Veteran environmentalist Bob Brown has been fined $500 for trespassing during a protest against logging that he calls a “death sentence” for the critically endangered swift parrot.
The 79-year-old was arrested in 2022 on Sustainable Timber Tasmania land at Snow Hill near Lake Leake alongside fellow activists Karen Weldrick and Kristy Alger, who had locked themselves to logging machinery.
Police took the trio into custody after they refused to comply with forestry staff’s requests to detach from machinery and leave the area.
In Hobart Magistrates Court on Wednesday, Brown was fined $500, with no conviction recorded.
Alger received a $1,600 fine and was convicted of trespassing.
After sentencing, Brown dismissed claims that the protest had endangered lives, despite the deployment of a search and rescue team from Launceston to free the two women with an angle grinder.
He argued that the logging, not the protest, was the root cause of the incident.
“That logging was illegal and search and rescue were called to an illegal activity. Had the illegal logging not occurred, they wouldn’t have been there,” Brown said.
“This critically endangered creature was having its habitat destroyed.”
“When people are told that those creatures are there, the law of Tasmania states that logging must cease, but it didn’t.”
Brown also announced his intention to appeal the court’s decision.
“I was inclined not to appeal because we’ve got so much forest protection to be undertaken. But for the swift parrots, for the forest and indeed for my good companions, I will be appealing,” he said.
“It comes down to the fact that the swift parrots were there, the logging should have stopped, none of this would have occurred, including calling out search and rescue.”
“The fault lies with the loggers and the whole establishment … The wrong people are being fined. The wrong people are being impugned.”
The Tasmanian Greens have applauded the protest activity.
“The only way to stop forests defenders defying laws that would see our wild places destroyed is for the Rockliff Government to follow the lead of other states and bring native forest logging to an end,” leader Rosalie Woodruff said.
