Gunns is responsible for the logging activities in the region, producing hardwood woodchips for such Asian-based consumers Oji Paper, Nippon Unipac Holding, and Mitsubishi Paper, and have been constantly dogged by environmental protesters. The protesters are seeking a halt in logging, and the inclusion of the Styx Valley in the Tasmanian World heritage Area.

Seven Greenpeace activists have fronted a Tasmanian court today over the protests. Justin Timothy Welch, Jai Liam Critchley, Esther Zoe Nunn, Cathy Louise Moore, and Ben Morrow, 29, all of Hobart, appeared briefly in the Hobart Magistrates Court. Anne Lucia Nunn of St Peters, South Australia, and Adam Maurice Shore of Pittwater, Sydney joined them.

All have been charged with one count of trespass and one count of remaining in an exclusion zone, when the group allegedly scaled a 30m high gantry at a Triabunna timber mill on Tasmania’s east coast to prevent the loading of woodchips on to a ship bound for Japan.

Magistrate Peter Dixon adjourned the case until May 4 and granted bail to all defendants on the condition they not approach or loiter within 500m of the woodchip loading tower at the mill.

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