Veteran environmentalist and activist Bob Brown has been arrested in the Styx Valley of Tasmania whilst defending forests just 200 metres away from a World Heritage Area.

 

When asked to move on from the active logging coupe, Brown said ‘I’m staying here because these forests are World Heritage value, and it is illegal under international law to be destroying forests that are World Heritage value’. 

 

 

Brown was arrested alongside two other protesters who violated bail conditions after previous arrests for protesting to defend native forests. One of them is Dr Colette Harmsen, who spent three months in prison last year and was Tasmania’s first woman to be jailed for environmental activism.

From the back of a police paddy wagon, Brown told reporters that Forestry Tasmania had already cut down four or five giant Eucalyptus regnans trees, the tallest flowering plant in the world. Brown reports that one of the trees was over 3.3m in diameter.  

The Styx Valley is in southern lutruwita/Tasmania and is a crucial habitat for the critically endangered Swift parrot. Just weeks ago, Tasmania’s Supreme Court granted the Bob Brown Foundation’s appeal to halt logging for a small, specific area west of Geeveston.  

It comes just days before 200 runners will take to the trails of takayna/Tarkine rainforest to support the Bob Brown Foundation’s campaign to have these native forests added to the World Heritage Area and returned to First Nations ownership. Runners have already raised over $220,000 to support the campaign.

 

Photos by Bob Brown Foundation

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