FEDERAL Environment Minister Tony Burke has declared an end to Tasmania's forestry wars, after key environmental groups signed up to an amended agreement with the state's logging industry.
Tasmania's Lower House is expected to sit late tonight to debate the forestry peace deal legislation, which is designed to end decades of bitter wrangling.
Environmentalists and the timber industry were forced to recommit to the agreement after the state's Upper House made amendments that delayed the protection of more than half the forests originally earmarked.
With agreement reached between signatories including The Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Environment Tasmania, and the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, Mr Burke said the state's forestry war was now over.
Passing of the legislation will unlock tens of millions of dollars in federal and state assistance, aimed at helping Tasmanian struggling forestry industry restructure.
"Instead of an industry that was going through a significant decline ... as of tomorrow we get a story where conservation and forestry jobs get to move forward hand in hand," Mr Burke told reporters in Hobart this afternoon.
"In terms of wars, yes (it's over). You might get the odd skirmish from small minor groups. But what we have seen from the last 30 years ends tonight, and that is something to celebrate."
Despite her Tasmanian Greens colleagues and environmental groups backing the forestry agreement, Australian Greens Leader Christine Milne labelled the deal "dead" because of the Upper House amendments.
"Now there is a salvage strategy at best, a picking over the bones of the dead body," Senator Milne said.
"It died in the Upper House when the Legislative Council in Tasmania took a chainsaw to this agreement and destroyed its integrity."
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