Click on images to enlarge. Images: Matthew Newton

Media Release 24 April 2012 – Call for ban on forest burns, climate and health hazard, Flare Protest and online action in Tasmania

Huon Valley Environment Centre has today launched a campaign with a protest flare on Hobart’s Parliament lawns.  Members of the community let off twenty flares on the lawns of the state parliament.

“The community has demonstrated today to call for a ban on the environmentally disastrous logging burns. The so called “regeneration burns” turn the world’s cleanest air into a health hazard. The entire state of Tasmania has to suffer air pollution and climate impacts, because Forestry Tasmania and the logging industry continue to pursue the archaic, ecologically unsound practice of logging and burning in the forests,” Jenny Weber said.

Huon Valley Environment Centre today launched an online action that will provide citizens the avenue to write to the State and Federal Ministers for Health and the Environment and the respective Attorneys General, calling on them to introduce legislation to ban the practice of “regeneration burns” in Tasmania.

“Tasmania needs a breath of fresh air and the Huon Valley Environment Centre is calling for a ban on the forestry industry’s “regeneration burns,” Huon Valley Environment Centre’s Jenny Weber said.

“We oppose the wasteful practice of polluting the clean air, threatening our health and environment and damaging the clean green brand of Tasmania,” Jenny Weber said

“Forestry Tasmania’s clearfall and burn method is destroying the natural forest ecology to turn it into a loggers wonderland, at the same time that it is dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and polluting people’s lungs with particulates that are injurious to health,” Jenny Weber said.

Link to the cyber action http://banforestryburns.good.do
Link to background briefing www.huon.org/bantheburns
News article of flare action, with video