020OEC’s This Week in Trees

Here we go again! The trees want you to read and know all 38 news stories from: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Louisiana, Canada, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, and the Czech Republic.

British Columbia:

1) As the traditional logging industry deals with unsteady prices and the challenges of globalization, the value of a new crop is coming to light: trees hidden under reservoirs, long given up for lost. While no exact count of these “rediscovered” forests — which are being logged primarily in North and South America, Russia, and Malaysia — seems to exist, one estimate puts it at about 200 million trees, a global supply worth about $40 billion. These watery woods have been preserved by cold water and protected from rot and insect infestation. The resulting high-quality timber is highly sought after, especially by craftspeople. Barges and divers have long gone after both standing trees and abandoned, sunken logs, but now a new technology is upping the ante, allowing more submerged trees to be cut more quickly. Proponents — including those developing the new high-tech method — say underwater harvests could help the planet, since they “spare” healthy forests in favor of the dead. Others contend the waterlogged trees are a nonrenewable resource whose harvest will simply detract attention from issues on land. In British Columbia this summer, a logging company and a First Nation band are embarking on a partnership that highlights the complicated allure of this new-old industry. Interest in logging reservoirs is particularly keen in Canada, since the country has had difficulty competing with cheaper labor rates in places such as Brazil, Chile, Russia, and even the southern United States, says Rob Kozak, associate professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia. “This makes the market for commodity lumber less appealing,” he says. “The direction British Columbia needs to go [is] out of the lower-value products and more toward high-quality ones.” http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/08/18/greenemeier-waterlog/index.html?source=daily

Washington:

2) Only a handful of endangered caribou remain in the remote Selkirk Mountains near the Canadian border, and a federal-court lawsuit filed yesterday seeks to ban snowmobiles from their winter range. The lawsuit filed here would limit snowmobile access on 450,000 acres of high-elevation forest in a sliver of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho near the snowmobiling hot spot of Priest Lake, Idaho. The lawsuit said only three mountain caribou were seen in the area this year, though about 30 live on the Canadian side of the border. “It is the most endangered mammal in the United States,” said Mark Sprengel, executive director of the Selkirk Conservation Alliance, which brought the lawsuit. The lawsuit contends the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service have failed to take adequate steps to save the caribou, which has been listed as endangered since 1983. “When you have an animal that endangered, the agencies should be falling all over themselves giving the benefit of the doubt to the animal,” Sprengel said. “They have declined to do that. “Dave O’Brien, spokesman for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, said the lawsuit will put an end to efforts to broker an agreement with snowmobilers, environmental groups and regulators. The problem is that no one knows why caribou numbers have not recovered, and it is premature to blame snowmobiles, O’Brien said. Predators and logging also are likely keeping numbers low, he said. “We don’t like to implement restrictions on historic and traditional uses without really strong science supporting what we doing,” O’Brien said. “Everyone agrees the caribou are not there. No one agrees on why not.” The lawsuit seeks to ban snowmobiles from critical winter feeding and calving areas but does not specify an acreage amount. Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Idaho Conservation League, the Center for Biological Diversity, Advocates for the West, Conservation Northwest, the Lands Council and Defenders of Wildlife. Nearly 15,000 acres of caribou range on the Selkirk crest already are off-limits to snowmobiles. But conservationists contend they are seeing a growing number of snowmobile tracks in caribou habitat. Mountain caribou used to roam from British Columbia to Idaho’s Clearwater River, but logging reduced their habitat. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002444081&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=
caribou18m&date=20050818

3) Lumber prices in Chicago fell for the first time in three days Friday, resuming a drop to a 21-month low as supply from timber companies outpaced construction demand. Federal Way-based Weyerhaeuser Co., Canfor Corp., West Fraser Timber Co. and International Paper Co., the largest lumber producers, have increased production, leaving an abundance of wood to sell. Prices will average $315 per 1,000 board feet this quarter, down from a forecast of $325, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Bishop said Friday in a report, citing “supply-side” factors. Canadian mills shipped 5.8 percent more lumber to the U.S. in the first half than a year earlier, Statistics Canada said. North American housing starts have gained 5.3 percent from January to July from a year earlier, and lumber consumption rose 6 percent in the five months ended May, Bishop said. http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/5116061p-4657501c.html

Oregon:

4) Why are the Northwest forest wars still raging? Didn’t we come to terms years ago? Particularly with the fight about old growth, it seems like we are doing the same things over and over but expecting a different outcome. That’s the definition of crazy. The latest volley came last week, when a federal court struck down the Bush administration’s 2004 decision to ease restrictions on old-growth logging on public land in the Northwest. U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman found that the administration’s plan posed too great a risk to rare plants and animals. Unfortunately, this latest ruling will not bring peace to the woods. It is just another round in the continuing fight about old-growth logging. To stop this seesaw battle, three things need to happen. First, mature and old-growth forests (generally, 80 to 1,000 years old) and roadless areas need to be taken off the chopping block once and for all. The public has consistently supported their protection, and so do most scientists. http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1124358975192280.xml&coll=7

5) Jay Ward disappears into a head-high stand of firs in an old clearcut along the Pacific Crest Trail as it climbs north toward U.S. 26 through the Mount Hood National Forest. Then his cell phone rings and he’s gone for several minutes. Ward, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, is leading the group’s campaign to get 265,000 acres of public forest land designated as wilderness, removing key recreation and roadless areas from potential timber harvests. The 1.1 million-acre national forest includes 189,000 acres of designated wilderness, which makes it off limits to timber harvesting. Logging on public and private land is a major problem for the Pacific Crest Trail as it winds 2,650 miles through California, Oregon and Washington. Its designation as a national scenic trail does nothing officially to protect the land around it. Some 300 miles of the trail go through private land, and government funds to purchase those properties or buy adjacent land have been severely cut since 2000. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1124359396192281.xml&coll=7

