024OEC’s This Week in Trees

024OEC’s This Week in Trees

This week we have 33 news stories from: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, South Dakota, West Virginia, Virginia, Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, USA, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South Africa, and Tropical Forest.

British Columbia:

1) The Supreme Court of British Columbia released Reasons for Judgement on August 31 that decided a significant court case in favour of the Islands Trust, one that confirms the ability of local governments in BC to use development permits to protect development from hazardous conditions. In his Reasons for Judgement, Mr. Justice Groberman granted the Islands Trust’s request for a clear declaration that Dean Ellis unlawfully contravened the Local Government Act by altering the land in the Komas Bluff Development Permit Area without a development permit from the Denman Island Local Trust Committee. Citing Mr. Ellis’ “persistence in violating the legislation” in the face of warnings from the Islands Trust, Justice Groberman has also placed a permanent injunction against him that restrains him from cutting trees, clearing, developing, excavating or otherwise altering lands within 50 metres of Komas Bluff. The case dates back to 2002, when members of the Denman Island community complained that Dean Ellis was removing trees from portions of his property that were within a buffer area established by the Denman Island Local Trust Committee to protect the unstable slopes of Komas Bluff. Investigations by Islands Trust Bylaw Enforcement Officers confirmed the complaints were valid, although Mr. Ellis had been advised by Islands Trust staff about the buffer area and the need to obtain permits before removing trees. When Mr. Ellis continued to remove trees from the buffer area, the Islands Trust filed a legal claim against him in September, 2003, seeking an injunction and an order for restoration. The case went to court in late January 2005 and Denman Islanders provided affidavits in support of the Islands Trust’s case. http://www.islandstrust.bc.ca

2) Betty will be having a rally in front of the Supreme Court building in downtown Vancouver on September 7 beginning at around 9:30. She is appealing the judgments and conviction of her last trial. This is an important appeal as it concerns the ways in which the Supreme Court judges of BC have protected the logging companies by issuing injunctions which in effect, render citizens helpless to plead our cause as the Contempt of Court charge which results from the breaking of a court injunction is a legal black hole and the merits of the case cannot be argued. The courts say they are not influenced by numbers of people, but of course they are, they are only human and though the pretend to be disinterested arbitrators, they too often follow their own class prejudices. Please come and support Betty! http://www.necessaryvoices.org/
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=12534

3) The Biodiversity Branch (formerly the Wildlife Branch) has long been viewed as an apologist for the clearcut logging of grizzly habitat in BC as well as a doctrinaire defender of the trophy hunting of grizzly bears in the province. The opinion piece is scheduled to appear in the next issue of the International Bear Association’s official publication urging the association’s membership to support the Bush administration’s proposed grizzly de-listing. Biodiversity Branch bureaucrats have claimed that grizzly bears in BC can be properly managed, and even recovered in some regions where their populations have dwindled to precariously low numbers, with no reduction in the annual allowable cut (AAC) or any change in forest practices. In other words, the ministry’s view is that the current rate of clearcut logging can continue in perpetuity, along with the continued direct killing of the species by trophy hunting and somehow grizzly bears will thrive. 10,000 grizzlies have been killed in BC since 1975 and little, if any, core coastal grizzly habitat has been protected in the last decade. In fact, proposed land use plans for the central and north coast would leave 80 per cent of grizzly habitat unprotected. It is highly inappropriate, but somehow not unexpected given their track record, for the ministry to publicly support the political maneuver by the Bush administration to de-list grizzly bears in the lower 48 from the US Endangered Species Act. This is clearly beyond the purview of provincial civil servants and once again reveals the biased political motivations of the bureaucrats in the BC government who are ostensibly in charge of managing grizzly bears. http://www.tidepool.org/original_content.cfm?articleid=172849

