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Outside Magazine, June 2005

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The Hard Way
Bush Bashing (cont.)

"LET ME FIRST SAY that there are no plans to clear-fell any more of the north side of the Styx that you visited," Steve Whiteley, a district manager for Forestry Tasmania, tells me in their offices a week after our hike.

"We're also not going to clear-fell where the Wilderness Society set up its Global Rescue Station," Whiteley adds.

(This, apparently, is news to the Wilderness Society. When I relay it to Geoff Law later that day, he leaps up and gives me a hug. "They've never said that before!" It's a small victory for the activists—but no guarantee for the rest of the Styx.)

"But we will keep harvesting approximately 300 hectares [740 acres] of forest from the Styx per year," Whiteley continues. "The Tasmanian parliament has set a quota of 300,000 cubic meters of quality eucalypt sawlogs and veneer for Tasmania. Our approach is to have a small level of activity over a larger area. The last thing we want to do is to put undue pressure on any particular area."

According to Whiteley, Forestry Tasmania is trying to balance industry needs with conservation. It has decided that any tree over 279 feet tall will be spared from cutting and provided a buffer from the napalm. Yet a survey published in the December 2000 issue of Forestry Tasmania's Tasforests found that the majority of the island's giants have a height just below this figure—suggesting that it's merely a bone thrown to the environmentalists.

So what percentage of harvested old-growth forest in the Styx River Valley is turned into sawlogs?

"Twenty percent," says Whiteley. "The rest is just residue, and most of it is wood-chipped."

Weeks after the interview, I learn three profound facts. First, in 2003–04, Forestry Tasmania harvested 357,088 cubic meters of quality eucalypt sawlogs and veneer, nearly 20 percent above the mandated quota. Second, the Styx provided only 27,862 cubic meters of this wood; so if the quota was exceeded, why log the Styx at all? Finally, the quota itself was set in 1920, and the logging industry has managed to keep it unchanged for 85 years.

Back in 1920, the Tasmanian tiger was still alive.

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