Hi kenny

"paper has to come from somewhere" Correct, but have you ever spent time in a Mountain Ash rainforest? Its a humbling experience. These trees are 70 or 80 m high - to give you an idea, most trees you see in a urban context are well under 30m. I get such a feeling of peace i find it hard to imagine anyone doing the same thing and not feeling compassion for the life there.

We already farm our food and textiles, why not farm our paper? There is enough existing cleared land for plantation pulp that we need not destroy complex ecosystems... It is simply cowboy colonialism. The reasoning for old-growth destruction is two-fold - firstly, get what you can in the clearfell, then get cheap, easy, un-weed-infested land for your plantations afterward. Its a criminal land-grab.

Mule

Get over this old-growth claptrap. The opponents of the pulp mill (and anything related to forestry in Tasmania) distort the facts and claim any area of native forest that is harvested is:
a) old growth;
b) it is permanently cleared.

The truth (I know it hurts) is that it is neither. In fact the majority of the chattering classes that oppose the use of wood to provide timber in its various forms (paper, cardboard, newsprint, etc)live and work in areas that are permanently cleared - they are now concrete jungles. They use forest roads to access areas they protest about. They use and read newspapers to make their opposition clear and they visit supermarkets and buy 80% of their products packaged in materials made from wood fibre. The hypocracy is not only breathtaking, it is offensive.

The pulp mill issue is simply a NIMBY one and Peter Henning from the Tamar Valley personifies this.