4) The ongoing obliteration of the great forests that once covered the Lower Mainland, the Sechelt Peninsula, the Malaspina Peninsula, the Gulf Islands and the east coast of Vancouver Island is usually discussed in an awkward and burdensome dialect. “The environment” is perhaps its most cumbersome, vague, and unhelpful term. It is within that dialect, nonetheless, that we are more or less obliged to discuss the way British Columbia’s government is im?plementing the final destruction of the distinct and irreplaceable ecological universe known as the coastal Douglas fir forest. The last time anything like this happened was 65 million years ago. This time around, the culprit is a single species, the one known as Homo sapiens. But there, in that last sentence, I have resorted to the dialect again, and in a way that allows a certain cynicism, as though ordinary people, because of their very nature, are willfully and rapaciously devouring the living world. Actually, they’re not. The ongoing mass-extinction event is the result of specific decisions, made by specific people, with specific names. That is what you see when you look closely at what is happening to the remnants of the coast Douglas fir ecosystem. What you see is that there certain specific people involved, and certain specific decisions. Here’s one name: Bill Barisoff. Last year, on Barisoff’s watch as minister, the Water, Land and Air Protection Ministry decided to amend the provincial endangered-species list to remove endangered plant communities. The provincial Conservation Data Centre classifies all 21 distinct plant communities within the coastal Douglas fir ecosystem as vulnerable, imperilled, or critically imperilled. Here’s another name: Cindy Stern. Last year, in the full knowledge of the contents of that ecological report, Stern, a Vancouver Island district forest manager, approved the logging of 97 percent of a portion of forest near Nanaimo that the ecological report had proposed be set aside in a recovery strategy. The ecological report’s recommendations would have put out of harm’s way 11.4 percent of the mature forest in the area, or 1,059.3 hectares of land. Stern approved logging of all but 37.1 hectares of the mature forest in the cutblock.
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=12554

Washington:

5) The need to protect fish and wildlife in Olympic National Forest may make it difficult, if not impossible, to rebuild the once-popular Dosewallips Road leading into Olympic National Park, officials say. A 300-foot section of road, 5 miles from the park boundary near Brinnon, was washed out during a winter storm in 2002. In the latest twist, the National Marine Fisheries Service has informed the Forest Service that rebuilding the road could have “dire consequences” for chinook salmon, listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The Marine Fisheries Service, which is legally responsible for threatened and endangered salmon, has recommended that the Forest Service “fully analyze” the option of closing the road forever and restoring fish runs. Ironically, the road washout and continuing erosion has contributed significant amounts of spawning gravel to the river. As the washout area expanded from 300 to 600 feet, biologists report improved salmon-spawning habitat downstream. At one time, the Forest Service proposed building a road connection on the slope above the river, but questions arose about the stability of that slope, the loss of old-growth habitat and effects on the northern spotted owl ? another species listed as “threatened.” The latest idea is to build a “low-water crossing” that would flood during heavy storms and allow continued erosion, but Landino questioned how sediment movement would be maintained. More environmental analysis is needed, he noted, but his letter raised the prospect that his agency might declare the project a “jeopardy” to the survival of Dosewallips chinook. That’s a legal declaration that would force the two federal agencies to work out alternatives to the problem. Bonnie Phillips of Olympic Forest Coalition said the road-closure option should be fully examined so people can consider the trade-offs. “It is a shame that the Forest Service is pitting people who want to recreate against people who have concerns with the river and the forest and the environment in general,” she said. “I just picture all these problems and have to say there are times when nature is trying
to tell you something.” http://reg.kitsapsun.com/bsun/web/loginForm?from=www.kitsapsun.com/bsun/local/article/0,2403,BSUN_19088_40
49473,00.html

Oregon:

6) On Saturday, August 27 unidentified vigilantes fired off six gunshots at forest defenders associated with the Guardians of the McKenzie Watershed at the Sten timber sale located in the McKenzie District of the Willamette National Forest. These were not random gunshots up in the air, but focused shots such that treesitters and their ground support watched nearby foliage get rustled from the bullets. According to the treesitters, a Forest Service law enforcement officer showed up five minutes later. No one has been prosecuted. It is unclear if there is an investigation. Forest Defenders held a press conference in Eugene yesterday calling for an immediate investigation into the incident.
http://www.cascwild.org

7) The CWP and conservation partners have filed a legal challenge to the B&B post-fire clearcutting project in the Deschutes National Forest in the aftermath of the suspicious 2003 fires. The project aims to clearcut over 5,000 acres of designated old-growth reserves above the renowned Metolius Basin in the shadows of Three Fingered Jack and Mt. Jefferson. As we brief our preliminary injunction request, logging in a limited area has begun. Boise and International Forest Products were the two top bidders. We are being represented by Susan Jane Brown and Stephanie Parent of the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center. Keep in mind the suspicious origin of the fire. Just days before Pres. Bush arrived to stump for his so-called Healthy Forests Initiative, two fires started, although no lightning strikes were recorded in the area weeks prior. We and others continue to urge Governor Kulongoski to “re-open the investigation.” We urge you to do the same, and tell him to not reward possible felony arson with massive clearcutting projects. http://www.cascwild.org

California:

