'Heavy-handed' logging tactics

SUE NEALES
Chief reporter

February 16, 2007 

FORESTRY Tasmania will seek to obtain an immediate injunction this afternoon in Tasmania's Supreme Court to stop a southern Tasmanian environmental group from organising a protest march into the sensitive Weld Valley on Sunday.

The injunction, if approved by Tasmania's Chief Justice, Peter Underwood, would prevent the Huon Valley Environment Centre and six of its senior members from emailing, texting, handing out pamphlets or posting information on the internet about Sundays planned "walk-in" rally in the Weld Valley.

It would also bar the Environment Centre from allowing protestors to sleep at its headquarters in Huonville, or at any of its named office bearers' homes.

The Environment Centre's president, Adam Burling, who is one of the individuals named in the injunction, described the legal move as "heavy-handed" and an outrage.

"I see this as a desperate attempt by Forestry Tasmania and the State Government to try and silence democratic process and free speech," Mr Burling said.

Mr Burling said Forestry Tasmania had already imposed an "exclusion zone" around the entire Weld Valley, which makes it illegal for anyone apart from forest workers and logging contractors to enter the vast region.

"We believe there are enough existing laws, such as the exclusion zones powers, at Forestry Tasmania's fingertips. Why do they need to crack down even more?" Mr Burling asked.

The Huon Valley Environment Centre hopes more than 100 peaceful protestors will march through the prohibited exclusion zone into the Weld Valley on Sunday to "bear witness" to the "outrageous logging".

Mr Burling said logging in some of its mid-reaches of the Weld Valley, which protestors have fought to protect for the past two years, has started this month.