6) Most of the tax credits go to big industry. Recipients have included the Weyerhaeuser Co. cardboard factory in Springfield, and the Hynix computer chip factory in west Eugene. Over time, the pollution tax credit system has broadened to benefit an eclectic range of ventures. In 2001, for instance, someone discovered that the state will give the credits to people who buy wood chippers – on the theory that this reduces slash-pile burning. Since then, taxpayers have helped individuals and companies buy 773 chippers. This irks state Rep. Mark Haas, D-Beaverton. “We’re spending about a half-million a year on tax credits on guys who go down to Sears and buy a wood chipper and sit out in the backyard and throw twigs into it,” he said. “We just don’t have the will or the votes – however you want to characterize it – to say `This (tax credit) isn’t working well, let’s cut it,’ ” Haas said. Haas likens it all to the problem of redundant military bases. When closures are proposed, affected states rally and block them, even if the bases are of no use to the military. The only solution is to appoint a panel to rank sites by objective criteria, he said. http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/08/21/a13.taxcreditbar2.0821.p1.php?section=cityregion

7) The forest service dates from 1905, when nature-loving President Theodore Roosevelt transferred the vast expanses of federal trees from the Bureau of Forestry under the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture’s new agency. In the beginning, each forest had but a lone ranger, augmented, in the summer, maybe, by a forest guard or two. Each ranger oversaw a vast territory — in Oregon alone there are 14 national forests totaling nearly14.4 million acres — and was hard-pressed to function effectively. “They did whatever it took to get the job done, often working late into the evening or on weekends,” say the opening pages of “We Had An Objective In Mind,” a newly published anthology of more than 300 personal stories gleaned from the Pacific Northwest Forest Service Association’s newsletter, “Timber-Lines,” and other sources. The rangers’ bible was a little “Use Book” sufficiently compact to tuck into a shirt pocket. Rangers earned $65 a month, and furnished their own horses and gear. The Forest Service supplied a badge, the Use Book and a hatchet. Horses frequently were a source of trouble — unsure of foot and tending to stray at night, even when hobbled. Dan Pederson spent 11 years, starting at age 40 in 1915, as a fire lookout on Brush Mountain in Southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest. A former sailing-ship crewman, Pederson found his ground-level view inadequate for efficient fire spotting. Taking his cue from the crow’s nest on a ship, he attacked a towering shasta fir and installed steps leading to a platform 104 feet up Trouble was, Pederson’s telephone was at the bottom of the tree, according to Alvin “Andy” Anderson, a longtime timber management assistant for the Siuslaw forest, “and it was troublesome and time consuming to scramble down to make his fire calls.” Pederson “rigged two buckets on a cable and counterbalanced his weight with rocks. One good yank on the cable would drop him down to the phone. Another would shoot him back to the perch with little time lost.” http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/john_terry/index.ssf?/base/news/1124535599326821.xml&coll=7&this
page=2

8) The Native Forest Council’s aerial photographs reveal that even our country’s publicly owned forests are a war-torn mosaic of endless logging roads and clearcuts. These photographs portray the startling truth about the dishonesty of corporate logging in the United States. Importantly, they are irrefutable evidence that building more than 400,000 miles of roads in tax-payer owned forests to facilitate extreme overcutting has created environmental havoc, all without any inventory accounting whatsoever for our forests and streams that are being , damaged, lost or destroyed. One thing we can all agree on is that our forests and watersheds are not worth zero as claimed in the Forest Service’s accounting. To look at these shocking images raises the question as to whether or not the Forest Service is aiding and abetting a grotesque fraud in the liquidation of public assets and nature’s services, risking human extinction or even genocide. The photographs of these denuded publicly owned lands illuminate the loss of our forested watersheds and their soil, air and water, human and wildlife habitat. More importantly, as industrial fiber farms and tree plantations take the place of natural forests, these monocultures are far more susceptible to insects, fire and disease. Dense or sickly rows of industrial seedlings and trees are a poor substitute for native forests honed and adapted by thousands of years of evolution by God and nature. Logging roads fragment, dry out and warm the forests. Combined with rampant clearcutting, they erode the soil, pollute the water, destroy fisheries and ruin natural life-support systems needed for wolves and bears, other important large and small mammals, birds, insects, human and other wildlife. You may access and see the photographic evidence for yourself at: http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html

California:

9) A proposal to place greater restrictions on conversion of forests to vineyards is being called the most-watched issue to come before Sonoma County officials in almost a decade. The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider seven options – ranging from no action to an outright ban – on how to address the practice of clear-cutting timberlands and planting grapevines. Environmentalists contend the practice is becoming increasingly common, but opponents of more government intervention say the practice is limited and any action by the board would be unnecessary and duplicative. Supervisor Mike Reilly, who in June successfully lobbied the rest of the board to consider the proposal quickly, is backing a plan that would ban conversions unless a public benefit can be established. More people have called, written and e-mailed him on this issue than any other in his nine years on the board, Reilly said. But the county is mindful of not overreaching its authority and interfering with state agencies, he said. “Of course, turf is always a consideration,” Reilly said. “Our attorneys have been very careful to try to craft opinions that are clearly within the county’s authority.” “We feel there is plenty of ag land in the county for folks who want to grow grapes. There is no real reason to convert forest land,” said Mike Sandler of Town Hall Coalition, a 2,000-member environmental advocacy group based in Sebastopol. “There is a lot of feeling among environmental groups that the Department of Forestry is not properly regulating timber conversion,” he said.http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/NEWS/508210339/1033/NEWS01

