I believe that you have done yourself and your readers a great disservice in airing Richard Flanagan's extremism in ‘Gunns: Out of Control'. I would also question the wisdom of a magazine for 'free thinkers' publishing an updated cut and paste of a rant that was aired previously in a 2004 Bulletin article ‘The Rape of Tasmania' (Vol. 121 No. 6403). Substantial passages of that article have been simply repeated word for word in ‘Out of Control.'

As a forester with 30 years experience - including six years in Tasmania - I view such writing with a far more critical eye than most readers. I have come to appreciate that - to paraphrase a famous quote - the first casualty of anti-forestry extremism is proportionality. Flanagan typifies this by failing to give any sense of proportion to his environmental claims. For example, not once has he mentioned that Tasmania has the highest rate of forest reservation in the world, or that 87% of its 'old growth' forests (or over a million hectares) are already reserved. To mention such things would make a nonsense of his central claim that "the rape of Tasmania will continue until one day, like so much else that was precious, its great forests will belong only to myth."

Of course, Flanagan simply waves away the presence of such critically important information by informing readers that "the forestry industry and the Tasmanian government withold key information, fudge definitions ... and distort statistics to prevent the truth ... becoming publicly known ..."However, the reality is somewhat different. Anyone with access to the internet can easily obtain forestry relevant information from Federal government sites such as the Bureau of Rural Sciences or ABARE'S forest and wood products quarterly statistics. Flanagan is determined to make this a world issue - as he says "... an environmental catastrophe of global significance," but again a sense of proportion is lacking. From 1996-2001, the average area of Tasmania's old growth harvest was 1400 hectares per annum. Time prevents me from finding more current figures, but the current harvesting rate may be several thousand hectares per year, which is then regenerated as new forest. Compare this with Brazil - in the year to August 2004, 2.6 million hectares of Amazonian rainforest was permanently cleared and replaced with soy bean farms and cattle ranches. Tasmanian forest management is obviously far from a global issue.

In the face of on-going public misrepresentations of the magnitude expressed by activists such as Flanagan, there is realistically little that the Tasmanian government or local wood-based industries can do to hold back the tide of adverse public opinion. Certainly complaining to an appropriate media watchdog could draw the satisfaction of some public retractions, but few amongst the general public could be expected to notice these let alone be moved to change their mind. Pushed into a corner, it is hardly surprising that, as Flanagan has reported, there is anger and frustration directed against those such as himself, whose opinions are promoting a distorted view of the reality.

That Tasmania's native forests bear little resemblance to the dire state portrayed by its most extreme critics, supports Flanagan's notion that this is no longer an environmental issue. Like most opposition to the very limited logging that now occurs throughout Australia, it seems to be rooted largely in the cultural values of increasingly urbanised populations with a romanticised view of nature. Its increased intensity in Tasmania seems to have coincided with increased migration of urban ‘mainlanders' that appears to be an important factor in a developing ‘not-in-my-backyard' clique that makes it well nigh impossible to make major infrastructure projects a reality. Currently, it is Tasmania's pulp mill, soon it may well be a Victorian desalination plant that no-one wants to live near - after all seaside property values and idyllic lifestyles are at stake - dying of thirst may well be preferable.

Giving such media prominence to Flanagan-style activism raises important questions of public interest. Arguably, those such as Flanagan, who are fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to state a detailed ‘opinion' in the print media are encouraged to present it in the most convincing manner without any reference to countering views. Unfortunately many readers mistake this type of journalism for fact and, with respect to forestry issues, the media has been reluctant to balance the published ‘opinions' of passionate anti-logging activists with articles written by timber industry spokesmen or foresters who actually manage the forests. Creating flawed popular opinion may well influence public policy for the worse - there are flow-on environmental consequences even from what may seem so simple as halting Australian hardwood logging. Impacts on climate change and tropical rainforests spring readily to mind. The morality and merit of managing forest resources by ill-informed popular opinion is a theme that The Monthly should explore.