Protesters have once again brought logging operations in the West Kunanyi Range to a standstill by suspending themselves from trees and machinery.
Maya, a 23-year-old member of the Grassroots Action Network Tasmania (GRANT), is currently perched 40 metres above the ground in a tree-sit attached to machinery at the site, effectively preventing any logging work.
The action comes after another GRANT protester, 28-year-old Hughie, last week suspended himself from a 9-metre structure tied to logging vehicles in the range, before police attended and work recommenced shortly afterwards.
Maya says she is taking a stand against the “unhinged and unregulated extractivist machine” of the forestry industry.

“It is one of the great harbingers of injustice on this island, injustice done to the environment, to First Peoples, to local people and to the connections that we all share with each other,” she said.
“Like us, forests need connection and no amount of supposedly selective logging or ‘ecological corridors’ created by Forestry Tasmania can ever substitute for old growth.”

“The main product from native forest logging? Woodchips for export to Asia. What do we get out of it? Community conflict and the desecration of sacred ecosystems,” the group said.
Today’s action is part of 20 days of protests called by Pakana Elder Uncle Jim Everett in the lead-up to Australia Day.
Sustainable Timber Tasmania last week said each time protesters disrupt logging works, emergency services are diverted “away from the community” and present “a safety risk for both responders and protesters”.
Liberal MP Felix Ellis has slammed the actions by the “radical activists” as “completely unethical”.
“We have strong anti-workplace invasion legislation here in Tasmania and it’s simply not on to be stopping people going to work legitimately in any of our productive industries.”