Campaign to Save Native Forests

The Campaign to Save Native Forests (W.A.) (CSNF) was the name of a grassroots organisation which grew from a campaign started in Perth, Western Australia, in 1975, as a response to the development of a woodchipping industry in the south-west Jarrah and Karri forests of Western Australia. The Manjimup woodchip project aroused significant levels of protest in Perth and the South West region out of public concern that inadequate measures had been made for conservation alongside exploitation of the south west hardwood forests.

The public figures and faces of the CSNF at the time—Beth Schulz, Basil Schur, and Neil Bartholomaeus—were each to gain extensive coverage on the local media during public rallies at Wagerup and elsewhere.

At the times that the CSNF tried to cope with the issues of governmental and forestry business pressures to develop woodchipping, and mining in the Jarrah forest, another group started as well—the South West Forests Defence Foundation. There was co-operation between the groups on some issues as well as joint publications.

The CSNF subsequently campaigned in response to mining by Alcoa in the Jarrah forest on the Darling Scarp, conducting rallies and protests outside the alumina refinery construction site at Wagerup in February, May, and August 1979. It was involved in submissions to Australian federal and Western Australian state inquiries on forestry through the late 1980s.

Many members of CSNF went on to become involved in other groups and associations, such as West Australian Forest Alliance, Great Walk Networking, and other groups usually associated with the Conservation Council of Western Australia. A lot of these groups did not gain the extensive national attention and subsequent political ramifications that, for example, the Tasmanian Wilderness Society did with its early 1980s No Dams campaign for the Franklin River, which influenced Tasmanian domestic politics for a decade. However, they did have coverage in local media for their particular issues, and despite the lack of national attention they had marked impact on the ways that all levels of government proceeded with environmentally problematic issues.

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