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Issue Number 60 - July 2002

• Australia: Tree plantations grabbing thriving forests

• Papua New Guinea: The logging industry's empty promises of job generation
      

- Australia: Tree plantations grabbing thriving forests

Today I went for a walk in the Tarkine. I was fortunate to sit under a wedge tailed eagle as it circled around me. Its nest must have been nearby as it seemed to linger, most curious about my intrusion. As I wandered in to that spot, so similar to many other places in Tassie's north-west, I had the pleasure of seeing a couple of wallabies and some rather rare trees, amongst which was a magnificent specimen of native olive.

This was made all the more unique because I was on the edge of plantation country. This area is being converted from native forest to weed infested Eucalyptus nitens plantations at such a rapid rate that a mere six weeks ago, much of the cleared, piled up debris that surrounded me was magnificent rainforest, filled with myrtle, moss, ferns and teeming with life. One coop I entered was not even logged for chips or sawlogs. It was purely a land grab, salvage crews had retrieved some of the trees for speciality timbers but most of the rainforest was burnt. Pure, unethical waste.

By the year 2020, the amount of plantations in Tasmania will be doubled if we do not do something now. Old growth, which we are lead to believe is well protected, is being cut down, burnt and woodchipped. Rainforests, with so many different varieties of fungi that it would be impossible to count them are dozed through and slashed. Again, pushed into windrows and burnt. Thousands of jobs have been cut since the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) was signed.

Forestry Tasmania tell us their logging is world's best practice but everyday clearfelling and streamside logging occurs. Communities disappear, towns are removed from maps as family homes and farms are levelled and put under plantations. 1080 [a poison used by farmers and foresters to kill animals that may affect plantations] is then laid and native animals also disappear. Few survive if any.

This madness, so destructive, is not unstoppable. These forests are yours --they are on public land! Tell everyone you know, lobby politicians, forward this email on. Please help us make a difference.

By: Matthew Campbell-Ellis, makojazz@bigpond.com , sent by Anthony Amis, FoE Australia, aamis@wild.net.au 

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- Papua New Guinea: The logging industry's empty promises of job generation

There should be more literature on the broken promises of the logging industry. When those companies arrive in a country, they try to entice the local people with arguments like that their operations will bring jobs and training for them.

In the case of Papua New Guinea, an investigation carried out in May 2001, by Joe Meava, information manager of the publication "Echoes from the Forest", into reports of illegal logging in Pondo, in the Open Bay area of East New Britain, reveals that most of the jobs created --much less than expected, anyway-- were performed by foreign workers, who are not legally allowed to occupy positions which could be filled many times over by Papua New Guinean workers.

According to the forest activist network PNG Forest Watch, "The data that has been released shows clearly that the logging companies must be involved in either a major illegal immigration scam or a criminal people smuggling operation."

During a visit to the logging site, Joe Meava saw that out of the five bulldozers that were clearing tracks through the forests, or were pulling logs out, four were being operated by Asians. Only one was driven by a national from East New Britain.

A youth from Pondo village told him that one of the jobs he performed as an employee of the company, was to keep "unnecessary" people out of the logging area. According to Meava, the youth meant people whose families or clans were not party to any logging agreement. The father of the young man was the head of a clan who had welcomed the logging company into their area. His part of the deal was that his son was employed as a security guard against his own people.

According to official company documents from 2001, 17 timber companies with a combined log export value of US$ 50 million or one third of the total log exports from PNG, employed some 468 staff, including 420 people or about 90 percent of the total with obviously Asian names, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia but also mainland China and the Philippines, while a mere 40 of the total of 468, or 10 percent of the employees appeared to have possibly Papua New Guinea names. This major immigration traffic may become a source of conflict between foreign and national workers.

The investigator noted that the records of the 17 logging companies also list 27 forest surveyors but NO foresters, NO forest managers, NO environmental managers, NO conservation officers and NO biologists amongst their employees. It is also shocking to see that the 17 companies list no nurses, no health workers, and no medical orderlies, despite their claims of providing local health services to the rural communities. And moreover, the data provided exposes the grossly exaggerated total employment figures claimed by the logging industry --ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 jobs-- when compared with the 468 staff actually employed by the 17 logging companies.

Article based on information from: "Logging company employment data: another example of forest industry corruption", 24 June 2002, PNG Forest Watch, lukautimbus@global.net.pg ; Echoes from the Forest 6: "Logging Employment and Jobs for Local People", 3 June 2002, by Joe Meava, Information Manager, PNG Eco-Forestry Forum, http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=12128 
  

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