Timber group slams logging protesters

Activists preventing logging in Victoria's far east are threatening the jobs and
livelihoods of local timber communities, the nation's peak timber body says.
Protesters halted logging this week at Stoney Creek and Brown Mountain, in East
Gippsland, by staging tree sits and locking themselves onto machinery.
On Friday, two women were attached by steel tubes to a log loader at Brown Mountain,
while another 20 conservationists remained at the site.
Timber Communities Australia chief executive Jim Adams said the protesters' actions
were unlawful.
"To them, it is just holiday entertainment, but to the people whose businesses and
lives they disrupt, it is a matter of survival," Mr Adams said in a statement.
Mr Adams called on Victoria Police to ensure the protesters acted within the law.
He said the logging was legal and took place in areas set aside for management
through the Regional Forest Agreement.
Protest group spokeswoman Kate Reynolds said activists had successfully stopped
logging again on Friday after a week of action.
She said Brown Mountain should have been earmarked for protection under a promise
made by the state Labor government.
Brown Mountain was the site of a number of protests in 1990, with 180 arrests and 21
detentions, when the then government started logging the area.