10) Preventing a catastrophic wildfire was the number one issue discussed at the Lake Tahoe Environmental Forum Sunday in Tahoe City, with U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) pledging to develop legislation for fuels reduction management in the Tahoe Basin to be completed in 10 years. Ensign said it would cost $200 million to restore forest health in Lake Tahoe. He and Feinstein will use the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, signed into law by President George Bush in December 2003, as a blueprint for their bill to get money specifically for Tahoe. The U.S. Forest Service has said the forests around Lake Tahoe represent some of the highest at-risk fire areas in the country, and the likelihood of a severe fire grows each year. The agency manages 80 percent of the forests in Tahoe and has already completed fire management of 38,000 acres, according to Rex Norman, public information officer for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service hopes to complete the other 42,000 acres within 10 years, Norman said. “There has been growing interest (in fuels reduction) since 2002,” Norman said. “There was resistance to fuels reduction (by the public) because they didn’t think there was a threat. The 2003 fire season changed people’s perceptions. Now, instead of saying, ‘Not in my neighborhood,’ they are saying, ‘When are you coming to my neighborhood?’” Last March, Feinstein and California Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) held a wildfire community forum in South Lake Tahoe that kicked-off Tahoe’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Since then, each fire district in the basin has completed its plan and is now set to apply for grants under the Healthy Forests Initiative. “These plans have identified about 26,000 acres of federal and non-federal land that is most at risk of wildfire,” Feinstein said. “They will now work together on a combined basin plan to be coordinated by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.” Patricia Hickson, chair of the Tahoe Area Sierra Club, said the environmental group is behind the agencies in their goal of fire prevention, but that there needs to be room for public discussion and input. http://www.tahoe-world.com/article/20050821/NEWS/50821002

Utah:

11) The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday halted a timber clearing project in Fishlake National Forest, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service failed to adequately study the possible effects. The appeals court upheld the Utah Environmental Congress’ request to overturn a District Court ruling that would allow the Forest Service to reduce stands of spruce and aspen on about 220 acres in Wayne County. The project’s objective is to thin the stands most at risk for spruce beetle infestation while supplying local businesses with timber. The UEC argued that the federal plan did not properly select indicator species to study the effect on the old-growth timber and the surrounding ecosystem and did not consider “a reasonable range of alternatives.” The appeals court on Friday found the Forest Service did examine reasonable alternatives, but it did not use suitable indicator species to assess the effect that clearing the trees would have. It is the second time in less than a month the 10th Circuit Court has sided with the UEC. Last month, the court granted an emergency stay to halt a planned timber sale on Fish Lake National Forest. Oral arguments for that case are scheduled for November. “It is frustrating that we have to keep going to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,” said Kevin Mueller, director of the Utah Environmental Congress. http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_231224518.html

New Hampshire:

12) The smell of fresh-cut balsam, spruce and fir trees is sweet on a hot summer day, the views of Mount Success and North Bald Cap spectacular. The quiet in the forest is broken only by the trickle of a brook and an occasional truck on Success Pond Road.
But a storm is brewing here over landowners’ right to cut lumber versus the state’s interest in protecting wildlife. It centers on 22,555 acres of timberland owned by Thomas and Scott Dillon of Anson, Maine, in this unincorporated township, but muffled thunder can be heard across the North Country and all the way to the state capital in Concord. For now, the dispute involves the size of “protected districts” for wildlife, where no logging is allowed. But the bigger issue is whether state wildlife regulations need to be strengthened because of the heavier pace of logging by some new landowners like the Dillons. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050820/NEWS02/108200028/-1/HOME

Minnesota:

13) So far, the BWCAW forest appears to be recovering well from the massive 1999 blowdown windstorm and from intentional fires started to remove downed trees, Frelich said. Areas that have burned are sprouting with young birch trees and red pines, Frelich noted. Areas where most big trees blew down are sprouting with balsam fir, black spruce, white cedar, maple and paper birch. Those trees already had sprouted but had been held back by the towering old aspen and other trees that shaded the forest. When the big trees blew over, the little trees took off. “What we’re finding is that the forest succession was pushed ahead 50 years or more by one event,” Frelich said. “These trees were there, but wouldn’t have flourished for many more decades if the blowdown hadn’t happened.” With some species, Frelich and other researchers, including Roy Rich, are observing the fastest growth they’ve ever seen. More than 700 different plots are being studied. For example, cedars that usually grow6 inches a year are growing 2 feet and more — thanks to the extra water and sun now that the big trees are dead. On Seagull Lake’s Three Mile Island, purposely burned in 2002 to remove thousands of dead, drying blown-down trees, red pine are sprouting across the island even though only a few stands of big pines survived the fire. “We’re seeing red-pine reproduction a lot farther from the remaining pines than we expected. Apparently the seeds can move better than we thought,” Frelich said. Birch trees seem to be doing especially well where intentional fires have been lit, Frelich said. Not all is well, however. In blowdown areas outside the BWCAW, especially where logging occurred to remove downed trees, several exotic species are flourishing, possibly at the expense of native species. “Wherever you get logging equipment or ATVs, they spread the seeds of the exotics,” Frelich said. “That can stop the normal succession.” http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/12438817.htm