8) The process of developing a stewardship plan for Brooktrails 2,500-acre forest has evolved from angry confrontation to a focus on neighborhood planning and reconciliation of opposites. Now that the fear of a back door for commercial logging has been eliminated, and the breaks will clearly be limited in number, there appear to be few objections from residents. Residents also appear to accept the committees suggestion that the first of the break be established along Ridge Road, a response to the history of wildfires that swept uphill from west of the township and then down the other side. I think there has been growth in this community when it comes to trusting the process, Ziady said. That trust, in turn, appears to have been generated by the committees increasing willingness to incorporate public input into the evolving plan. Due to public input, reads the document presented by Ziady, herbicide use and logging for profit to subsidize the cost of forest protection will NOT be in the Greenbelt Stewardship Plan. http://www.willitsnews.com/Stories/0,1413,253~26908~3037994,00.html

9) As it has for years, the company claimed the most recent round of layoffs is due to onerous and politically motivated regulations. Environmentalists that chimed in claimed the company is a victim of its own forest practices and its enormous debt. Palco’s longtime counsel Jared Carter said at a public meeting earlier this year that people and companies routinely use credit, and that there’s nothing wrong with it. But as everyone knows, when a family’s credit card debt exceeds their ability to pay it down, that family is in trouble. Caught in the middle are employees just trying to make a living on the North Coast. That’s getting increasingly difficult in the timber industry. Palco’s longtime counsel Jared Carter said at a public meeting earlier this year that people and companies routinely use credit, and that there’s nothing wrong with it. But as everyone knows, when a family’s credit card debt exceeds their ability to pay it down, that family is in trouble. Caught in the middle are employees just trying to make a living on the North Coast. That’s getting increasingly difficult in the timber industry. http://www.times-standard.com/opinion/ci_2997820

10) The vast majority — about 95 percent — of the old redwood forest has been cut. California’s remaining giant trees are in parks, preserves and in areas set aside for endangered species on private lands. Scientists believe logged-over stands left alone may not become old-growth forest for eons, if ever. But strategic thinning may help these forests resemble old growth in our lifetimes. ”I wouldn’t describe it as a paradigm shift, but an evolution of what it means to save the redwoods,” said Ruskin Hartley with the Save-the-Redwoods League, the nonprofit group behind a century of old-growth redwood preservation. Redwood National Park is now proposing the first phase of restoring some 15,000 acres of dense, desert-like forest scattered across the south end of the park. It’s the worst of the worst, and the park is looking first to 1,700 acres in the South Fork of Lost Man Creek drainage. The stands are about 50 years old and they’re thick — averaging about 1,100 trees per acre. The park is hoping to treat about 360 of those acres on gentle slopes, bringing densities to about 300 to 400 trees per acre. Steeper areas would be thinned only lightly, and creeks would have wide buffer zones. Tan oak stands would get the lightest touch in an effort to prevent creating brushy, fire-prone areas. Stands along bordering old-growth would also be more lightly trimmed. Only trees under 15 inches in diameter would be removed, said park vegetation management chief Leonel Arguello. Merchantable trees would go to the park contractor to offset the project expenses. In today’s market, the estimated $2.5 million to $3 million cost may nearly be offset by the yield. For more than a decade, the city of Arcata has directed thinning in its expanding forest — now 2,000 acres — toward improving conditions for wildlife and native plants. It’s used the experiments at Redwood National Park as a guide. In what has been called a pinnacle of public forest management, parts of the forest are now airy and diverse with species that historically grew there. The city paid off its parkland bond in 1989, freeing it of debt that in part drove timber harvesting. http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3000354

Montana:

11) In a complex deal that will be complete in 2007, they are selling parts of the land to federal land agencies, to ranchers and to other private owners with strict easements on it. Combined with other easements, the agreement will keep more than 100,000 acres undeveloped. The group, called the Blackfoot Challenge, will keep 5,400 acres. “Our goal is to maintain a large intact landscape and the character of our valley,” said Hank Goetz, a retired forestry professor from the University of Montana. The interest of local people in managing the neighboring woods for their benefit is known as community forestry, part of a growing international trend. A 2002 report by Forest Trends and the Center for International Environmental Law found that since the early 1990’s the number of acres under some form of direct community management had doubled in the Southern Hemisphere, the only region that was studied. In community forestry, traditional opponents like environmentalists and loggers often join to fight a common enemy, for example subdivisions, absentee landowners or the decline of a local economy. The idea, however, worries some environmentalists, who see it as a way for industry to co-opt environmental protections. It could, they say, lead to the sale of public lands. “It’s Sagebrush Rebellion light,” said John Horning, executive director of Forest Guardians, an environmental group in Santa Fe, N.M., referring to an effort in the 1980’s by some Western politicians to persuade the federal government to turn over federal land to the states. “It’s sinister and it’s frightening, because it comes at the same time federal environmental safeguards on public lands are being dismantled to allow logging, mining, and oil and gas development.” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/national/04conserve.html

