Logging Off

Environmentalists are hoping that Australia's largest temperate rain forest, the Tarkine, does not one day follow the fate of the aboriginal tribe after which it's named. The indigenous people who inhabited this northwestern swath of Tasmania for some 10,000 years were wiped out by conflict and disease in the wake of 19th century colonial settlement. Today, their former homerich in ancient groves and pristine water coursesmay be under threat from the island's logging industry, which intends to process the trees into wood chips and pulp. Granted, the Tarkine, spanning 450,000 hectares, is not going to disappear overnight and felling is now...