Australian authorities yesterday said there would be no logging in the World Heritage-listed Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, following recommendations in a report submitted to UNESCO.
One of the last expanses of temperate wilderness in the world, the forest in Tasmania covers about 20 percent, or 1.4 million hectares, of the southern island state.
The conservative federal government in 2014 controversially tried, but failed, to have UNESCO revoke World Heritage status for parts of the wilderness to allow more access to loggers.
It was the first time a developed country had asked for a delisting.
“Today we confirm that we accept the recommendation of the monitoring mission that special species timber harvesting should not be allowed anywhere in the world heritage area,” Tasmanian Minister for State Growth, Energy, Environment, Parks and Heritage Matthew Groom said in a statement.
“It was important that the mission experts had the opportunity to hear all sides of the debate and, having done so, their clear advice to the World Heritage Committee is that there should no timber harvesting in the world heritage area, including for specialty timbers,” he said.
The report was compiled by experts from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the International Council on Monuments and Sites after they visited the site in November last year.
Australian Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt yesterday said the federal government would respond to the report’s recommendations ahead of the World Heritage Committee’s July meeting on the state of the wilderness’ conservation.
The announcement came days after Australia’s parliamentary upper house said it would hold an inquiry into bushfires in the forest to investigate the impact of global warming on fire frequency and on measures to protect the area.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where