Former Australian senator and co-founder of the Greens Bob Brown says he has been arrested in Tasmania's northeast while staging a protest against logging.
Protesters began a "peaceful occupation" of swift parrot habitat near Swansea on Monday, where they claim the birds are being pushed out of their usual breeding and feeding forests by intensified logging.
Mr Brown has been arrested for "upholding the laws of nature and the international Biodiversity Convention", he said on Tuesday.
Three of his companions are on-site - one, in a tree-sit - and all could be arrested, the Bob Brown Foundation said in a statement.
"Bob Brown told the arresting officers that there was no public evidence that this logging is legal," the statement said.
"The arresting officer told Brown that the logging was getting rid of sugar gliders (a threat to swift parrots)."
Protesters' requests to save swift parrot habitat have been ignored by the Tasmanian premier, the Forest Practices Authority and Forestry Tasmania, Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Erik Hayward said on Monday.
