A group of protesters from the Bob Brown Foundation have staged a dramatic protest in front of a large crowd at a Hobart food festival overnight.
The activists stormed the Street Eats @ Franko event in Franklin Square on Friday, lighting fiery flares as they stood on the steps of the Treasury and Finance building.
They collectively called for an end to post-logging forestry burns in Tasmania, which they say fill Tasmania’s air with toxic fumes and destroy the state’s native environment.
The stunt comes as the foundation launches a new website that monitors logging and burning activities in native forests across the state.
Forest Watch aims to bring transparency and accountability to the logging practices of Sustainable Timber Tasmania, including details on the burns’ climate, health and wildlife impacts.
“Our message to the public is that your government deliberately lights these fires after destroying native forests, and they must be banned,” the foundation’s Jenny Weber said.
“Using satellite surveillance, government and citizen science data, we are holding Forestry Tasmania to account by showing what goes on behind locked gates in Tasmania.”
Weber said if the logging and burning of the native forests currently profiled on their website had not happened, the forests would have continued to absorb 95,405 tonnes of carbon each year.
“Instead, Tasmania’s government has damaged the climate with harmful emissions after logging and burning these forests,” she said.
