So Julia Gillard has declared that she wants the parties who started the so-called Tasmanian forest peace process “to do everything they can to use their abilities to silence those who haven’t gone with the mainstream consensus”.

To silence.

Nippon, owners of the Eden woodchip mill and the Maryvale pulp and paper factory that makes Reflex paper, recently announced it will be building a cellulose nano-fibers production facility using wood pulp as the raw material. These fibres are supposed to have special qualities like high elasticity, barrier performance to gas, including oxygen, can be used as reinforcements and thickeners. Nippon says that being from plant fibres, they are eco-friendly.

Addressing markets worth more than $130 billion worldwide, researchers say that lignin from trees could become the main renewable aromatic resource for the chemical industry in the future. The first opportunity could emerge as early as 2015 from the direct substitution of phenol in most of its industrial applications: phenolic resins, surfactants, epoxy resins, adhesives or polyester.

Many of our supporters who recently wrote to Planet Ark about its support of logging native forests http://environmentaledge.com.au/wood/ received a fairly patronizing response. Planet Ark has been sucked in to the logging lobby groups’ spin and regurgitated this back at us. It was unfortunate they never asked for a briefing from green groups or forest campaigners, but simply swallowed the logging industry spin. Planet Ark claims that if HCV and old growth are protected the rest can be logged, if it’s done under some certification scheme. Well, actually, it can’t be.

More news has surfaced regarding Planet Ark turning Judas and working against our environment.

Planet Ark accepted $700,000 from the logging industry group Forest Wood Products Australia and then began running their ad campaign for them.

Planet Ark or Dark as some say - famous for loo paper, soap powder and advocating we recycle our Xmas cards - has accepted a large parcel of cash from the logging industry, in exchange for its ‘green’ endorsement of forest destruction.


No genuine green group would go near the AFS with a bottle of phenyle. But we hear that Planet Dark was in dire financial straits so sold their light green soul for some dark green paper. The logging industry thus bagged a cheap ‘enviro’ group to give AFS certified native forest timber some green cred.

CSIRO research funds given to logging lobby group

We recently asked the CSIRO to cancel its $10,000 membership to Australia’s national logging lobby group, Australian Forests Products Association (formerly NAFI) as it was inappropriate and against the charter for the CSIRO.

GOOGLE has been accused of stifling free speech after it banned an ad attacking a paper manufacturer over its environmental record.

The Wilderness Society paid to have its ad on Google promoting a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old-growth forests.

Hats off to Minister Jennings for turning his Department into the ALP's propaganda office. When the DSE asked part of the Department to do a survey for endangered animals in East Gippsland, the Departmental staff were so poorly resourced that they didn't have enough time to do the work properly.

It’s the kind of destruction we’re used to hearing about in the rainforests of South-east Asia, not in our own backyard. The Auditor General’s investigation into the Yalmy Road illegal logging during the 2003 fires, was released in early May 2004.