- guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 6 2003 17.44 BST
In the article below we referred to the Australian company, Forestry Tasmania. We alluded to a bribery scandal involving Edmund Rouse, the former chairman of another Tasmanian company, Gunns Limited. We wish to make it clear that Forestry Tasmania was not involved in any way with any bribery scandal and Mr Rouse was not a director of Forestry Tasmania.
Deep in the forest, from the vantage point of a rickety bridge spanning a lazy river black with tannin, some of the vegetation is as it would have appeared 60 million years ago.
Myrtle, sassafras, celery-top pine, prehistoric manferns and pandani all brush branches with eucalyptus trees which in places reach heights of over 90 metres and have circumferences of 19 metres - the tallest hardwoods on earth.
But then the paradise rapidly gives way to a scene of black devastation where for miles and miles little grows amid charred stumps and bulldozed piles of smouldering timber.
It is here where the prehistoric Tasmanian forests have been unceremoniously plun dered to feed the global market for woodchip. Old growth trees like these will take thousands of years to regenerate.
The process is brutal. When the trees have been cleared away, helicopters come in to drop napalm to burn away the remaining stumps and vegetation so that quick-grow species of pine and eucalypt can be planted. Both of these have disastrous effects on native wildlife, of which Tasmania has the most diverse range in Australia.
But while the will exists in this antipodean island to end the destruction, some of it being carried out by the state-owned company Forestry Tasmania, the way is blocked by the country's dire economic situation.
Unemployment in Tasmania is running at 12 per cent with a rapidly declining population. In an attempt to redress this, the Australian government via the Tasmanian state government has pumped huge amounts of money into the timber industry, specifically the clear-felling of old growth forests. An area the size of 15 football pitches is cleared every day.
In 1990, the forestry industry boasted almost 10,000 jobs; today that has shrunk by half. On an island with a population of less than half a million, any loss of jobs is significant.
Over the past five years, despite $A75 million (£29m) - having been poured into the industry, more than 400 jobs have been shed.
Forestry Tasmania's managing director, Evan Rolley, does not dispute that it would be desirable to stop the log ging. But he said: 'A sudden end to old-growth forestry would have a devastating impact on the Tasmanian economy.'
Critics, including the Tasmanian Green Party, claim jobs are only a tiny part of the equation - and many Tasmanians agree. An astonishing one fifth of the voters backed the Greens in the 2002 state elections.
There has been a growing protest against the logging, with several lobby groups coming together.There are Doctors for Forests, Veterinarians for Forests, Lawyers for Forests, Beekeepers for Forests, Aborigines for Forests and even Timber Workers for Forests - proving that the protests are not just headed by 'feral greenies', as some of the industry's supporters like to think.
Last year Artists For Forests expressed concern at the appointment of Forestry Tasmania as a major sponsor of 'Ten Days on the Island', the showcase of creative Tasmania. A boycott was backed by novelists Tim Winton, Joan London, Booker prizewinner Peter Carey and Richard Flanagan, author of the acclaimed novel Gould's Book of Fish .
'I felt they were trying to use the artistic achievements of Tasmanians to veil the terrible shame of what they are doing and I didn't want to be party to it,' said Flanagan.
Toxic chemical use by Forestry Tasmania has tripled since 1999. After the napalm, a poison called 1080 is laid to control the possums and wallabies that eat the young trees. Many pets die after eating an infected possum or wallaby.
Flanagan says 'somebody's child will get poisoned and that will be the line in the sand. People will go berserk'.
A 1989 government report found other species exposed to the threat of incidental poisoning included wombats, the threatened Tasmanian bettong, and parrots.
Forestry Tasmania's Evan Rolley claims the company leads the way in exploring alternatives to 1080 use and that there is 'no evidence of population harm'.
Doctors for Forests spokesman Dr Geoff Couser said none of the lobby groups was against a timber industry. 'While most other state governments are encouraging their forest industries to use plantation timber, Tasmania alone permits its industry to rely almost entirely on logging native forest and exporting woodchips.'
Tasmania has made its forestry department exempt from Australia's Environmental Protection Act, Threatened Species Act and Freedom of Information Act.
Gunns, a private company, accounts for over three-quarters of the forestry operations in the state and is the largest regional woodchip exporter in the world. Its shares have skyrocketed and last year it made a $A50m - nearly £20m - profit.
The abolition of quotas has led to a burgeoning of the industry and Tasmania now exports more woodchips than any other country in the world except the US.
The Tasmanian government is feeling the pressure. Premier Jim Bacon's own idea, Tasmania Together, a process set up to involve the whole community, backfired. In a poll last year a board representing the community was 70 per cent in favour of ending old-growth clear-felling by 1 January 2003.
But the timber industry sticks to its view that selective logging is the best way to maintain the health of the forest, to ensure that there is always going to be a diversity of wood coming from it . Rolley insists this level of activity is sustainable: 'It is nonsense to suggest that old-growth forest is being harvested at record rates.'
The Church recently took a stance when Father Brian Gore, famed for his imprisonment in the Philippines, held a liturgy below the tallest hardwood on earth and said: 'God is a Greenie.'
'People have finally woken up to the fact that this island is precious and unique and they don't have to sell it off for a mess of pottage,' Flanagan said.
