003OEC’s This Week in Trees

003OEC’s This Week in Trees

By Dirt

This week in the Pacific Northwest and beyond:

In Eastern Washington a the Fisher Fire caused much ecological
improvement to fire suppressed stands amid rare patches of old growth
forests. These last ancient forests don’t burn to ashes like young
human-made plantation forest so they don’t fit into what
Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Service considers healthy. So
lawsuits have been filed and loggers are logging as fast as possible to
ensure the courts have no control over the hauling of 4,000 log truck of
fire adapted forests. It’s called an “Economic Emergency.”
http://www.cascwild.org/

On the Westside of Washington the salmon keep moving to extinction and
the State is proposing to help with a habitat conservation plan for 9
million acres on state and private lands. As always they will improve
fish habitat by logging along streams that they call “protected” areas.
They say they are actually doing all they can do to help the fish. The
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, the Olympic Coast Alliance the
Washington Environmental Council, and many tribes are planning on suing
to stop them
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225916_forests26.html

Also in Washington the greatest forest destroying empire of all time is
trying a new way to promote the destruction of whole mountain ranges in
18 countries across the world: “Call it enlightened self-interest,”
Weyerhaeuser said of his plea to help the environment by helping his
company’s recycling business. “Weyerhaeuser sees mountains of discarded
waste that aren’t being recycled.”
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_2762986

Further to the South in Oregon along the Columbia Gorge in the town of
Hood River a tree sitter took to the top of a tree in the middle of the
town. He says: “In July 2004 the Bush Administration decided to ignore
the sentiment of the American citizens by eliminating the Roadless Area
Conservation Rule and in its place put a meaningless process that will
not necessarily protect anything. We the people, need to remind Bush
that we have already told the government loud and clear how we feel
about this piece of legislation. A record number of Americans wrote to
the federal government, 1.6 million, and over 95% supported the Roadless
Rule.” A rally to support this treesitter is planned for Friday, June
3rd, at 7 pm. For more info:
http://publish.portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/318439.shtml

Following the Rally The Blue Mountains Biodiversity project is hosting a
field checking Blitz in the B & B fire in Deschutes National Forest.
Even the inexperienced are invited to show up (call Karen: (541)
385-9167) and help save this forest from the loggers who set it on fire
in order to support a George W. Bush publicity stunt visit to the area
Summer before last. Back then Bush had to “change his travel plans” in
order to avoid the “ferocious” fire that was fueled by “unhealthy” trees
that needed to be clear-cut. This PR trick, along with setting the
forest on fire in Los Angeles ensured the passage of his “Healthy Forest
Initiative.”

Further to the south Umpqua Watersheds, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands
Center and Cascadia Wildlands Project filed an appeal against the BLM
against the logging of any trees that still have green needles until the
appeal of the Bland mountain salvage sale is reviewed.
http://www.newsreview.info/article/20050527/NEWS/105270067 . As always
the questionable practice of cutting much needed dead habitat trees is
not good enough and they want to cut all the live green ones too.
“We regret to have to appeal this salvage sale. We simply want them to
do what they say they’re going to do,” said conservation director
Francis Eatherington. “We will do our best to stop this sale because of
the green trees they’re logging. Green trees will help this forest
heal.”

Also on the coast of Oregon a deal has been struck to preserve 1,300
acres of forest as compensation for the estimated 30,000 lost tourist
trips caused by a shipwreck and oil spill several years ago. By buying
the land, fixing some trails and making pathetic attempts to restore
habitat for ducks, puffins, gulls, petrels and many other birds, the
ship’s insurance company doesn’t have to haul their broken ship away. In
other words tourist get to marvel at their wasted ship forever and they
shipping insurance company saves money. The insurance guy who swindled
us even earned a promotion.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1117015194
252140.xml&coll=7

Further to the South in the Klamath National Forest in California the
sound of Old Growth falling and chainsaws sawing is running wild in the
Jack Timber sale. The bright side is the Beaver, Westpoint and Whittler
old growth sales have been saved thanks to the efforts of many who work
tirelessly to battle the evildoers. Please help them and call the
evildoers, pressure them stop cutting old growth native forest: Klamath
National Forest Supervisor, Peg Boland (530) 842-6131

