Australian Forests Face Woodchipping and Clearfelling

by Andrew Pearson

My 80-year-old grandmother was growing visibly concerned at the deep pot holes as we drove down logging roads into Giblett Forest. Western Australia's ancient spirit towered all around, an intimate ecosystem of 400 to 800 year old karri, marri, and jarrah trees. Giblett is state forest, 15 minutes north of Pemberton and a six-hour bus ride from Perth. Except for 50 hectares clearfelled in 1994, the forest is all old growth and full of very large, very old trees with numerous hollows. Ancient she-oak groves fill the understory; frogs croak with the heavy rains.

But Giblett is to be logged to supply the sawmills of Bunnings logging company. Bunnings produces 90 percent of West Australia's native forest woodchips-900,000 tonnes a year. Twice a day 20-wagon funeral trains head to the port of Bunbury where the woodchips are loaded into ships bound for Japan.

Clearfelling of five planned coups [units] totaling 460 hectares started on April 30, 1997. On Sunday, May 4 Chris Lee climbed a giant karri tree and all logging in Giblett has since stopped. Giblett has a history of being rescued. A 1994 logging attempt was met with protest and stopped. Bunnings got away with just one coup cut for export to South Africa.

Although my grandmother couldn't navigate the tangle of understory, cleared before the rescuers could move in, she was nevertheless made to feel at home by local residents. Giblett has the caring energies of older locals and younger ferals. Fellow senior Eileen Michauls made Granny the best sandwich she's ever had. Dave Chinup, a local cattle rancher, is one of many locals who risks isolation from the timber community to defend Giblett.

"We're not against timber workers or logging," said one woman. "We're just making a conscientious objection to the way the forests are being managed. Clearfelling removes good topsoil. It destroys the forest structure and the habitats of wildlife, particularly the hollows in very old trees."

West Australian forests are home to 51 species of birds and mammals requiring unique hollows for breeding and shelter. Endangered numbats, chuditchs and cockatoos form part of the web with ancient species from the time of the Gondwana supercontinent.

There are only about 188,000 hectares of karri/marri forest on the planet, all growing the southwest of Western Australia. Original karri and karri/marri forest has been one-half cleared since European invasion, from 400,000 original hectares. Of the remainder, only 83,500 hectares of pre-European old growth is left. 43,500 hectares of that is in state forest, available for logging.

Native West Australian timber is now being marketed around the world as alternatives to rainforest timbers with the misleading claim that they are produced from "sustainably managed forests." (My grandmother had never seen anything so destructive since WWII as the clearfells in Giblett.)

If you local furniture or lumber dealer has karri or jarrah, its most likely from the 15,000+ hectares logged in Australia each year. Its price tag won't include the state funded road construction and ecological cost of clearfelling, prescribed burning, and poisoning-or the dieback, weeds, feral predators, fungus and erosion that take their toll on habitat and biodiversity.

In 1996 51 percent of the hardwood logs from West Australia's native forests went straight to the chipper. Approximately 80 percent of the total tonnage of wood removed from clearfelled old-growth karri/marri forest is turned into woodchips. The woodchipping industry has exported over 14 million tonnes of karri and marri trees overseas as woodchips since 1976.

The West Australian government has a legally binding commitment to supply Bunnings with 680,000 tonnes of logs suitable for woodchipping every year until 1997. With the woodchipping contracts coming up for renewal this December, it is a crucial time for action against Bunnings.

The Wilderness Society is targeting Bunnings, and its managing director Michael Chaney, with a consumer buypass (a less gender loaded term than that Yankee equivalent, boycott). A few thousand pledges were stacked high by July.

The woodchipping industry has created demand for remote forests, or forests that have little commercial viability for sawlogs. The introduction of clearfelling came with the woodchip industry.

Bunnings' large scale crimes only directly employ "around 50 people" (1997 report by Bunnings) while being hugely profitable, but produces very low grade woodchips the Japanese only buy because they're so cheap.

Woodchipping is the fast food of the forest industry. Its an easy, mass produced, low grade, multi-use product that is the source of corporate capital's saturation, cheap-product marketing.

Hope

The Giblett and the Buypass Bunnings campaign are part of the worldwide trend by responsible consumers away from wood products taken from old-growth forests. The Dutch government has decided not to buy karri from WA forests for canal linings.

There is a committed alternative wood movement sprouting many different ideas and trades. One TV documentary followed a mobile furniture maker who collected abandoned railway beams, old boat hulls, and timber yard scraps to make functional furniture. Traveling to schools, farms and churches he holds workshops to spread the gospel of recycling timber. And there are tree plantings, tree parties, and permaculture gardens penetrating into the heart of the asphalt heated city of Perth. A "Buyer-Logical" wood campaign could smack Bunnings with some eco-responsibility too.

Australia, as a continent still wild at its core, is a key piece in the struggle of democracy vs "economic development," of wilderness vs resource extraction. Australia is an integral part of the West's treasure trove of minerals which supports the arms industries, industrialization and the globalizing efforts of multinationals.

If you're planning a trip to Western Australia, Giblett needs you. Please contact me at SEAC to help build an Australian/American Forest Alliance so that the Giblett victory will ripple into our struggles in North America.