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A battlefield that smells of eucalypt stays behind. Like ripped off limbs of fallen soldiers broken branches, shattered trees are jutting out of mountains of wood, uprooted shrubs and stirred-up soil. Weeks later, helicopters throw thousands of fuel spheres and turn the coup into a flaming inferno. The heat is so intensive that a smoke mushroom develops which resembles those of a nuclear explosion. Once the apocalyptic procedure is over and the charred earth cooled down again, the man with the carrots comes. He throws them between the dead tree stumps, on the tracks, in the bushes. Kangaroos and possums approach from the surrounding forest and enjoy the titbits. For two days. The third day, the carrots are poisoned. "It is a cruel way to die: cramps, loss of sight, paralysis, panic," Vica Bayley says.

The young man with the red hair and the bright shorts squats on the forest floor and raises a small piece of carrot from the ground and watches it. The 31-year-old man is a full-time activist with the influential Australian environmental organisation Wilderness Society, which fights against the big clear felling here in Tasmania.

In the travel agencies the Australian holiday isle sells itself to the tourists as "green and clean" (green and clean) but there is nothing left of such ambience here at coup 27, one hour drive north of the capital Hobart. A wound of 35 hectares is trashed into the primeval forest with clearing methods otherwise known in the western world only in the dark past and these days only practiced by countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, or Brazil. In the valley of the Styx River, forestry workers tear huge holes into an ecologically unique landscape. Since primeval times the thick rainforests have been the habitat of a broad spectrum of plants and animals. Many of them have high-level protection – but this doesn’t assure their survival. Over the treetops, wedge tailed eagles, which have a wingspan of two metres, search for prey. Possums and parakeets live in the knotholes. Moss covers the wet ground. Wallabies graze between ferns with a height of three metres. At night, carnivores like the quolls and the vicious "Tasmania Devils" fight for prey.

The swamp eucalypt is the uncrowned king of the Styx Valley – a tree of overwhelming dominance. With up to 95 metres of height and a circumference of 15 metres Eucalyptus regnans is the highest hardwood tree on earth and the biggest flowering plant. The primeval forest giants in the "Valley of the Giants", as environmentalists call the area at the Styx, get up to 400 years of age. It is one of the last places in Australia where a larger stock of this species still exists. Only about 13 per cent of all Tasmanian swamp eucalypt have survived the past 200 years – that is since the colonisation through British convicts in Tasmania when the clearing of the forests started. Nevertheless, only four per cent of the mammoth trees are protected by natural conservation areas.

Green groups demand the creation of a 15,000 hectares national park in the Styx Valley. "I want my child to experience these trees too," environmentalist Vica Bayley says. He will be a father in a few weeks time. Now he stands on top of a tree stump, which would be large enough for a whole school class. Vica Bayley, who studied economy and used to be a teacher, is pragmatic and realistic enough to know that the opponents of the rainforest won’t just give way. He commits, that in a certain sense, he can even understand them. "There is a lot of money involved."

Indeed. The value of the so-called harvestable wood in the Styx Valley is estimated at 250 million Australian Dollars. At least, that is what Evan Rolley, the head of Forestry Tasmania, says. 1.5 million hectares of forest are under the control of his office. He issues clearing licences to private companies – not only for plantations but also for virgin primeval forests - 700 hectares are allowed for harvesting this year. The Methuselah-trees don’t die to end up as precious wall wardrobes or as expensive floor covering; rather 90 per cent is processed into woodchips. The centimetre-long pieces of fibre are used by companies in Japan as raw material for the production of paper bags and newspapers. They also are political tinder; object of trench warfare between business and environmentalists.

The Tasmanian wood industry, blessed with a yearly turnover of $1.3b at the moment, has produced great wealth in two centuries. After all, it creates jobs. "We employ over 8,000 Tasmanians," Terry Edwards, spokesperson of the Tasmanian Forestry Union [sic] in Hobart, says. "Another 15,000 are directly dependent from forestry." This is significant for an island with a population of 400,000 and, with 10 per cent, the highest rate of unemployment in Australia. The trees that are turned into planks are a valuable raw material for internationally awarded furniture manufacturers. It is hardly astonishing then that the social democratic Labor government in Tasmania wholeheartedly stands on the side of the tree choppers. To turn away from forestry, which is the third most important area of business after agriculture and mining, would be political suicide for Premier Jim Bacon. The Premier and his minister for forestry, Paul Lennon, defend the industry correspondingly vehemently.

