Former Greens leader Bob Brown has been released on bail after being arrested during a community protest
over logging in northwest Tasmania.
Mr Brown was arrested on Monday at the site of Forestry Tasmania's logging project in Lapoinya and taken to Burnie police station.
"I didn't go with the intention of being arrested, but when I saw the destruction, I had to take a stand," he told AAP after his release.
He has been charged with failing to comply with a direction to leave a business access area, and has been banned from going back to the Lapoinya logging area under the terms of his bail conditions.
Mr Brown said the area, including a bridle trial, was used by nature lovers before loggers moved in.
"It's now a bulldozed highway, a logging road with tree ferns, trees and shrubbery flattened, and bare earth.
"And they're getting ready to log the forest next door."
The former senator is urging federal environment minister Greg Hunt to protect Lapoinya's rare and endangered wildlife.
Mr Brown was arrested just before midday after police arrived at the protest and asked him to leave.
He refused.
"I made that stand as I felt a real obligation not to turn my back on the place and leave," he told AAP.
The protest in Lapoinya began last week as Forestry Tasmania prepared to start logging the area's regrowth forest.
Steven Chaffer from the Bob Brown Foundation says the arrest reflects new "draconian" laws in Tasmania which prevent protests at workplaces.
Mr Brown is due to appear before Burnie Magistrates Court on March 15.
Tasmania's resources minister, Paul Harriss, has accused Mr Brown of a policy flip-flop.
"Bob Brown is a hypocrite," he said in a statement.
Mr Harriss says the former senator "didn't raise even a squeak" about Lapoinya when he signed off on the area's logging project while he was leader of the Greens.
The state government supports freedom of speech but "no protester is entitled to interfere with the right of other
Tasmanians to earn a living", Mr Harriss said.
