It reminds of Lucaston a few years back. Such intensity of resources for such a crime! I hope those vehicles parked on the crest were booked.

Sooner of later it has to dawn on one of the egg-heads in Treasury that its costing MILLION$ to supply chips into a non-existent market. And those few unskilled jobs are bringing down one political career after another. What a soap opera!

tas police sure are in the pocket of gunns,cosy to have your own private police force.

“Forest Manager Steve Whiteley says once the protesters are removed and the blockade is dismantled, forestry workers will build a road to a 50 hectare coup of eucalypts.

“Any of the roads we build there will be low impact, and the harvesting will be small scale,” he said.

Mr Whiteley says 10 to 20 per cent of the wood will make high quality sawlogs, with the rest to be used as low grade timber and woodchips”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/13/2464788.htm?section=australia

Makes you wonder why they would bother, unless the intention is to send a “strong police message” to those of us packing our toothbrush and undies for the ongoing puke mill stoush.

However, let me assure Mr Whiteley that the majority of Tasmanians do not regard our magnificent forests as “low grade timber”. Leave the bloody things in the ground and they remain high grade conservation areas that the rest of the world pay money to come and see.

Perhaps someone with some spare time might enlighten Mr Whiteley on the advantages of carbon sinks in this time of environmental enlightenment. But then why bother, he and his masters have obviously had their collective heads in the sand (or should that be trough) whilst the facts have been raining down around them!

Tasmanian Times makes it a bit easier to keep up, if you don’t have the time. Please Mr Whiteley follow this link -
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/the-need-for-a-new-forest-politics/

“a recent report from the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment & Society promotes the benefits of wilderness as carbon sinks.

Mackey et al argue in their report Green Carbon: The Role of Natural Forests in Carbon Storage that natural forests “are more resilient to climate change and disturbances than plantations because of their genetic, taxonomic and functional biodiversity” with a high capacity for “regeneration after fire, resistance to and recovery from pests and diseases, and adaptation to changes in radiation, temperature and water availability” (2008, 5)”