna declared a World Heritage Area and a National Park for future generations. MMG has alternative sites for tailings, and technologies available to better manage mining waste," said Jill Pierce, 61, Social worker, health educator, and Craig Brown, 67, Doctor, GP

"These mature biodiverse ecosystems are not just glorious and awe inspiring but have numerous vital functions. Meeting John the beekeeper I understood how much leatherwood and Manuka would be lost from this proposed dam site if clearing is allowed to process. There are very few mature leatherwood sites. It’s a finite resource, important as part of the unique Tasmanian beekeeping cycle of crop pollination in spring then onto leatherwood honey flow. Tourists, farmers and orchardists are linked to these forests via honey and bees yet they are being destroyed," said Jane Wilson, 61, Vet, Winemaker.

"State and federal governments have the power to end this controversy, halt the excessive spending of taxpayer dollars on police resources, and do the right thing for Tasmania by protecting the takayna/Tarkine rainforests. For decades, citizens have lobbied governments for World Heritage protection of takayna/Tarkine, and it is now more crucial than ever, with a climate and biodiversity catastrophe looming overhead,” Bob Brown Foundation Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said