Saving Native forests from logging

Interesting post on Facebook about the fight to ban logging of Native Forests in NZ https://www.facebook.com/brad.windust/posts/10155002842701565 for those not on facebook i've pasted the text "When we Stopped Native Logging." By Dean Baigent-Mercer. This month, it is the 20th anniversary of the announcement that a new group called Native Forest Action had occupied Charleston Forest on the West Coast which, among many other native forests, was being logged by Government logging company Timberlands West Coast Ltd. Around 20 of us had sneaked into Charleston Forest under dark and drizzle to the call of great spotted kiwi a few nights before. A few navigated by compass and maps, the rest of us had no idea where we were, whether we'd get lost, be attacked, fall down a bank or be successful. It wasn't glamorous. It got the heart racing and bloody wet. It was the beginning of something that changed everyone who was involved. We were hidden and had pitched tents across uncomfortable roots on a steep slope in Charleston Forest. The other side of the ridge was where Timberlands' loggers had been felling centuries-old rimu and kahikatea the week before, on a downhill slope to Madman's Creek (its real name!). The next day some of the keener activists scrambled over the treacherous broken forest to standing trees. Here they tied white ribbons around the impressive rimu trunks and stapled notices warning that the forest was occupied and chopping down trees could endanger people's lives. The forest stunk of rimu sap bleeding from ancient stumps and logs. As the loggers drove up to go to work they were greeted by some friendly Native Forest Action crew who gave them boxes of chocolates and explained our issue wasn't with them but with the Government - and that they wouldn't be logging today. In the forest we had food rations for a few weeks, friends in a kombi van far out at the road-end that we could contact a few times a day and others at a 'media base': a ramshackle local bach. From here we got the message out to the world. We were pretty naive. We thought that based on the fact that Stephen King and friends had saved Pureora Forest in 1979 from destruction after a 3-day totara treetop occupation, that the Jim Bolger/Winston Peters (National/NZ First) Government of the day would have stopped the West Coast rimu logging within 3 weeks max... No such luck! In the following 5-6 years, our bid to save those forests became an arm wrestle of national proportions. All sorts of people were involved in large and little ways across the country. A coalition of the Buller Conservation Group, Forest & Bird and Native Forest Action campaigned hard. A funky Native Forest Action office was set up in Nelson which ran on love and donations from people who cared. In Wellington the poor little fax machine I was given got a thrashing (you didn't email media releases back then you'd fax them to reporters one at a time!). Over years, the core group of activists from around the country had wonderful planning meetings sitting around campfires in the Pelorus bush and elsewhere planning for our next flurry of activities. We didn't realise some of us would risk arrest and life (in one case), be pitted against a vicious well-funded (by the taxpayer) anti-environmental PR campaign, and a determined new Prime Minister Jenny Shipley who wanted the logging to go ahead. The main cities came alive with creative campaign posters that often changed and were pasted up in the middle night (we were pretty messy by the time we got home). There were were many twists: Sticks of dynamite were planted on a logging helicopter and blamed on Native Forest Action Somebody leaked Timberlands’ beech forest logging plans to us which we released with Forest & Bird, ECO, Jeanette Fitzsimmons of the Green Party and Helen Clark, Labour Party Leader (in Opposition at the time) A judicial review of the West Coast Accord was carried out Nicky Hager's book 'Secrets and Lies (The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign)' helped turn the 1999 election into chaos and forced political parties to declare their positions on the logging. (This book was based on the biggest leak - at the time - internationally of a sleazy global PR company's internal documents showing how they were undermining conservation groups and manipulating local people and media - among many other things) West Coast native forest logging became a defining election issue in 1999 where Labour won and National got dumped - in large part for their support for the logging of ancient native forests. After the election Helen Clark and Pete Hodgson worked to end the logging, first culling the massive planned expansion of beech forest logging, then the (mostly) rimu logging (known rather nicely as ‘the Buller Overcut’) 130,000 ha of native forests were eventually added to in Kahurangi, Westland and Paparoa National Parks and other protected reserves The West Coast got a $135 million compensation package So eventually we won. We saved those 42 ancient forests, home to threatened species like rowi/Okarito brown kiwi, kaka and kakariki. These forests are absolutely incredible places of international significance. One of the original t-shirts Thanks to all who contributed: you all know you are and what you did! Keep telling the stories of what happened so people don't forget. The campaign to save these forests were was life changing for many of us. Over the life of the campaign there were probably hundreds of people who considered themselves to be part of Native Forest Action (NFA). Our work built on the successful campaigns to protect native forests (from clearfell logging and the use of petroleum jelly (ie napalm) that was used to wipe out native forests for pine plantations) a generation earlier. Those efforts led to the establishment of Westland, Paparoa and Kahurangi National Parks and other conservation areas. None of the protected conservation areas we now have happened by themselves. It took all took a lot of dedication, passion, stress, creativity, sacrifice, strategy, connections and most of all love from many, many people. We shouldn't take that for granted and must continue to look after these areas. With a healthy dose of naive optimism and a lot of determination, we helped change what seemed like an impossible situation. You can too. Go for it! Dean Baigent-Mercer (once upon a time, a National Spokesperson for Native Forest Action) PS - For many of that small group of young people who started with the occupation, and for many of the hundreds who joined them in the following years, Native forest Action was their first taste of activism. Many of those people are still, right now, working on issues in their communities and, some, even on a global scale. Who could have known?