Ohio:

14) Appellate judges recently heard depressing numbers when the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition argued that mining permits should be harder to get: From 1992 to 2002, mountaintop removal and associated valley fills in Appalachia destroyed 1,208 miles of streams and 380,547 acres of forest. If past, present and future disturbance is combined, strip mining will impact more than 1.4 million acres of Appalachia. What’s needed, obviously, is a massive effort to restore green to the hills and hollows — especially to replant hardwoods on mined-out land. Well, the Office of Surface Mining’s Appalachian Reforestation Initiative intends to do just that. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050819/OPINION01/508190370

New York:

15) Ah, those glorious, tree-covered mountains of Sterling Forest, stretching as far as the eye can see, setting atwitter the hearts of nature lovers. They look as though they’ve been that way since the dawn of time – a gorgeous showcase of how southern Orange County must have looked before man got his grubby hands on it. But Sterling Forest wasn’t always a tree-hugger’s paradise. There was a time when what is now a protected jewel within the Hudson Highlands was more of a temple to industry than nature: the site of a robust iron-mining operation, complete with smoke-belching furnaces. It seems incomprehensible today, given the pristine image of the forest and the fervor with which preservationists fought to save it from development – a fight that will continue tonight at a hearing in Tuxedo over a proposal to build 107 luxury homes on a pocket of private land. But in truth, this land revered as an “unbroken tract of wilderness” used to be plenty broken. Trees were harvested and converted into charcoal, which fed two massive furnaces that melted down iron ore extracted from 22 mines. Woods were stripped away for the homes and fields of the miners and other employees, who numbered somewhere around 1,000 at the peak of the operation around the time of the Civil War. This sooty history of what many know only as a 17,500-acre state park with hiking trails is told in a museum exhibit in Tuxedo created by the Orange County Historical Society. Those beautiful trees in Sterling Forest? Many took root only after the mines closed in 1923. http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/08/22/camsterl.htm

Massachusetts:

16) Massachusetts needs new housing, especially affordable, year-round housing, but it will squander an important resource if it lets sprawl chew up its woods needlessly, instead of following smart-growth principles of reduced lot size and more transit-centered development. Also, woodlands will less likely be bulldozed over if their owners put a greater value on them as sustainable sources of wood products. The state is trying to provide a better example of forest stewardship by both setting aside protected forest preserves and, at the same time, expanding the logging of its working forest lands. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/08/21/forest_green/

Pennsylvania:

17) “Heavy cutting in the ANF at the turn of the 20th century created a large, even-aged forest,” Finley explained. “The ANF was clear cut and left as worthless. Fortunately, through a series of events, the high-value forest grew back. However, many of the trees are the same age, and many of the most common trees are shade-intolerant,” he said. “Black cherry is one of those species that has done well,” Finley said. “No forester wants a forest of pure cherry. It’s too risky. A disease or insect could wreak havoc, and many intrinsic forest values could be lost.” For nearly 70 years, Finley said, excessive deer populations have selectively browsed the forest, allowing black cherry to gain a position of dominance and making it relatively easy to regenerate. But in some places in the Allegheny National Forest, even black cherry does not regenerate well, he said. Many of these areas have dense fern cover on the forest floor, or higher up there are saplings of beech, striped maple or black birch. “Like black cherry, deer do not find these trees to their liking,” Finley said. Research on forest growth and development is important in managing forests, he added. For more than 50 years, the U.S. Forest Services Northeast Forest Research Station on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest has conducted research on forest growth and function. “Those who say we should allow forests to manage themselves are not considering the extent of problems that past human decisions and activities have already imposed,” Finley said. “The forest that once was the ANF can never return. We have changed it. We need many of the resources the forests create and provide, and we have to provide the best resources we can to future generations.” http://www.stargazettenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/COLUMNIST18/508210329

North Carolina:

18) Conservation groups and state agencies hope that a possible clearance sale by the largest private owner of timberland in North Carolina will produce a windfall of parks and nature preserves. International Paper announced last month that it might sell all 6.8 million acres of forest land that it owns in the United States, including 639,000 acres in North Carolina, mostly east of the Triangle. That sent private land trusts and state parks and wildlife departments scrambling to see what company land they might like to buy and can afford. “This is opening up a door that may only be open once,” said Merrill Lynch, assistant director for protection for the Nature Conservancy in North Carolina. “It’s a huge opportunity. The geographic scale is huge.” In addition to preparing offers to International Paper, conservation groups and state agencies need to find money to buy land from the company. They got a boost this month when the General Assembly voted to provide $100 million to the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, a major source of money for conservation. http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2744161p-9181937c.html

Louisiana:

19) Near the end of the last legislative session, I went to the State Capitol to listen to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee debate a resolution (SCR71) that is likely to have a negative impact on the natural history of Louisiana. The proceedings I witnessed disturbed me enough to prompt the filling out of a green card to testify before the committee. As passed, SCR71 requested the federal government (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) to stop regulating cypress harvesting along navigable waterways of Louisiana. After hearing fully the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry wholeheartedly support another clearly bad idea and Buck Vandersteen, president of the Louisiana Forestry Association, blatantly misrepresent the facts in testimony, I couldn’t just sit and listen. I wanted to share with our legislators at least one piece of invaluable advice that a favorite law school professor shared: Before you make your first big decisions in an environmental case, visit the site. Sitting before this committee, I was very troubled to learn that few, if three, of its members had actually been out to see sites threatened most by unsustainable cypress logging and that science had virtually no role in influencing this crucial decision. In fact, most legislators, knowing they were about to condone the eradication of some of our last and most vital stands of the state tree, appeared to be primarily concerned with spin. In the end, opposition testimony was unceremoniously interrupted, the tired claims of the knee-jerk cynics and status-quo crew apparently persuasive: these decisions come down to Jobs vs. the Environment, or if we really want to keep America great, we need to support private landowners over the rabid environmentalists. We buy that mess? http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/082205/opi_keep001.shtml

