Forestry Corporation Locked Out. Access roads into the FC HQ have been blocked by a tree-sit and human padlock. Calls for Forestry Corporation to be shut down permanently.
13 March 2023 – Forest advocates and defenders from across NSW have united in Sydney to shut down Forestry Corporation’s headquarters in Pennant Hills this morning . With more than 40 areas of NSW forests currently closed due to logging operations, activists have closed both roads leading to Forestry HQ to raise attention to the wanton and profitless destruction of public native forests across NSW.
“There are now more than 40 State Forest areas closed to the public. Most are closed to avoid public scrutiny of destructive logging operations,”
said spokesperson Sean O’Shannassy.
Greens MP Sue Higginson and spokesperson for the environment said
“Forestry Corporation has been closing public native forests all across NSW to keep communities in the dark about the damage that is being caused in these precious places.
“I have been on the frontline of forest defence myself and I have represented countless other forest defenders through the courts as they seek to protect the environment from senseless destruction.
“The actions by forest defenders this morning is a natural and noteworthy reaction to their experiences of being locked out of public forests while the Forestry Corporation destroys the environment, pollutes the waterways and directly drives the climate crisis.
“NSW has the highest rates of extinction in the country and the Forestry Corporation is directly driving these extinctions through destruction of habitat in forests that are either struggling to recover from the 2019/20 bushfires or are the last remaining unburnt areas in the landscape.
“Forestry Corporation needs to see and hear the community opposition to their operations in NSW public native forests, this is why their headquarters are this morning being blocked by protestors in tree sits.
“If the Government and Forestry Corporation don’t start to wind back logging operations in public native forests then they have to be prepared for communities to take matters into their own hands.
“When governments don’t listen and ignore the facts, brave people will engage in legitimate and nonviolent direct action to protect the environment. The Forestry Corporation is vandalising our public native forests estate and people have had enough. For action on climate and to reverse the extinction crisis, we must end the logging of our public native forests now and do whatever it takes to preserve these forests for the future,”
Ms Higginson said.
Juliet Lamont, arrested only a few months ago trying to protect high quality koala habitat in Yarratt State Forest, north of Taree, said:
“Forestry Corporation’s native forest logging operates at a loss. It cost NSW taxpayers almost $30 million in the last two years. This doesn’t count the cost in damage to roads from logging trucks, erosion and stream sedimentation, the decrease in regional water supplies and the loss of the most efficient carbon capture and storage mechanism we know- big trees.
“The loss to our native wildlife is irreparable. Habitat components being removed cannot be replaced for, in some cases, centuries.
“The people of NSW would be better off if the Forestry Corporation of NSW were to be disbanded. That would save us a fortune and give animals like koalas a fighting chance of survival.
“If the Forestry Corporation were to log this forest here at Pennant Hills the way they are logging public forests elsewhere, people would be horrified and outraged and the whole community would be here blocking the road. Because the logging happens largely out of sight, down the end of dirt roads, it’s not in the public eye.
“We’re here from the regions to say, we’ve seen what they are doing, and it has to stop,”
Ms Lamont said.
Concerned members of forest defence groups from around NSW, shut access to their headquarters in Pennant Hills and call for Forestry Corporation to be shut down permanently.
Sean O’Shannassy said:
“The NSW government of Domenic Perrottet allows the Forestry Corporation to operate like a dictatorship. They are secretive and intolerant of dissent. They run a sophisticated propaganda machine aimed at greenwashing the devastation they create in our public forests.
“This rogue Government owned corporation routinely ignores increasingly urgent calls from communities around the state for an end to native forest logging and protection of our increasingly threatened wildlife.
“I am here for my month old grandson, because he can’t be here for himself. I want there to still be koalas in the wild when he gets to my age. It is essential that we all take urgent action to give our kids a safe future.
“We are in the midst of a climate emergency and extinction crisis. Forests help stabilise our climate, both by absorbing carbon, regulating water supplies, and cooling the land. Every truckload of logs ripped out of our native forests threatens the possibility of a safe future.
“I was arrested here 30 years ago, opposing the destruction of our dwindling old growth forests. Clearly this rogue Corporation continues to operate above the law as a fiefdom of the National Party. Despite the devastating bushfires, wood supply contracts were renewed with no public or parliamentary scrutiny. That is criminal in my view and demands a public response,”
Sean O’Shannassy