Still further South in San Francisco, what once was the ‘Gateway to the
Redwood empire’ they are hosting the United Nation’s World Environment
Day http://www.wed2005.org/ . Among other things they are looking into
ways city’s destroy forests and ways to change this bad habit.
Treesitter Julia Butterfly http://www.circleoflifefoundation.org/ and
others are at this event doing their best to help the world regain some
sanity. Also in San Francisco this week is a women’s eco-oriented
leadership conference
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/women_HTML/index.htm

Further outside of Cascadia to the East in Idaho: loggers are
celebrating the 200 year anniversary of Lewis and Clark by hiking 45
minutes along the Lewis and Clark trail into a roadless area to kill a
wild stand of old growth forest. The loggers goal: destroy all green
trees on the Wendover timber sale before a judge finds them in violation
of the law and orders a stop to logging. The loggers are confident that
they’ll be able to come back later and cut down the dead trees, which
are legal to cut, once the judge rules that logging the green trees is
illegal.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug
=ID%20Lewis%20Clark%20Logging also http://www.nativeforest.org

In the rest of the world, activists in China are disputing the
Government’s claim that they no longer log native forests.
Zhong Yu, director of the Greenpeace forestry protection division, said
the Jinhai company, which has an annual capacity of 1 million tons of
pulp, needs 2 million mu (133,000 hectares) of forest for its raw
material. But APP has so far planted only 960,000 mu (64,000 hectares)
on the island, and only 100,000 mu (6,000 hectares) is available for
logging, she said.
Zhong also said many ecotypic (native) trees had been cut down and
replaced with eucalyptus trees, APP’s major raw material
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/26/content_445865.htm

In the mideast our supposed enemy is showing they are way smarter then
our greedy lustful ways: “AHVAZ, Khuzestan Province – Iran will not have
to import paper by 2013 if only one half of the money that is spent
every year on paper imports is used for turning bagasse into pulp. To
produce each ton of wood, some six cubic meters of wood is needed.
That’s why the forest area in the country has shrunk from 18 million
hectares in 1979 to 7 million hectares. The volume of bagasse that is
collected from one hectare of a sugar cane farm will be enough for
producing the same amount of paper that is made up of a pile wood
collected from 6.2 hectares of forest trees. In the next ten years, Iran
should spend 1.5 billion dollars each year to import paper while a
bagasse-based domestic industry would only need 600 million dollars of
investment per year.
http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=190343

In the Amazon Greenpeace on Tuesday nominated President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva and five others for its first “Golden Chainsaw” prize — to be
awarded to the Brazilian deemed to have contributed most to the Amazon’s
destruction. Figures released last week showed deforestation of the
Amazon rainforest reached the second-highest level on record in
2003-2004 — an area of 26,130 square km (10,088 sq miles), driven by
logging, ranching and farming interests.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=787646

In Mexico an ambush killed two sons of a longtime anti-logging activist
who was part of a campaign by local political bosses to crush
environmental campaigners in the western state of Guerrero, according to
Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Mexican rights groups. Farmer
Albertano Penalosa, a leading environmental campaigner, was apparently
the target of last week’s attack but he escaped with slight injuries.
Two sons were shot dead.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30980/story.htm

Last but not least in India activists have taken to rock-sitting to stop
a giant Buddha sculpture project that’s designed to be a tourist trap
that will require a huge facility that will destroy a rare forest.
“After climbing and sometimes crawling their way up to the rock to a
half-way height, they held on to the 1,050 feet rock to display their
opposition to the project, shouting slogans of ‘Buddham Sharanam
Gachami, Buddha Vigraham Na Ichami’.” The article goes on to qoute a
Buddhist teacher who says: “According to Lord Buddha, the whole
experience of life is momentary. Nothing in life is permanent. In that
case, a Buddha statue too is pointless.”
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may302005/city2142492005529.asp

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