Arrested at anti-logging protest, Brown’s still Green after all these years
Environmentalist Bob Brown is expected to give evidence as he attempts to fight a trespassing charge stemming from an anti-logging protest in Tasmania.
Former Greens leader Bob Brown. has been arrested over an illegal protest. Image: Human Rights Law Centre
The former Greens leader and two other activists were accused of trespassing over action at a Sustainable Timber Tasmania forestry coupe in the state’s Eastern Tiers on November 8, 2022.
The activists claim they were defending nesting habitat of the critically endangered swift parrot.
Brown is expected to give evidence at the Hobart Magistrates Court on Tuesday on day two of a joint hearing.
Sustainable Timber Tasmania forest officer Dion McKenzie on Monday told the court a habitat tree, earlier used by a sit-in activist as part of the protest, was felled on November 8.
He said it was cut down on safety grounds since it was over-mature and had features likely to make it suspect to falls.
Mr McKenzie also agreed with the suggestion from activists’ lawyer Kathleen Foley SC that the tree was meant to be retained but was not.
Speaking outside court, Brown claimed the tree was the only swift parrot nesting site in the coupe.
He described the felling as potentially unlawful and an “act of official vandalism and spite, meant to distress those of us trying to protect the swift parrots”.
Mr McKenzie told the court when he arrived at the coupe he saw about 10 people who were not authorised to be there.
He said he asked the group to leave – as he deemed their presence unsafe – which seven of them did.
The court was told at one point Brown was sitting on a tree stump while the two other accused trespassers, Kristy Lee Alger and Karen Lynne Weldrick, had attached themselves to machinery.
