World's highest tree occupation to stop logging

Hobart, Tasmania, 12 November 2003: A Tasmanian forest has today seen the start of the world's highest tree occupation. A 65 metre high treehouse is being occupied by activists from around the world in an effort to prevent the world's tallest hardwood trees being logged for woodchip. Organisers at Greenpeace have dubbed the treehouse a Global Rescue Station.

The Tasmanian government and timber companies are planning to destroy the island's Styx forest in large-scale logging operations. The threatened Styx Valley contains old-growth forest and is home to Eucalyptus regnans, or 'swamp gums' - the tallest hardwood trees in the world. Many are more than 80 metres tall - higher than Canterbury Cathedral - over 400 years old and up to 5 metres wide at the base. Only the famous Redwood trees of North America, which are softwood, are taller.

Clearcutting in the Styx Valley is already taking place at an alarming rate. Time is rapidly running out and it may be only a matter of months before clearcutting of the ancient trees begins in the area that Greenpeace is attempting to protect.

Greenpeace Campaigns Manager Danny Kennedy said: "We hope this treehouse will save these 400-year old trees from logging. Activists from Japan, Canada, Germany and Australia are camped in it and telling the world that woodchip exports to Japan are killing one of the world's most valuable forests."

The Styx has been identified as worthy of World Heritage Listing (World Heritage Bureau 1994), the highest international legal standing for natural heritage protection. It is home to endangered and rare animals such as the majestic wedge-tailed eagle and the grey goshawk, and is also home to bettongs, bats, wombats and possums.

Clearcutting operations involve cutting down large timber and burning the rest. Useful timber, primarily destined for use as woodchip, is removed before the area is bombed from the air with incendiaries to ensure it is completely destroyed. A poison is then spread to ensure that possums and wallabies are killed before they graze on re-sprouting seedlings. This inevitably kills other 'non-target' species such as bettongs, quolls and wombats. The area is reseeded with commercially profitable species and the diversity of the forest is lost. The majority of clearfelled forest in Tasmania is converted into plantation.

Booker prize winning author Peter Carey recently withdrew from the Tasmanian government's Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize in protest at the continued destruction. The '10 Days on the Island' Festival was sponsored by Forestry Tasmania.

The tree-dwellers are keeping a weblog of life at at the top. Read it at: http://weblog.greenpeace.org/tasmania