South Dakota:

12) Rick D. Cables, Rocky Mountain Regional forester, said that the forest service had treated 250,000 acres since the Black Hills Forest Plan was implemented in 1997. To treat acres is a program of fuels reduction in the forest. “The trend in number of acres treated is up,” Cables said.Cables went on to recognize the danger wildfire poses to the forest and the need to reduce that threat.”We (the forest service) recognize that to really make a difference in reducing the threat of large-scale wildfires we are going to have to step up our performance to restore fire dependent ecosystems by placing greater emphasis on hazardous fuel reduction and forest management,” Cables said.Cables summarized his remarks when he said, “We are committed to healthy forests through thoughtful and aggressive management while maintaining all of the other important forest values. We will be as aggressive as law, policy and funding allow, consistent with our Black Hills Forest Plan,” Cables said.Not all of the witnesses agreed with Cables’ assessment of management practices in the Black Hills National Forest. Tom Troxel, director of Black Hills Forest Resource Association said that measuring forest health by the number of trees killed by mountain pine beetles and by the number of acres burned by fire is simplistic, but useful. “Since, 2000, over 180,000 acres have burned and over one million trees have been killed by mountain pine beetle in the Black Hills. If the Black Hills National Forest were a patient in a hospital, its condition would be critical,” Troxel said. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1300&dept_id=156923&newsid=15139246&PAG=461&rfi=9

West Virginia:

13) Autumn is a vibrant time in the mountains surrounding Asheville. Most spectacular is the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a 3,800-acre virgin wilderness on the North Carolina-Tennessee border where kaleidoscopic brilliance meets prehistory. Kilmer Forest is the remnant of a wilderness that once covered the entire U.S. east of the Mississippi River and contains some of the nation’s oldest trees and plants, according to the park’s Web site. There are more than 60 miles of trails near the forest, ranging from easy to strenuous. The main two-mile trail can be completed in one to two hours. It is divided into upper and lower loops. Both are broad and well marked, as well as equipped with stairs and bridges for managing hills and streams. The highlight of the main trail is the Poplar Grove on the Upper Loop, which contains the park’s oldest and largest trees. These yellow poplars are more than 400 years old, 100 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet in circumference. According to legend, it takes four adults holding hands to encircle the poplars. I saw four adults attempt this and, yes, it took all four. Also in Poplar Cove is a monument to poet Joyce Kilmer, author of “Trees,” for whom the forest was dedicated in 1936. It was slated for clearing, but the Forest Service bought the pristine land in 1935 for a hefty $28 per acre (most land then was $3 to $4 per acre) and named it for Kilmer, who was killed in France during World War I. http://wvgazette.com/section/Travel%20&%20Leisure/200509014

Virginia:

14) Leaders of a coalition of environmental groups say that they are not opposing an increase in logging proposed for the Monongahela National Forest. Instead, West Virginia Wilderness Coalition officials say their focus is increasing the parts of the forest that are protected as wilderness areas. “We’re not opposed to logging on the national forest,” said Dave Saville, a West Virginia Highlands Conservancy activist and leader of the wilderness coalition. “That’s not our position.” Saville said that, while the Forest Service’s preferred alternative would triple the allowed logging in the Monongahela, the other option backed by the coalition would allow almost as much. “Some people are going to criticize us for supporting an alternative that would triple the logging on the forest,” Saville said. “We can live with that, if we can protect more of the special places.” http://wvgazette.com/section/News/Other%20News/2005083133

Colorado:

