A broad alliance of residents, businesspeople, Aborigines, farmers, 
"ferals" and environmentalists in Apollo Bay on Victoria's Great Ocean 
Road have joined forces against a local logging company, the State 
Government and the multinational tissue-paper manufacturer 
Kimberly-Clark over plans to log 4kms of state forest in one of Victoria's 
major tourism destinations.



The central claims are that logging causes erosion and landslides, 
pollutes the town's water supply, make the forest susceptible to invasion 
by diseases, threatening biodiversity and that logged areas are unsightly 
and deter valuable tourism. Kimberly-Clark and the Victorian government 
deny any wrongdoing.



The target of the proposed logging is the Wild Dog Creek Ridge, 
overlooking Apollo Bay township facing south to Antarctica, one of the
 southernmost points of the Australian mainland. 



Farmers in the Apollo Bay Landcare Group, "ferals" and
 conservationists in the Otway Regional Environment Network and the 
Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce are organising their strategy over 
winter, when the loggers can't work in the forest and have begun a 
boycott campaign against Kimberly-Clark products such as Kleenex 
tissues.

Fourteen protestors were arrested February 3 and charged with 
hindering forestry operations. They are due to appear in Colac 
Magistrates Court on May 5.


But according to Apollo Bay Landcare Group spokesman, Roger 
Hardley, the arrests are nothing compared to what will happen if the 
logging companies don't change their plans. He says the State 
government has approved logging operations that breech its own 
principles and guidelines.


Mr Hardley supplied The Republican with a Landcare Group document
 tendered to the Victorian Minister for Natural Resources and 
Environment, Ms Marie Tehan,  from Mr Dennis Williamson, who was 
employed by the State Government from 1977 to 1984 to establish the
 Victoria's visual management system for natural and rural landscapes.

 
Mr Williamson says "serious errors exist" in the Department's 
assessment of the area to be logged and that the type of logging 
operations proposed "will not satisfy DNRE's own Visual Quality 
Objectives."


It concludes: "Given high local resident concerns and tourism values in
 the area, the proposed timber harvests are of very serious concern and
 should receive further review before operations proceed, with the result
 that such operations may be significantly modified or halted altogether," 
Williamson concludes.


The official Victorian State government response to The Republican's
 inquiry was "No comment." 


Sceptical of gaining a favorable hearing with the Department, which is 
said to be more concerned for the estimated $4million in logging royalties 
than the Otways $90 million tourism industry, local residents have begun action against paper manufacturer Kimberly-Clarke.


Kimberly-Clark has taken full-page advertisements in local newspapers 
to make the case for logging. The company denies that Otways logging 
is primarily for its benefit, while admitting that it is the single largest 
customer, by volume if not by value. A company spokesperson said his
 company would be out of the Otways by 2000 .


And the advertisements themselves have become part of the 
controversy OREN spokesperson Mr Simon Birrell says the advertisment
 is "misleading" with the company sourcing its product from clear-felling 
coupes where "every tree is taken".


The boycott of Kimberly-Clark products has begun under the slogan 
"Don't wipe your bum on the Otways Native Forest."


ends news text

c copyright David Langsam 1997 

"We don't want to be at loggerheads with the loggerheads, but if it's war they want, then war it will be" - Roger Hardley, Apollo Bay Landcare Group spokesperson

The meeting in the Otway State forest was the strangest
coalition since Syria, Saudi Arabia and Israel joined George
Bush for the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. Fourteen
people had been arrested attempting to prevent logging
operations the previous Monday and more than 50 locals had
turned up for a Saturday afternoon meeting in the forest - a
sizeable number for a small Victorian country town.

The Framlingham Aboriginal Community has local jurisdiction
for the Otways  and is ciurrently in discussions with
Victorian Premier Jeffrey Kennett on proposed “regional
agreements”.

Framlingham elder, Mr Geoff Clarke, a Commisioner on Native
Title with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Commission -  said the area has been surveyed and there are
“extensive Aboriginal sites in the forest”.

Mr Clarke said there were not enough old growth forests and
they needed to be maintained and managed better than they
are.

“The Aboriginal principle is one of sustainability and what
is driving the loggers is not sustainability, but commercial
greed.”

ATSIC was involved in discussions with Premier Kennett on
“regional agreements” including management and environmental
issues, he said.

“Then we’d be the ones to decide forest management. Regional
agreements bring benefits to the peole living there rather
than others coming in and taking all the profit out. It’s
the only way to get power back to the people,” Mr Clarke
said.