Canada:

20) Forestry company Kruger will be allowed to log timber from recent forest fires on an island in northern Quebec despite the objections of aboriginals. The Quebec Court of Appeal rejected on Friday a request by the Betsiamites Innu to stop Kruger from harvesting the burned timber on the Rene-Levasseur island, about 900 kilometres northeast of Montreal. A work stoppage would “cause substantial economic losses for Kruger, without mentioning indirect consequences, such as layoffs,” wrote Justice Pierre Dalphond. Kruger will be able to harvest the equivalent of about two million trees, a fraction of the island’s forest. Negotiations involving the Innu, Kruger and the Quebec government over the harvesting had reached an impasse. The Innu have already said they could take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. Kruger said the decision saves 150 jobs in the north. Innu Chief Raphael Picard compared the island’s logging roads, which comprise about 100 kilometres, with “a cancer.” Picard said he wasn’t surprised by the decision, but added the Innu will return to court to try to get all logging stopped on the island and continue to press their land claim. Natural Resources Minister Pierre Corbeil said the provincial government is satisfied with the decision, “which permits the maximum use of the resource and avoids the loss of wood.” http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/news/shownews.jsp?content=n081963A

21) Senate now expected to be called to investigate whether Liberal Sen. Raymond Lavigne broke Senate rules in allowing his staffer, Daniel Côté, to carry out non-Parliamentary duties. The Senate is expected to be asked to investigate whether Liberal Sen. Raymond Lavigne broke the Senate’s rules by allowing his staffer to cut down trees on his neighbour’s property in West Quebec. The matter came to a head last month after Liberal Sen. Lavigne’s neighbours found Daniel Côté, who identified himself as working for Sen. Lavigne, cutting down trees with a chainsaw on their property to make way for new hydro poles. According to neighbour Neil Faulkner, Mr. Côté cut down about 15 trees on his land located in Wakefield, Que., about a 30 minute drive from Ottawa. http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2005/august/22/trees/&c=1

22) Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay says the government will provide $771,000 for an alternative energy project to help northern Ontario communities. Ramsay says the money will be spent to build a transportable bio-refinery plant. The plant will be able to convert forest waste into a bio-oil that can be used as fuel to provide heat and electricity, and to make products such as plastics and glues. The project is part of a three-year partnership with Advanced BioRefinery Inc. Ramsay says Ontario has a sustainable supply of forest waste such as tree tops and limbs left after logging operations, as well as trees destroyed by fire, insects and disease. He says the government is promoting the development of clean, renewable energy sources to help improve air quality and protect the environment. The Liberal government has committed to ensuring that five per cent of Ontario’s electricity capacity comes from clean, renewable sources by 2007. http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=c0889d8e-8071-4dae-bafe-3a35015cca84

23) In 1999, ecologist from various organizations surveyed the Carolinian Zone, which is from Sarnia,Ont., to Niagara Falls, Ont., and from Windsor, Ont., to Guelph, Ont.
From that survey a big picture map was developed highlighting core natural areas Carolinian Canada believes should be protected and preserved as green space.
The surveyors found many endangered species only found in this region of the world.
“If something came along and wiped out the West Lorne woodlots, you could lose endangered species,” said Kanter. “It’s a significant woodland.” Kanter said scientists and ecologists recommend all geographic areas should include eight per cent of green space for a healthy landscape. “Right now we have about three per cent. We don’t have enough in southern Ontario. We are one of the most threatened areas in the country,” said Kanter. “If we don’t act as a community to put more green space on the map we could lose dozens of the species in the region forever.” While the 101 different sites mapped as core natural areas are not bound to remain green spaces, Kanter hopes local governments and land owners will work to maintain the land and expand it as green space. Whether protecting forests along creeks or creating trails from one forest to another the big picture is hoped to create more green space untouched by logging. http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/story.php?id=179500

Guatemala:

24) The loud drone of a gas generator and the buzz of power saws break the jungle silence. While a logger strips the bark off a mahogany tree, six teenage boys sand boards of Santa Maria, a popular hardwood used in furniture making. Some of the finished product is destined for a college campus in the East Bay and a pool in San Francisco’s Sunset District. But unlike so much logging that has devastated forests throughout Latin America, including other areas of this 5 million acre rain forest in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, these workers toil under strict guidelines issued by a European organization that encourages responsible management of the world’s forests. Many of their wood products are shipped to the United States and Europe. “It’s the best model in Latin America,” said José Román Carrera, Central America forestry coordinator for the New York-based Rainforest Alliance. The cooperative that works the 130,000-acre concession in the rain forest here consists of 56 impoverished families from the jungle village of Carmelita. It is one of 13 locally managed forest concessions the Guatemalan government has given to communities living in the reserve. “The best preserved places in the reserve are in the concession areas,” said Liza Grandia, a UC Berkeley anthropologist who has worked with Carmelita and other reserve communities. “They have done an incredible job, even though many have only a third-grade education.” The Maya Biosphere Reserve is Central America’s most biologically diverse rain forest, one of the largest jungle areas north of the Amazon. It is home to such endangered species as jaguar and scarlet macaw and more than 200 Mayan archaeological sites. Although 36 percent of the reserve is protected by law, some of its most prominent national parks have suffered major destruction in recent years due to illegal settlers, ranchers, poachers and drug traffickers. More than half of Laguna del Tigre National Park, a vast wetland area, has been burned for ranching and farming in the past several years, environmentalists say. Yet recent satellite photos by the U.S. Geological Survey show forest coverage remains mostly intact in the area under concession to 11 communities and two timber companies. Meanwhile, eight reserve communities — including Carmelita — are hoping to increase their income with recently opened sawmills financed partly by Rainforest Alliance and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Although logging has brought Carmelita running water and a new primary school, villagers hope the new venture will soon bring them electricity and other advances. “There is now more work and more possibilities for our children,” said Ana Centeno, a member of the Carmelita cooperative. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/22/MNGJKEBB1V1.DTL