Their opponents think the job argument is an excuse made by profit-eager forestry. The increasing mechanisation has rather lead to a decrease of jobs, Geoff Law, chief coordinator with Wilderness Society, says. He resides in Hobart in an old villa with an appropriately wild yard. Geoff Law talks of a "unholy alliance" between the wood industry, government and labour unions, and he says of "our primeval forests": "You mustn’t forget: the trees are the property of all Tasmanians."

For now, the Tasmanian company Gunns has above all the benefit. It is a quasi-monopolist in the reign of chainsaws and one of the worldwide leaders in exporting hardwood chips. As reported in the newspaper The Australian, the company produces 4.2 m tonnes of woodchips per year. 1.2 m tonnes of it are gained from state primeval forest wood. The company reports record net profits. The Gunns share is a favourite of the Australian share market. Its value rose almost 500 per cent between July 1999 and February 2003.

For the Wilderness Society the reason for the success of the company is obvious: woodchips "are thrown much too cheap onto the world markets" by Gunns. The duty to the licensor, the state, is correspondingly low. The company has no comment on this. Environmental groups estimate that the prices are between seven and 14 dollars per tonne. Therefore, they calculate, the average primeval giant has a value of just $220.

A forestry road leads through the Styx Valley like the cut of a mercilessly led knife. Between the charred branches, Vica Bayley discovers an echidna, an Australian echinoderm. In silent desperation, it searches for food in the dead landscape of a coup. With a long muzzle it stirs up the ground. "A whole ecosystem is being destroyed here," the young man says. Thousands of animals and plants die, the ground erodes, stretches of water silt up.

Clearing is a question of costs for the industry and besides that it is the only safe method of harvesting. Selective felling of trees is too dangerous because of the possibility that branches fall down, Larry Henderson, clearing expert of the forestry association, says. Besides that, this practice is according to the "internationally accepted norms". For the forestry industry it is not more than regrettable that after burning a coup kangaroos, possums and other wild animals (some of them are protected) are attracted from the surroundings and poisoned. In this way, they are hindered from causing any damage once the forestry officials start reforestation by spreading eucalypt seeds. The animals, you know, love to eat the seedlings.

Meanwhile a faction for the protection of the primeval forests and its inhabitants has formed. Dozens of groups, which call themselves "Doctors for Forests" or "Artists for Trees" are not only active in Australia. Recently, Günter Grass has sent a statement for a protest. It reads: "We see how valuable living space is being destroyed, how more and more is being lost and how there is nothing left than empty pockets for democracy."

The attention of the shareholders of the company Gunns, among them the Deutsche Bank [German Bank] with a share of five per cent, shall now be drawn to the clearing practice at an extraordinary general meeting. Financial institutions, which have invested millions into the company, are asked to end the exploitation of the rainforests and to obtain all the wood from plantations, which are already numerously established.

The fight of the environmentalists has already brought some successes. 40 percent of the area of Tasmania is already reserved (forest free areas included). In addition, there are already regulations saying that when clearing in the Styx Valley, primeval forest giants of over 80 metres in height shall not be felled. But the effectiveness of such rules is controversial. The industry supervises itself. "It is as if I drive too fast on the road and had to give a ticket to myself," a former forestry worker said.

Those who come too late to the tree education-walk at Tahune Forest have to queue up. It has been operating only for a few months but the walk on the suspension bridge out of steel high up in the crowns of the trees has turned into one of the greatest tourist attractions of Tasmania. "Even I am surprised," Evan Rolley, leader of the forestry board, says.

The project is an attempt by the department to use for profit their raw material in another way than with the chainsaw. In other parts of Australia and in other countries, eco tourism of this kind has long turned to be an economic factor. Tourism has taken the place of destructive methods of use of nature. "Hundred of new jobs could be created with tree tourism," Geoff Law, the man from the Wilderness Society, says. His comrade-in-arms Vica Bayley welcomes projects like the Tahune-walk too. They prove "that a living tree has a higher value than a felled one", he says. Nevertheless, his optimism is cautious: "Only 500 metres further and tourist attractions are turned into paper bags." "