The meeting was cordial, and a valuable exchange of views took place. We came away with a better knowledge of the issues from their point of view, and a commitment to meet again.
Differences in our definitions of 'forest' were discussed. After clearfelling PaperlinX replant the 'forest'.
We pointed out that they replant a crop of trees - they do not replace forest which consists of a wide diversity of species and ages, the older 'overmature' trees being necessary to provide nesting holes.
The different properties of pine and eucalypt fibre were described by PaperlinX. The shorter and more opaque eucalypt fibre being necessary to make smooth white printing papers. Although a small proportion of longer pine fibre is used for strength the huge pine plantations of the Strzeleckis were planted for strong paper bags, for which the market almost vanished when supermarkets switched to plastic bags. So there is a glut of pine, shortage of eucalypt.
A change of management of the APP group in 1998 led to the refusal of further meeting.
So the Shareholders' Group developed and successfully requisitioned two resolutions for the 1998 Annual General Meeting, held in Sydney.
To do this it was necessary to build membership to over 100 shareholders, a substantial challenge. Advertisements carried by Environment Victoria News, Habitat (ACF), Earth Garden, Wild, and word of mouth around the Australian Shareholders Association materially helped us over this hurdle.
Quite a number of Melbourne based members of the Group travelled up to join the Sydney members at the meeting, and found the experience illuminating.
For the 1998 resolutions, and the results of the votes please click here.
There was no other direct communication however.
In July 1999 the Managing Director of PaperlinX Ltd., Russell Jones, had contact made with our coordinator, inviting us to meet with him to discuss our objectives.
At the meeting he offered us a bus trip to Gippsland to look at the Maryvale Mill and the forests.
One of us had done such a trip with a group from the Australian Shareholders Association and was able to say that the trip was very pleasant and educational, but that we saw a carefully selected area of forest on a relatively flat ridge top.
We would have liked to have shown him something of the other side of PaperlinX's forest work, and the effects it has on the highly erodable soils and steep slopes of the region.
To her astonishment our Coordinator received a phone call a few weeks later giving us dates on which Mr Jones would be available, and the invitation to organise the forest segment!
About 26 of the shareholders, from Melbourne, and as far afield as Bendigo, Mansfield and Traralgon enjoyed the tour.
Maryvale mill's VIP room put on a spread that could have fed us four times over.
In case of rain a tent had been erected out in our chosen forest coupe.
Management turned out in force to escort us.
The choice of forest coupe was limited by accessibility for a big bus. It is one at Traralgon South, which has been used as case study by local environmentalists.
PaperlinX Plantations had done quite a lot of restorative work on roading and culverts as result, and the one to two year regrowth is starting to hide the erosion scars.
Nevertheless it was possible to illustrate and discuss some of the issues, largely related to water movement, erosion, lack of buffer zones in gullies, and an incident in which herbicide tanks had been washed out in a stream by a contractor.
PaperlinX foresters presented improved examples of coupe plans.
[Unfortunately a check on some new and less accessible coupes in the same area had found that it is still not universal practice to install crushed rock or other means of dispersing and slowing water flowing out of culverts on to very steep slopes.
There appears also to be a reluctance to leave adequate buffer zones in drainage lines (gullies and streams) to hold the gullies together and act as sediment filters when rain storms strike.
An 'unimproved' culvert which shows dramatically the silt and erosion issues could still be found however.
Such a culvert, with over 2 metres of drop into the erosion gully below it, also acts as an absolute barrier to fish movement.
It was agreed that this stream crossing would have been more appropriately built as a rock ford, ensuring less erosion, lower maintenance costs and improved stream conditions.
As an engineering feat the new Maryvale Number 5 paper machine is immensely impressive, turning out paper about 6 metres wide at better than 40 Km an hour.
The downside of this is the thought that it is consuming native forest at the rate of over half a million cubic metres a year
[Visualise a block of solid wood 100 metres long, 100 metres wide and 50 metres high.
Alternatively all the timber from 1700 Hectares (47 times the area of Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens) of prime forest every year.
Mountain Ash forest can grow about 12 cubic metres of timber per Hectare per year.
So we need some 42,000 Ha of forest plantation to produce this quatity of chips.]
Once again the meeting was constructive, and adding some reality to our perceptions, and providing valuable discussion.
Again in 1999 we have requisitioned two resolutions.
For the 1999 resolutions please click here.
What might be achieved if we can gain improved dialogue with the company?
Our greatest hopes are:
To learn more about the background to our concerns, click here.
To contact us, please click here
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