Labor is demonstrating how close it remains to the Greens on forestry, with Scott Bacon now jumping on a Wilderness Society scare campaign bandwagon.
The Green front group has been suggesting for some time that the Derby Enduro World Series mountain-biking event is somehow threatened by the Liberal Government’s support of a sustainable forest industry.
Now Mr Bacon is borrowing from Vica Bayley with the same nonsense.
In reality, this event is a great example of how forestry and tourism can coexist in Tasmania and it should be celebrated for that, not used for grubby politics.
Around 15 kilometres of the Blue Derby trails are built on production forestry land made available by Forestry Tasmania.
Further, FT has consulted closely with the mountain bike community to align its harvesting plans in the Blue Derby area with the needs of track users.
Its current Three Year Wood Production Plan also includes a number of revisions that are relevant to the Blue Derby area. In particular, the coupes that the Flickety Sticks, Long Shadows and Dam Busters trails traverse (CC107B and CC118C) have been removed from this latest plan. In addition, coupe CC123A has been removed as the thinning operations in that coupe have already been completed.
I cycled the Blue Tier last year and just last month visited the tracks with the Mayors of Dorset and Break O'Day, who both complimented FT on its support for the promotion of mountain biking in the area.
As Labor’s tourism spokesperson, Mr Bacon should be promoting this event, not Green propaganda.