As if to emphasize that any place known as Wild Dog Creek
Ridge should be preserved simply on its name alone,
"ferals", conservative conservationists, Landcare group
members, farmers, Apollo Bay townspeople and the Apollo Bay
Chamber of Commerce were united in their opposition to
proposals by Kimberly Clark - manufacturers of Kleenex
tissues (no recycled content) -  to log four kilometres of
native trees, along with the rare tiger quolls, powerful
owls and everything else in the near prisitine habitat.

Speakers at the meeting said that tourism brought $90
million a year to the region and the logging operation - 60
percent for pulp and 40 percent for saw logs - would make
about $2million for the overseas owners of Kimberly-Clark.
To add insult to injury, the timber cutting crews are from
East Gippsland and Tasmania, and there is no local labor,
other than at the Colac sawmill.

While the gathering was divided on what alternatives were
acceptable, the proposal to clearfell a strip along the
ridge 27m wide by 4kms long was rejected unanimously. Some
said logging would damage the contiguity of the temperate
rainforest, others were concerned at what the desecrated
ridge would do for tourists wishing to visit the Great Ocean
Road, one of Victoria's leading tourism destinations.

A member of the Landcare Group had discovered that buried in
the fine print the logging company had the right to cut five
"loading bays" 10m deep into the forest per kilometre - one
every 200 metres of the four kilometres.

The spokesperson for the Landcare Group, Mr Roger Hardley,
said he had 1500 signatures on a petition sent to the
Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, Ms Marie
Tehan, opposing the logging operation and he had "never seen
the community galvanize like this". Ms Tehan's office's
reponse to the issue was: "No comment."

Mr Hardley said the Code of Forest Practice, drawn up by the
Victorian State Government had been ignored by both the
loggers and the policing authority. He said the Department
was approving licences against its own proposals and that
government departments - although "spooked" by the publicity
- were not abiding by their own guidelines and were in
breech of the Wild Dog Creek Landscape Study prepared by the
Department in 1986.

"The loggers have contravened the Code of Forest Practice a
number of times.  It's the logging bible and they just
ignore it. They are skating on thin ice," Mr Hardley said.

He said there were serious concerns from the community over
tourism income being lost by the destruction, as well as the
irreversible damage to the flora and fauna.

"All logging down here is clearfelling. There's no selective
logging," Mr Hardley said. "We don't really have a problem
with selective logging - we are reasonable people who are
residents and farmers," he said.

The Wild Dog Creek Ridge has been classified "Zone A" which
requires "all logging to to be inevident within 12 months"
which Mr Hardley says is simply impossible.

He said the Apollo Bay Landcare Group had grants amounting
to $15,000 from State and Federal governments to repair a
land slip caused by soil erosion in turn caused by logging
operations. The project was the 1995 Keep Australia
Beautiful Council's most effective Landcare Project in
Victoria and "thousands of hours of local labor had gone
into the repair and replanting work".

"It is directly opposite where they intend to clearfell the
east face of the Wild Dog Creek Ridge, which is prime Zone A
high sensitivity level 1, to turn it into Kleenex and
Wondersoft dunny rolls. We would put it to consumers to
choose carefully," Mr Hardley said.

He said the Landcare Group strongly supported the Geelong
Environment Council's proposal to expand the Otways National
Park to include the Wild Dog and the East and West Barham
valleys.

Apart from the destruction of the Wild Dog Creek Ridge and
its visual impact on tourism and local enjoyment of the
Apollo Bay hinterland, Mr Hardley says plans to log to
within 50 metres of sensitive rainforest areas contradicts
"the best scientific view that 350-500 metres is the nearest
you can go without causing damage".

Without protection, trees become susceptible to damage and
then fungal attacks, threatening the forest and its
biodiversity. According to Mr Hardley, he had to use the
Freedom of Information Act to obtain a Victorian Government
study showing the extent of myrtle wilt which affects the
myrtle beech trees in the Otways. He said it was a fight to
obtain documents from the Department that he says proves the
case against the logging operations.

Mr Hardley piled government documents on his table quoting
from them liberally and accusing the Department of not
abiding by its own published reports and recommendations.

"It's like playing Collingwood at home, four quarters
against the wind and they're moving the goalposts," Mr
Hardley said. "I mean they oppose their own documents."

"We don't want to be at loggerheads with the loggerheads.
We'll talk, but if it's war that they want, then war it will
be."

Documents show that the total log for the area is 100,000
tonnes of which 60,000 is for woodchips with Kimberly-Clark
purchasing 44,000 tonnes of "residual logs".

"The economics underlying this is a massive taxpayer subsidy
to the timber industry, 60 percent of which is for dunny
rolls in a time of economic rationalism -it's ludicrous," Mr
Hardley said.

