NEWS RELEASE

Tuesday May 4th, 1999

Friends of the Earth Sydney

History shows govt's South Coast forest assessment will promote 20 year clearfelling and woochipping

Today NSW Forest Campaigner with Friends of the Earth (FoE), Mr Tom McLoughlin, called for the Carr Labor Government to abandon the Comprehensive Regional Assessment (CRA) process for NSW's Southern Forests due in 1999. The forest stretches from Bega District in the south to near Wollongong in the north and west to Tumut. Instead he called for outright conservation decisions based on existing community reserve proposals and employment packages for displaced workers.

"Peak NSW environment groups have all condemned the new woodchip law passed last December giving 20 year logging guarantees to 800,000 hectares of forest in Eden and Northern Forests resulting from their CRAs.

"The Carr government will now try and smooth talk their way to the same outcome in the Southern Forest Region from Bega to Wollongong and west to Tumut. In 1994 the Forestry Commission revealed under FoI that foreign woodchip company Daishowa wants at least over 100 logging compartments in the Bateman's Bay management area.The government will use flattery, and minor grants to co-opt the result and deliver a nasty woodchip decision at the end. By that time it will be too late. Yet the Bateman's Bay region has never had an Environmental Impact Statement for native forest logging.

"Places on the hit list include Monga, Conjola, Wandella, Badja, Croobyar, Upper Clyde, Deua, Dignams Creek, Ettrema, Flat Rock, Kianga and Tallaganda" he said.

Mr McLoughlin, a lawyer and zoologist by training, has been involved in forest campaigning in Southern NSW with The Wilderness Society and national group Friends of the Earth for the last 8 years. He negotiated a stop to logging at Croobyar State Forest in 1994 after a controversial blockade. He also worked to protect Deua Wilderness in 1993-5 in co-operation with the local catchment protection group, and gave legal support to forest blockaders at Badja State Forest near Cooma. He made a lengthy submission in person to the Visy Pulp Mill Commission of Inquiry at Tumut last year. More recently he organised with others the 1,500 strong Sydney Town Hall Forest Resurgence! meeting and election poster campaign in Sydney's marginal seats.

"My group will be working closely with environmentalists campaigning publicly to stop the State government's cynical public relations exercise on forests" concluded Mr McLoughlin.