The forestry vision that turned into a nightmare
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When Nationals politician John Anderson released a policy called Plantations for Australia: The 2020 Vision back in 1997, he had no idea how nightmarish that vision would turn out to be.
Instead of creating thousands of hectares of environmentally friendly native forests and a thriving timber industry, one ASX-listed company has been left with a charred mess and no easy way of cleaning it up.
This is a story of some of the worst government decisions in recent history crashing into the extreme heat of the 2019-20 summer. The drama is set about 200 kilometres south-west of Adelaide on Kangaroo Island, a flat land mass 155 kilometres wide and one-third as long with above average rainfalls and mild summers. And it starts with the Keating goverment’s National Forest Policy Statement of 1992, which stated places like Kangaroo Island were great for growing timber.