When The Republican inspected the area a fortnight ago, the
winds ripped through the clearfelled areas, where large
numbers of logs had been burnt and left to rot. Nearby, in
the dense forest, everything was still. The impact of a
curtain of trees is palpable.

A tree-farmer with 20 years experience in the area,
including work as a timber cutter, Mr Ken Forrester,
estimated the waste of good quality logs was hundreds, even
thousands of dollars. The holder of a "Master Tree Growers"
certificate from the University of Melbourne, he dismissed
claims that woodchipping merely cleaned up the forest floor
and removed waste and debris. He said the timber crews know
exactly what they are after and ignore the rest. When they
replant, it is only with trees that they want to harvest.

The president of the Friends of Otway National Park, Ms Judi
Forrester, who has international visitors to her Otway Herb
Nursery above the Wild Dog, says the logging threatens the
entire ecology of the area.

"The Wild Dog, West Barham and East Barham are amongst the
best mountain streams in Victoria and should be incorporated
into the National Park to provide a really effective
wildlife corridor between the existing national park and the
flora and fauna reserves to the north of Turton's Track," Ms
Forrester said.

She said the West Barham still contains the largest area of
pre-invasion Mountain Ash forest in the Otways, with trees
growing up to six metres in diameter and 100 metres high.

"It's important to have the free movement of a full range of
animals and birds to maintain species variety through
interbreeding. Just as important as the wildlife corridor,
is the preservation of the rainforest in the valleys which
are the eastern most rainforest in the Otways.

"Because they are long ribbons of rainforest they are very
vulnerable," Ms Forrester said.

Ken Forrester says it takes nearly 100 years for trees to
regrow to create the high canopy and the ecosystem requires
trees of varying ages to provide the array of habitats.

"The integrity of the forest  starts at the top of the hill
and if they break the integrity by clearing the top, the
movement of soil, humus and detritus will have a detrimental
effect on the gully populations," Mr Forrester said. "The
waves of sediment changes the soil composition radically,
damaging the existing life forms and having a cumulative
effect and increasing water turbidity in the streams," Mr
Forrester said.

The environmental manager at Kimberley Clark Australia, Dr
Harley Wright, says his company is merely buying material
from the loggers and has no part in the operations. He says
any criticism of the operations should be taken up with
either the logging companies or the Victorian government.

"We're not the ones logging it. The logging operations are
authorised by the [State] government," Dr Wright said

He said that less than two percent of the forested area was
being harvested and it was a "fully sustainable operation".

"Clearfelling might upset some people, but forests grow
back," Dr Wright said.

He said Kimberly-Clark had been taking material from the
Otways since 1992 and the area had been logged for more than
100 years. Opponents point out that it is only in recent
times that clearfelling operations have been conducted. Dr
Wright agreed his company might be the single largest
purchaser by volume of material, but disputed whether it was
by value of timber. He said Kimberly-Clark was only taking
the bottom grade timber residual logs, forestry waste and
saw mill waste

Dr Wright said that Kimberly-Clark was working towards self
sufficiency in plantation pine and eucalypt and expected to
no longer take timber from the Otways by 2000. He said
Kimberly-Clark was aware of the growing boycott of its
products in the Otways, "but not sure why they are
targetting us".

"We don't want to be associated with a badly-run operation.
We don't like the objections, but we believe the [State]
government is operating it satisfactorily at this stage," Dr
Wright said.

ends main feature

c copyright David Langsam 1997

One of the most troubling ramifications of the logging operations has 
been the destruction of the water supply to Apollo Bay, causing 1,000 
residents and up to 200,000 tourists to buy imported bottled water.


Following the logging of the West Barham - the water catchment for 
Apollo Bay - water quality dropped from "crystal clear" to undrinkable, 
according to Judi Forrester of the Otway Herb Nursery.


"Apollo Bay has excellent water up intil the late '70s when clearfalling 
was commenced. By the time it was brought to a halt in 1986, 
approximately half of the catchment had been subject to clearfalling and 
there was a radical effect on the water quality, becoming muddy and 
with high e. coli levels," Ms Forrester said.


"They've had to introduce expensive treatment processes, water rates 
went up to cover the costs and the town water is now considered 
undrinkable," Ms Forrester said.


"So instead of drinking natural clear mountain spring water, it's like 
drinking from a chlorinated swimming pool," Ken Forrester added.


He said that apart from the daily impact on the 1,000 permanent 
residents of Apollo Bay, up to 30,000 visitors come to Apollo Bay in 
summer and more than 200,000 in a full year -  "and they have to buy 
water in bottles from Europe".


c Copyright David Langsam 1997