Using the Big Gunns

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"While the forestry industry in [the Australian state of] Tasmania is notoriously defensive, Gunns appears to be setting new standards," reports the Independent. Gunns, Tasmania's largest private logging company, "recently threatened to sue a man who wrote a critical letter to a newspaper, and told a television station to broadcast more positive stories about logging." Gunns also filed an Aus.$6.3 million (U.S.$4.8 million) SLAPP lawsuit against 20 conservation groups and activists, including a 60-year-old grandmother, for "disrupting its business through grassroots action and blackening its name through 'corporate vilification.'" Gunns claims the activists "sabotaged machinery, destroyed property, blocked access to land and obstructed police at four logging sites."