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GetUp! and ENGO supporters being betrayed by deceitful campaigning

By Mark Poynter - posted Thursday, 14 July 2011


For decades, a lack of economic self-interest enabled environmentalists to claim the high moral ground in conflicts with resource-use industries. Times have changed dramatically with the major Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) now wealthy corporations in their own right, with multi-million dollar operational budgets enabling them to employ well-paid career activists.

Although rarely acknowledged, the major ENGOs are now equally as economically self-interested as resource-use industries, but with jobs reliant on funding generated by sustaining sensational campaigns against these industries to attract donations. In 2009, it was reported that Australia's four largest environmental groups had spent $70 million in the previous financial year, of which 60% (or $42 million) went to lobbying, fundraising, membership drives and other activities not directly linked to on-ground conservation works.

Forests have always been at the fore-front of ENGO fund-raising. Perhaps better than any other facet of environmental conflict they provide wonderful opportunities to capitalise on the stark visual contrast between undisturbed beauty and the savagery of human disturbance. Tricia Caswell, then CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, acknowledged this in 1995 when she told the Business Review Weekly that "Forest issues are the best weapon to generate membership and donations, the Green movements' lifeblood"

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This has remained the case despite huge changes to native forest management since forest activism first came to prominence. In particular, the area of public forest being used for sustainable wood supply has fallen dramatically over the past 25-years due to a huge expansion of forested national parks and other conservation reserves. In addition, the development and refinement of Codes of Practices has elevated Australian timber production practices to amongst the world's best, while the annual harvested area is substantially lower – in Victoria for example, now only about one-fifth of what it was in 1980.

Despite this, the supposed environmental damage being attributed to native forest timber production by environmental activism has become increasingly outlandish and deceitful. A typical example was contained in a recent Wilderness Society pamphlet seeking financial support for a market-based campaign against Reflex Paper – a product comprised of a mix of plantation, recycled, and native forest fibre obtained as a by-product of sawlog harvesting in Victorian Central Highland's forests:

"Victoria's Mountain Ash forests once covered 170,400 hectares. Shockingly, only 2,000 hectares (1.17%) now remain unlogged and unburnt."

The Wilderness Society, June 2011

To the majority of the community who are relatively uninformed about forestry matters, the clear impression that this statement conveys is that almost all of Victoria's Mountain Ash forests have either disappeared or are highly degraded. This is an outrageous misrepresentation which could well have prompted many people to donate to a campaign purporting to 'save' the supposedly last remaining forests.

The reality is markedly different. According to the 2007 Department of Sustainability & Environment publication, 'Mountain Ash in Victoria's State Forests', by Fagg and Flint, the state has 249,600 hectares of Mountain Ash-dominated forest, with 86% occurring on public land.

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Mountain Ash is reliant on periodic severe wildfire to naturally regenerate and, in the prolonged absence of fire, will eventually be replaced by non-eucalypt scrub and tree species. Therefore, as they wouldn't exist without fire, Mountain Ash forests have obviously been burnt at some point in their past. The most recent major fires to have affected Victoria's Mountain Ash forests occurred in 1939, 1983, and 2009.

These burnt areas have regenerated well and are regrowing vigorously as would be expected. As for logging, about one-third of Victoria's Mountain Ash forests are public land forests available and suitable for timber production. Almost all of this is 1939-fire regrowth forest, but where older remnant trees occur within this regrowth, they are protected by management prescriptions for habitat and seed supply purposes.

About 900 hectares of Victorian Mountain Ash forest is being harvested and regenerated each year within this available area, while the other two-thirds of the forest are contained either in public land conservation reserves or are on private land, where most is effectively also reserved. There is clearly no cause for alarm about the future of these forests.

There have recently been several other alarming misconceptions used to solicit funds for 'save-the-forest' environmental campaigns. The group, Markets for Change, has been operating in an alliance with GetUp!, but both groups have made deceitful statements to generate support:

"In .... Tasmania - home to the tallest hardwood trees on earth, some of these giant trees are being quite literally blown up. The trees are so huge loggers can't safely fell them with chainsaws, so they use dynamite to bring them down before they are wood chipped and shipped overseas to be made into paper"

GetUp! email to members re its 'Save Tassie forests' campaign, June 2011

This represents another attempt to sensationally misrepresent logging as being far more destructive and wasteful than it actually is. Occasionally, old and rotten trees that pose a safety threat are blown-up when they are too dangerous to fall by hand. This is not a standard practice to obtain woodchips from large trees, but is an ad hoc occupational, health and safety practice. The wood from these trees is not usually suitable for chipping and paper-making in Japan.

"Recent figures show that logging is still permitted within 76% of Australia's native forests..."

Markets for Change publication, 'Retailing the Forests' campaign, May 2011

This is another massive misrepresentation again designed to grossly overstate the significance of timber production by skewing statistics contained in the government publication, Australia's Forests at a Glance 2011. This shows that of Australia's native forests, about 24% are contained in public land nature conservation reserves, or other Crown Lands, and lands with unresolved tenure within which logging is excluded. A grossly inappropriate assumption has then been made that the rest of the forest (aka 76%) must be available for logging.

In reality, the vast majority of Australian forest that is not formally reserved, such as most of the 103 million hectares of privately-owned or leased public forest, will never be logged because it is comprised of unsuitable forest types that are too small, too defective, or contain non-commercial species; is too remote or topographically-challenged to be economically accessible; or is owned and managed by people or corporations which have no intention of logging.

Logging is permitted only within the multiple use public forests which comprise about 6% of the total area of Australian forest, plus it occurs in a small portion of the privately-owned forest. However, only about half of the public multiple use forest is being used for timber supply (~3% of the total), with the rest being also reserved for various reasons. So, the total area of Australian forest used for timber production comprises about 3% of the total area plus a small portion of private forest estimated to comprise about 2% of the total area – so, a combined ~5% of the total forest area. This is just one-fifteenth of the area being claimed by the Markets for Change group.

Australian ENGOs are arguably supported both by people with an inherent belief that we need to save the environment, and others who have been led to believe this by exposure to their campaign rhetoric. The support of the latter group relies on an uncritical belief in the integrity of environmental activism, and they have every right to feel betrayed by revelations exposing lies and distortion used to engender their financial support. This amounts to a form of fraud, and is also evident in our streets on almost a daily basis when activists dressed in koala suits make simplistic and erroneous claims to attract donations.

A good example occurred last year outside the offices of government timber agency, Vicforests, where a Wilderness Society campaigner was shouting to passersby that eight football fields of 'old growth' forest is felled each day in East Gippsland. Upon being asked by one of Vicforests' foresters where he had got that information, his answer was that he didn't know as he was just a paid fundraiser who was told to say it!

For the record: Eight football fields per day equates to around 6,000 hectares per year which represents an approximately 120-times exaggeration on the actual area of 'old growth' forest logged in East Gippsland, which was about 50 hectares last year. It is high time that this sort of entrenched deceit was exposed.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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