15) This is the first phase of Vail’s Forest Health Project in which more dead and infested trees will be removed from parts of the forest within the town. The work above Donovan Park will take five to six weeks and the town has hired a local tree cutting firm, a logging company and an organization. Crews will cut and pile about 1,000 trees on what’s known as the park’s “upper bench.” Many of the trees will be hauled away, but some will be burned in a controlled fire late this fall or early spring. The work will cost about $144,000. The pine beetle is native to Colorado’s pine forest with outbreaks of the bugs occurring every 20 years to 30 years. The current outbreak has spread from Mexico to Canada, said Phil Bowden, a fire official with U.S. Forest Service. “There currently are more than 75,000 trees infested in the Lionshead to Dowd Junction area alone, and during the next five years the area surrounding Vail could continue to loose hundreds of thousands of trees from infestation,” he said. There is little that can be done to landscape areas as the trees begin to die, Bowden said. “We can’t prevent trees from dying so visually there’s little we can do,” said Bowden. “It’s much more important to focus our work on removing those trees that are a wildfire danger.” http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20050830/NEWS/50830002/0/FRONTPAGE

Wisconsin:

16) I was once in a classroom with a forester who asked a room full of second graders, “When is it OK to cut down a tree?” “Never!” was the emphatic response. He then used the opportunity to talk about how forests can be thinned, much like you thin a vegetable garden. The message of forest sustainability is critical. Members of the Paper/Forestry Product Cluster understand how important it is to harvest trees with as little impact on our environment as possible. Today more trees are planted and more wood is grown in Wisconsin annually than the combined volume that is harvested or lost to natural disasters such as wild fire, wind, ice storms, disease and insects. As the Paper/Forestry Cluster works to increase local business opportunities, we also recognize the need to build awareness and appreciation for trees and for the wonderful resources they provide. http://www.wisinfo.com/dailytribune/wrdtlocal/333479410699402.shtml

New Hampshire:

17) The Lyme Timber Co. discovered the profit potential in land conservation almost by accident. For nearly a decade after its founding in 1976, it operated like any other timber management company — buying, logging and selling timberland for wealthy investors. But in 1983, it bought land in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina that environmentalists had been eyeing for inclusion in the Croatan and George Washington National Forests. Working with The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and the federal government, Lyme Timber helped make it happen. Along the way, it discovered it could earn as much from conservation and sustainable forestry as from land and timber sales, a market niche that became its focus in 1990 when it hired Peter Stein, former senior vice president of the Trust for Public Land. Since then, Lyme Timber has completed more than two dozen purchases that permanently protect land from development, pioneering a business model that has been adopted in part by bigger timber management firms such as GMO Renewable Resources of Boston. A consulting subsidiary headed by Stein has advised private landowners and nonprofits on another 50 conservation deals. “We like to be able to do well and do good,” Stein says. A limited partnership that does not disclose its earnings, Lyme Timber was founded by David Roby, former manager of Wagner Woodlands Ltd. of Lyme, and former Wagner investor Roy Van Vleck. At the time, it was one of a handful of traditional timber investment management organizations, or TIMOs. That changed in the early 1990s, as paper companies began selling vast tracts of forest land and more institutional investors discovered timber. The number of TIMOs surged, paralleling the growth of nonprofits hoping to protect land from development. Sometimes Lyme acts as an intermediary, buying land and harvesting timber until a government agency or nonprofit can come up with the money to buy the property. Sometimes it sells a conservation easement that protects the land from development and requires the landowner to practice sustainable forestry, protect critical wildlife habitat and allow public access for recreation. Many deals involve both. http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/09/03/lyme_timber_profits_from_forest_conserva
tion/

Pennsylvania:

18) The park, located in Clarion, Forest, and Jefferson counties, boasts about 120 white pines that stand 150 feet or taller. There’s no other place in the Northeastern United States that has more than 74 trees of that species that tall. Walking among them is like taking a stroll through some kind of fairy tale dark forest. There are lots of ferns and moss-covered logs on the ground and little else in the way of understory for 100 feet straight up. “Cook Forest is the premier display of a white pine forest in the Northeast,” said Bob Leverett, executive director of the Eastern Native Tree Society and co-author of a book on old-growth forsts in the Northeast. “There are a number of places where you can find white pines that make it into the mid-160-foot range. Beyond that, though, they just drop out. That’s not the case at Cook Forest. It’s a unique place in that sense.” Indeed, Cook Forest is home to the state’s only 180-foot-plus white pine, its only three 170 footers, and 27 of its 30 160 footers. The granddaddy of them all is the Longfellow Pine. At 182.1 feet tall, with a trunk circumference of 11.1 feet at chest height, it’s the tallest white pine to be found anywhere from Pennsylvania to Maine and the third tallest white pine anywhere east of the Mississippi River. In fact, the Longfellow Pine is one of just six white pines known to measure more than 180 feet tall anywhere. Luphringer often leads walks to the tree, and to the Forest Cathedral, a surrounding 315-acre example of old growth forest that’s a registered National Natural Landmark. Those trees stand as a testament to what was but may never be again, Luphringer said. The Longfellow Pine itself is probably more than 300 years old. It’s hard to imagine any trees being allowed to stand that long today, he said. “We may be looking at the very tail end of having historic native white pines of that size,” Leverett agreed. “That’s why the park’s stand of old growth is so special. It reminds us of what these species are capable of when given time. http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/sports/outdoors/s_370717.html

