Korweinguboora - Spargo Plantation located 15km south of Daylesford. This plantation is managed by Hancock Victorian Plantations. 1400 hectares of the plantation lie in Geelong's drinking water supply. This plantation has been leaching low levels of the herbicide Hexazinone for 31 months since December 2004 (A world record?). Are plantations really a sustainable solution to our forestry problems?

Friends of the Earth Forest Network

Forest Network (FN) formed in 1993 to help stop logging in Old Growth Forests. After 8-9 years of direct action campaigning, including the kick starting of the Goolengook Blockade and hundreds of actions, the remaining FN activists 'retired' from direct action, went 'underground' and resolved instead to work more on educating the masses through a number of websites. FN activists also spent time working with communities impacted by plantations. Of special concern was the impact of pesticides used in plantations (and agriculture) on the environment.

All of these websites provide a wealth of information about forests and the forest products trade.

Forest Network: This website collates some of the actions and alot of the research that FN collated over the years. It also contains the web version of the Good Wood Guide and an informative section on alternative visions for Victoria's forests. The Good Wood Guide came out of the campaign to ban tropical rainforest imports in the late eighties, a campaign that FN activists were initially involved with. FN actually evolved out of Rainforest Action Group, which reduced imports of Malaysian tropical timber by 70%.

Hancock Watch: Collates a wealth of information and facts about the US company that now controls most of Victoria's pine plantations and logging rights over logging of native forests in the Strzelecki Ranges. Unlike other forest conservation groups, FN holds no illusions about the unsustainability of broadscale industrial tree plantations. "Boldly going where other forest groups fear to tread!"

Australian Paper Watch: Set up to monitor and put pressure on PaperlinX, Victoria's largest logger of native forests. Based near Morwell in the Latrobe Valley, the PaperlinX owned Maryvale pulp and paper mill currently uses about 650,000 cubic metres of native forest timber from the Central Highlands Region of Victoria each year. Boycott Reflex Copy Paper!

Rimbunan Hijau Watch: Documents activities by the notorious Malaysian based forest destroyer in Papua New Guinea. Rimbunan threatened legal action against this site in 2005, yet still the site survives.

Baddevelopers: A 'research' based site that deals in many murky matters that many green groups don't have the time or inclination to work on. The most popular page on the site deals with issues relating to toxic timber that Friends of the Earth was central in getting bans on in 2003. Other 'popular' issues include pesticides, the Yarra River, various mining interests and a host of other matters.