World's Highest Tree Sit Aims to Save World’s Tallest Hardwoods

HOBART, Tasmania, Australia, November 12, 2003 (ENS) - Activists from four countries have taken up positions on a platform high in one of the world’s most ancient woodlands in an attempt to save the Styx forest in southwest Tasmania from loggers' chainsaws. Establishing tree sits to protect forests is a well known tactic, but this one is a record breaking 65 meters (213 feet) above the ground.

Calling their demonstration the Global Rescue Station, environmentalists from Australia, Japan, Canada and Germany are sitting to protect the tallest hardwood trees on earth from being pulped for paper.

Trees in the Styx forest can grow to 85 meters (279 feet) in height, taller than a 25 story building and taller than the pylons of a well known landmark, the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Greenpeace Australia Campaigns Manager Danny Kennedy said, “Importers should source woodchips from plantations, not ancient forests."

In an unprecedented collaboration, Greenpeace Australia and The Wilderness Society say that without the demonstration the Styx forest could be logged within a few months.

Demonstrators from four countries settle in on the world's highest tree sit. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Australia)

“We have set up this Global Rescue Station to save these 400 year old trees from logging. We want people to know that woodchip exports are killing one of the world’s most valuable forests,” said Kennedy.

Wilderness Society Campaign Director Alec Marr said, “Logging the Styx threatens rare and endangered species such as the wedge-tailed eagle and the grey goshawk."

Up in the tree less than 24 hours, the demonstrators already have been visited by a Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle that swooped close to their platform. The wedge-tailed eagle is one of Australia's most endangered birds.

"The crude clearfelling methods used in Tasmania are equivalent to forestry practices in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil,” Marr said.

The Styx is logged by Gunns Limited, a Tasmanian woodchip company who grinds the trees into low value woodchips to make into paper. The woodchips are exported to Japan for use by Nippon, Oji and Mitsubishi.

On their website, the demonstrators are asking supports to send messages to the three Japanese paper manufacturing companies asking them not to buy woodchips from Gunns sourced from old growth forests.

But Labor Member of the House of Assembly for Denison Graeme Sturges, who represents the central Hobart metropolitan area, last month called on the activists to use their energies more constructively, and to start working with their fellow Tasmanians rather than causing unnecessary division and conflict.

Eucalyptus regnans forest, Styx Valley, Tasmania (Photo by Geoff Law courtesy The Wilderness Society)

Sturges said, “Through processes such as the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA), and again through Tasmania Together, we have found solutions that both protect our rich and wonderful forest heritage, while also providing a secure future for our timber industry and rural communities."

The environmentalists point to the fact that Tasmania exports more logs and woodchips from native forests than all other Australian states combined. Less than 20 percent of Tasmania’s original extent of untouched giant trees remain, with half under threat from logging, the say.

Forestry Tasmania Managing Director Evan Rolley says that The Wilderness Society is wrong to claim that the last tall trees in Australia are about to be felled in the Styx Valley.

"In the Styx Valley, two-thirds of the area is either in reserves or is not available for harvesting," Rolley said.

"As part of the two-year long public RFA process," Rolley said, "an extra 1,000 hectares in the Styx Valley area were added to the South-West National Park. A further 3,000 hectares were set aside from timber harvesting for ongoing conservation and protection purposes."

In addition to the formal reserves, Rolley said very tall and big trees are protected under Forestry Tasmania’s Giant Tree policy. "Eighty-six percent of Tasmania’s old growth forest on public land is protected in reserves," he said.