But both Keto, who runs the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society, and the forest industry wanted to try a new way out of the mess. Up to then federal and state governments had been trying to hammer out agreements through a lengthy bureaucratic process run by government agencies. Keto and the industry tried to avoid that. It involved direct negotiations between people like Keto and Rod McInnes, who represents the Queensland Timber Board. Our philosophy is to try to rationally resolve conflict.
Trust building is part of it.
It has to be put in a moral context. The context was not just moral. One of the keys, Keto said, was that all groups accepted the same set of facts. The timber industry, he said, decided not to dispute the meticulous inventory of species and unique sites Keto and her colleagues had put together during the years of negotiation. Their work showed the value of biodiversity and the ways it can be maintained, such as the need for protected areas to be sufficiently large.