GetUp! and ENGO supporters being betrayed by deceitful campaigning

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.