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Friday, 12 December 2003

Wiping our arses with habitat

Always excellent OnEarth magazine has a feature on how, much like Tasmania, the forests of Tennessee are being turned into toilet paper.

As one environmentalist put it arrestingly: "We're wiping our asses with habitat."

The article mentions how the “federal and state agencies that are supposed to be regulating the paper, timber, and mining industries are populated with these companies' former executives and have come to view these industries as clients whose permits and projects should be facilitated rather than scrutinized.”

And how “much of the devastation is hidden from view by thin "beauty strips" of native forest left along the plateau's highways.” They could be talking about Tasmania, where the Department of State Development pretends that the $713 million of largely woodchips exported last year wasn’t largely woodchips. The official three-page breakdown of export earnings showcases Tasmania’s $127 million catamaran exports (Incat), our $336 million in aluminium exports (Comalco Bell Bay) and our $411 million in exports of zinc (Pasminco). But the single biggest export category, at $713 million (29% of all Tasmanian exports), is credited to “Confidential Items of Trade”.

Officially, we export just over $1 million of woodchips. Anyone who believes that has never sighted one of the massive piles of woodchips at our ports, awaiting shipment to Japan.

With such blatant non-transparency its is no wonder Forestry Tasmania and its corporate siblings (or sibling, Gunns Ltd control the overwhelming majority of forestry operations here) are oft-referred to as the “Tasmanian Mafia”.