Indonesia:

25) Indonesian police say they’ve arrested five state forestry officials and two other men for alleged involvement in the illegal felling of forests on Borneo island. Indonesia last month promised to spend 15-million U-S dollars in the fight against illegal logging, which costs the country billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The arrested forestry officials are accused of issuing fake logging rights documents. About 74 other forestry ministry officials have been detained since January for backing illegal logging operations. Rapid deforestation has had devastating environmental consequences for Indonesia and its neighbors, causing floods, landslides and choking haze from fires. http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1442331.htm

26) The international environmental organization Greenpeace has urged the Indonesian government to declare a moratorium on forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan to save them from total destruction. “The government must take firm action against the destruction of the remaining forests and forest fires which have also affected many parts of Southeast Asia,” Greenpeace campaigner for Southeast Asia Hapsoro said. The moratorium should be imposed on new concessions of industrial-scale tree felling or conservation of palm plantations in the two islands, he said, adding that it would be an important step to save the country’s remaining forests from deforestation and forest fires. “Forest fires in Indonesia are closely related with uncontrolled land clearance. Its new impact is illegal logging,” he said. Hapsoro said the government’s permission to certain companies for opening new land should be followed by strict monitoring. Last week, environmental groups reported that about 1,700 hot spots had been detected in Riau province alone. Many of the hot spots were detected in forest concession and plantation areas. http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/index.php?id=5811

27) Alongside a small area of Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, Borneo is the only remaining natural habitat of the orangutan, whose numbers have dwindled to less than 60,000 from a population that once spanned Southeast Asia. “If I had gone to Sumatra, my life would be very different. It was fate that I came here,” says Galdikas. “Here” is Camp Leakey, an orangutan research and preservation center, named after her old mentor, that now employs 200 assistants to observe the apes and safeguard their environment in Indonesian Borneo’s 400,000hectare Tanjung Puting national park. Massive deforestation in Borneo and Sumatra by illegal loggers, man-made forest fires, extensive gold mining and land clearing for oil palm plantations has dramatically reduced the orangutan population in 20 years, a decline Galdikas has struggled to keep in check. “In the last 20 years, the [orangutan] population has probably dipped by at least 50 percent in Tanjung Puting,” she says. “But the net effect of having Camp Leakey and people here for 34 years is that this forest has been almost totally protected from fires, illegal gold mining and illegal logging. If we hadn’t been here, it would have been destroyed.” Camp Leakey came close to destruction five years ago when 300 armed illegal loggers occupied the area and began felling trees. The involvement of local police in their eviction marked a turning point for Tanjung Puting, which now has several US-funded security posts ensuring the forest’s protection. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Focus/GH22Dh01.html

Malaysia:

28) The orang asli (meaning ‘original people’) are the indigenous minority people of Peninsular Malaysia whose ancestors inhabited the peninsula before the Malay kingdoms were established. They comprise 18 different groups, which make up 0.5 per cent of the total population of 26 million. Assimilation – together with increased deforestation and dislocation (as a result of logging and development projects) – has threatened to cut the orang asli off from their ancestral lands, the source of their livelihood and cultures. The orang asli have responded to the state’s assimilationist goal and the appropriation of their ancestral lands by uniting, lobbying politicians, and bringing their cases to the court. They formed organisations such as the Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli Association (set up in 1976) and the Indigenous Peoples’ Network of Malaysia, a network of indigenous peoples’ organisations in Sabah, Sarawak, and the Peninsula. The orang asli began to claim an “indigenous identity” to “regain their cultural symbols” and to counter control by the state. One of the ways to assert this identity is to set up cultural troupes (involving old and young people of the orang asli communities) to perform indigenous music and dance and their own versions of popular music. Using modern instruments such as the guitar and keyboard and the world music idiom also helps the younger generation to connect and engage with modernity. Ten per cent of the proceeds from the sale of the CD go towards a Mak Minah memorial fund for the children, widows, and old folks of Pertak Village. Antares says that part of the memorial fund will be used to help young orang asli with athletic or music potential. He is convinced that helping individuals achieve something in the field of culture and sports is the most effective way of raising the orang asli’s self–esteem. This is in contrast to state Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli officers who try to “assimilate orang asli into modern Malay society by destroying their natural habitat and their spiritual links to the land.” http://www.aliran.com/monthly/2005a/5g.html

