BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Dozens of activists are maintaining a "Weld River community picket". The blockade, which entered its 12th day on February 15, has stopped work on a forestry road and bridge into the Weld Valley in southern Tasmania.
The picket was established to save more than 3000 hectares of unlogged, old-growth forest in the Weld Valley, an area immediately adjacent to a World Heritage listed area. The valley has also been repeatedly recommended for World Heritage listing by state government departments and international conservation bodies.
Forestry Tasmania wants to build the road and bridge to prepare for clearfelling the area. The Weld Valley is also adjacent to the site of the proposed Southwood woodchip mill and wood-fired power station. Wood from the Weld would be used in the Southwood mill.
Neil Cremasco of the Huon Community Association, a group fighting the Southwood mill proposal, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that "90% of wood taken from Tasmanian forests is used for woodchipping" and that is what forestry would do to the Weld.
Cremasco describes the Weld forest as "very, very impressive" with eucalyptus regnans standing 70-80 metres tall. "It is the lesser known twin of the now internationally famous Styx Valley."
"The Weld River is one of the last 'wild rivers'. Three quarters of the river runs through the World Heritage area, the rest runs through the unprotected but pristine Weld Valley", Cremasco said. "Other rivers are crossed by bridges and run through areas with agriculture, industry or forestry, but not the Weld."
Forestry practices in Tasmania further demonstrate that "governments around Australia are no longer governing for the people but for the large corporations", Cremasco told GLW.
The Weld blockade is organised principally by the Native Forest Network. Activists argue that the tactic of blockading is imperative because all official channels have been tried and have failed.
Support for the picket and the campaign against the Southwood mill remains strong. On February 11, 80 people participated in a BBQ at the blockade.
The Southwood development will be considered by the Resource, Planning and Development Commission — the final arbiter on planning issues in Tasmania — in the next two to three months. More than 200 submissions were received by the commission. According to Cremasco, "66 submissions were generally in favour of Southwood while there were around 150 detailed submissions against".
The commission will be reviewing the Huon Valley council's decisions to rezone the Southwood site from "rural" to "industrial" and to approve the Southwood development application. The council made both decisions by votes of 5 to 4.
Cremasco told GLW that the council's decision was "pathetic". "Many present at the meeting felt that the council members who voted for Southwood either did not read the documents or did not understand them. When they were asked questions about the project, they were stumped. Southwood has not been subjected to any decent economic, social or environmental scrutiny whatsoever."
Socialist Alliance member Geoff Francis, a campaigner to stop the Southwood mill, told GLW that Forestry Tasmania and the state Labor government are facing mounting pressure on this issue.
"These campaigns can be won. That's why the Labor Premier Jim Bacon's government has taken no action against the blockade in this pre-election period. What is crucial is that we find ways to mobilise the large numbers of people, like the more than 3000 people who rallied last March, to maintain maximum pressure for a reversal of the government's forestry policies."
[More information about the Weld campaign can be found at .]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 20, 2002.
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