29) The state government is seeking RM100 million compensation from the federal government to offset revenue loss from logging in permanent forest reserves every year. Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob said yesterday the compensation would help the state’s coffers if logging in forest reserves were to be stopped. So far, Pahang is the only state to gazette 1.5 million ha of forests as permanent forest reserves for water catchment and conservation. “As regulations still permit forest reserves to be logged to a certain hec tarage, the state government earns RM100 million from logging every year,” Adnan told reporters after opening a seminar on the Sungai Bebar and Sungai Debar biodiversity expedition here. “If the federal government is prepared to contribute a bit, we can stop logging (in per manent forest reserves).” Adnan said the compensation request would be tabled at the next National Forestry Council meeting although it had been raised before. In a related development, Adnan said weaknesses stemming from lax enforcement by the State Forestry Department would be addressed. He said the most glaring weakness was repeated marking of timber trees by loggers when a marking should be used only once. “We’ve detected loggers using the markings repeatedly like bus or cinema tickets.” Such a practice, though not rampant, should be given attention, Adnan said. He also said the practice was detected only lately and could not be monitored closely due to staff shortage.- Bernama http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=36569

Thailand:

30) Khao Yai is part of the Dong Phaya Yen-Khao Yai forest complex recently awarded the prestigious World Heritage status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). The recommendations were compiled during a seminar last week for police responsible for stopping the destruction of the environment and natural resources, CIB deputy chief Wuthi Liptapanlop said. Pol Maj-Gen Wuthi said those present concluded that Thailand still lacks a master plan for the management of its forests. There is insufficient information on the diversity of forest areas and forests lack clear boundaries, allowing illegal hunting and encroachment to take place. He said Khao Yai National Park and nearby communities are not clearly separated. Low-quality tourism, dam construction, wildfires and the relocation of plants and animals from elsewhere affect the conservation of the World Heritage site. Thailand should promote research into its resources in the national park, control the use of roads inside it and promote people’s participation in stopping animals moving out of it, Pol Maj-Gen Wuthi said. http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/22Aug2005_news04.php

31) Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has blamed encroachers on vast tracts of forest land for the disastrous floods in the North and vowed to take tough action against them, no matter how rich, famous or influential they are. Speaking during his weekly radio address yesterday, Mr Thaksin said he has already asked Natural Resources and Environment Minister Yongyuth Tiyapairat and Prime Minister’s Office Minister Newin Chidchob to crack down on trespassing and step up measures to prevent illegal logging in border areas by hilltribe people and illegal aliens. Mr Thaksin said people who had taken hundreds or thousands of rai of forest land would be severely punished. ”We don’t care who they are. We don’t need to look at their faces and names. They will certainly face serious legal measures,” he said. Mr Thaksin said people who had bought land that had been trespassed on or land in reform zones, which could not officially be sold, must return the land to the government or face legal action. People trespassing on smaller tracts of land, such as three to five rai, in order to make a living will be dealt with on a case-by case-basis. Mr Thaksin said floods and drought have been chronic problems for the country so the government would make a huge investment in large-scale water management projects. http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/21Aug2005_news08.php

32) The advisory team of the natural resources and environment minister is seeking permission for Polpana Co to import teak under its Burmese concession into Thailand through Mae Hong Son province. It believes the import route is unlikely to encourage illegal logging in Salween forest. If the permission is granted, Polpana will be the first Thai company to import wood from Burma since the business was halted 11 years ago. Minister Yongyuth Tiyapairat’s advisers joined a delegation led by Chartchai Kijcharoenwong, managing director of the company, to survey its import route recently. The delegation included police, military and administrative authorities of Mae Hong Son province. The route reaches Mae Hong Son through the Ban Na Hua Laem border passage, also known as BP 12, in Khun Yuam district. According to a provincial source, the delegation agreed that the route should not encourage illegal logging in Salween forest because it does not pass through the forest but through several sites of state agencies. Polpana Co is one of four Thai logging companies that won logging concessions from Burma. It sealed a contract with Burma’s Myanmar Timber Enterprise to acquire 1,600 tonnes of teak. Most of the trees were already felled and have waited for import consent about five kilometres from the Ban Na Hua Laem border passage for 11 years. The concessions expired during the long wait and Burma decided not to extend them until import permission was obtained from the Thai government. http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/22Aug2005_news11.php

33) The government has been busy pointing the finger everywhere except at itself, following the devastating flash floods in the North. After a helicopter inspection tour which gave him a hawk’s-eye-view, Thaksin Shinawatra pinpointed two culprits he said must be dealt with immediately: big-time land encroachers along the Ping River and ethnic highlanders in the northern hills. Our past experience with previous environmental problems, however, informs us that if anyone is to be dealt with at all, it will be the poor peasants and not rich encroachers. It must also be noted that although a senior environment official has come out to blame the rapid expansion of tangerine plantations on the northern slopes as the main culprit of the deforestation and the resulting flash floods, the government remains silent on this. Now the government is using the floods as an excuse to to talk of mega-dams again, as a means of storing water and preventing flash floods, while frowning upon traditional weirs that have served the northern farmers for centuries, saying they must be torn down because they obstruct water flow. http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/18Aug2005_news43.php

Australia:

34) It was a sit-in with a difference by protesters worried about the impact of logging on an endangered parrot. Activists, some in dressing gowns, re-created a suburban loungeroom on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne, sitting on a brown sofa beside a small fireplace to highlight their case. The protest was over the damage they say is being caused to the nesting grounds of the endangered superb parrot in the Barmah State Forest, near Echuca in Victoria’s north, after the Department of Sustainability and Environment approved logging permits there. The department admitted last week it had mistakenly allowed a new logging coupe in a protection zone established for the parrots, from which 6,000 tonnes of timber was harvested between February and June this year. Friends of the Earth spokesman Jonathan La Nauze said about 15 per cent of the superb parrot’s Victorian breeding grounds had been lost in the past six months because of logging blunders. Meanwhile much of the river red gum timber harvested from the forest ended up in the fireplaces of Melbourne homes, he said. Protesters now want a moratorium on all logging in the Barmah State Forest. Mr La Nauze said environmentalists and members of the Yorta Yorta people, the forest’s traditional owners, were concerned that Melburnians were unwittingly burning the parrots’ habitat as they consumed more than 115,000 tonnes of redgum firewood each year. “The Department of Sustainability and Environment has proved in the past six months that they cannot protect these incredibly precious species, they can’t protect the heritage of all Victorians and they can’t protect the heritage of the Yorta Yorta nation,” Mr La Nauze said. Friends of the Earth believes less than 200 breeding pairs of the parrot remain in Victoria. Victorian government figures suggest about 500 breeding pairs remain. “The birds visit Barmah between September and December every year, so these birds are about to turn up and look for their homes,” he said. “This is the equivalent of catching the train home and finding your suburb has been totally destroyed.” The parrot, which was once common in much of south-eastern Australia, is confined to the Barmah Forest and the south-west slopes of NSW. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=12535

35) LATE last month (July) conservationists in Wandella State Forest (Peak Alone), South-east NSW, went up the mountain to highlight issues about the logging of the forest. A banner was unfurled which read ‘Your Forests In Unsafe Hands; Leave Peak Alone’. This was done in conjunction with the community blockade of the logging operation, which has been running for two months now. The actions are aimed at Forests NSW, the government department responsible for native forests in NSW but it is the logging contractors who are copping the brunt of the protest. Contractors have had to increase on site security to maintain a 24-hour watch over logging equipment left in the forests at the end of each working day. “Over the twenty two years that I have lived here, I have watched forestry operations open the canopy destroying moist forest understorey,” resident Sandra Taylor said. “Woodchipping native forests such as this one is a criminal misuse of a public resource. “Forests NSW are incapable of managing our publicly owned forests sustainably. Most of the Forest on the mountain has been intensively logged. “Although the mountain looks green, walking through it you realise that the majority of it has been plundered and the biodiversity destroyed.” Claims and counter claims Protestors: It is a myth that timber is going to the local saw mills and it is fact that over 50% of the forest in the Wandella State Forest compartment 3283 and 3284 will be used for pulpwood. http://narooma.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&category=general%20news&story_id=417
196&y=2005&m=8

36) THE Federal Government has been urged to reconsider the impact of Tasmania’s proposed $1.5-billion pulp mill after the submission of revised plans. Sean Cadman, national forest campaign co-ordinator for The Wilderness Society, said today the Government needed to act to ensure Tasmania’s forests and wildlife were not sacrificed to an old-style development proposal. Logging company Gunns Limited submitted a new project scope to the Department of Environment and Heritage this week. The new proposal promises an elemental chlorine-free operation, despite a pledge in a company newsletter last year that only “a low impact, total chlorine-free mill will be looked at.” It also confirms plans to source wood from native forests and plantations, in contrast to last year’s “focus on processing premium plantation timber”. Construction of a new berth facility near the proposed Bell Bay site and a waste disposal facility are also flagged. “Each time we see a new iteration of the proposal it actually gets worse,” Mr Cadman said. “The only thing that’s green about this pulp mill is the colour that they’ve shown it on their display.” http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=3633594

37) TASMANIA’S Attorney-General Judy Jackson is seeking to intervene in a Federal Court stoush over logging in a native forest. Greens senator Bob Brown has self-funded an application to stop Forestry Tasmania logging two coupes in Wielangta Forest, in the state’s east, where three rare and endangered species are feared to be under threat. Ms Jackson has sought consent from both parties to permit her intervention on two issues related to the state’s Regional Forestry Agreement (RFA). The RFA is a 20-year state and Commonwealth agreement for the management of Tasmania’s native forests. Senator Brown said today he was surprised Ms Jackson had not intervened on behalf of rare and endangered species. He said Tasmania was “an ark” for species that had not survived on the mainland and Wielangta was one of the state’s endangered species hotspots. Senator Brown claimed logging in the area threatened the Swift Parrot, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and the Wielangta stage beetle, all of which were listed as endangered. The commonwealth last month expressed interest in intervening in the case but no action has yet been taken. The matter will return to the Federal Court in Hobart next Tuesday. Comment is being sought from Ms Jackson and Forestry Tasmania. http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=3638137

Czech Republic:

38) Since 1966 the forest area has increased by 50,000 hectares. Last year it amounted to 2,645 million hectares. Among the reasons for such an expansion is the system of subsidies for planting trees. Farming no longer pays, so owners of agricultural land to plant find it more advantageous to plant forests. “The European Union supports not-agricultural methods of landscape cultivation, and a forest is ideal in this respect,” said Hugo Roldan from the Agriculture Ministry. Before the Czech Republic joined the EU in May 2004, the country supported afforestation from its own resources. Now EU finances are also earmarked for this purpose. The environmental impact of forests is taken into consideration much more now than in the past. Consequently, higher subsidies are allocated to more resistant deciduous and mixed forests, which withdraw water for a longer period, than to coniferous forests. A forest owner will receive CZK 72,000 crowns per hectare in subsidies for a coniferous forest and CZK 92,000 per hectare for a mixed or deciduous forest. Moreover, forest owners can count on state subsidies for forest maintenance until the trees can be lumbered. http://www.praguemonitor.com/ctk/?id=20050816F00521;story=Forest-area-constantly-expanding-in-Czech-Republic