Alabama:

19) Seifried and Felder said part of their reason for writing “Alabama’s Canyons” was not only to bring attention to the area but also to help preserve it. “People just don’t realize what they have in the Bankhead,” Seifried said, referring to the natural beauty of the forest. “It happens over time to people who live in a spot, and, over time, they just don’t appreciate it.” Because the book is self-published, proceeds from its sale will go to them, but Seifried and Felder have partnerships with the Alabama Land Trust and the Huntsville Historical Foundation. “We’re trying to get beyond the break-even point with the book, and then we’ll worry about what we’ll do with the money we make over that,” Felder said. Beyond monetary rewards, the authors said that areas like Bankhead are always threatened, especially by logging and paper industries. “We took a risk doing this book,” Felder said, “But we care so much about the Bankhead, and we don’t want to see the encroachment into this natural forest.” Seifried, a native of Vermont, said Bankhead presents some of the most unusual and spectacular natural beauty of anywhere in the country. It’s for that reason, he said, the forest is such an attraction for people from across the Southeast. “A lot of times when I’m there, I see car tags from Louisiana and Mississippi and Georgia,” said Seifried, who is no stranger to books about Alabama and its natural habitats. “Wild Alabama” and “Alabama Simply Beautiful” are two of his books that are filled with similarly lush portraits of the state’s natural wonders.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050902/APN/509020547

Louisiana

20) The first products needed are panels to board up ravaged homes or for flooring replacement, helping companies like Norbord, Louisiana-Pacific, Georgia-Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, he said. A need for lumber would follow, helping companies like Weyerhaeuser, Canfor, and West Fraser Timber Co., Atkinson said. Mississippi Power, part of the huge southern utility Southern Co, has said it will need to replace almost 5,000 power poles toppled by Hurricane Katrina, which packed winds of 140 mph. Meanwhile, John Tumazos, analyst with Prudential Equity Group, raised his 2006 earnings estimates for a handful of lumber and building material companies since he now expects rebuilding to prompt a 10-percent rise in housing starts next year. That should offset the cost of damaged plants, higher raw material costs, and lost production time.
“(Panel) prices should be higher as we estimate that 200,000 to 400,000 people have lost their homes,” he wrote in note this week. He raised forecasts for Weyerhaeuser to $4.25 a share from $4.04; Louisiana Pacific to $2.23 from $1.85,; Georgia-Pacific to $2.92 from $2.66; and Temple-Inland to $1.53 from $1.41. Shares of BlueLinx eased 6 cents to $11.73 on Friday afternoon, but were up about 31 percent for the week. (Reuters)

USA:

21) National Parks Cartoon: The new animation “Pauly Appointee” has just been posted!
http://sfgate.com/comics/fiore/

Canada:

22) A common fungus has turned lethal and is killing pine trees in Western
Canada in what researchers describe as a “globally unprecedented” epidemic associated with recent changes in the climate. The fungus is killing plantations of lodgepole pine in the hardest-hit areas of northwestern B.C. and is also affecting mature native trees, says Alex Woods, a forest pathologist with the B.C. forest service. In a report in the journal BioScience today, Woods and his colleagues describe how the innocuous fungus has turned into a killer, aggravating problems in B.C. forests already devastated by pine beetles. “It shows how unpredictable the impacts of climate change can be,” says
Woods. “It’s sobering.” Scientists say warm winters have allowed the pine beetle to multiply and spread at an unprecedented rate, killing vast tracts of forest in central B.C. The fungus, called Dothistroma septosporum, is flourishing in northwestern B.C. where Woods and his colleagues say wet summers have favoured its spread. Lodgepole pine plantations, planted over the last 30 years and covering close to 40,000 hectares in the northwest B.C. region of Kispiox, are most severely affected, they report. Woods first became aware of the fungus outbreak at a B.C. plantation in 1997, but says he did not consider it a serious problem, as there was no documented evidence the fungus could kill native trees. When Woods revisited the site in 2002, he says, “all the trees were dead.” Since then, Woods and his colleagues surveyed more than 40,000 hectares of pine plantation in northwestern B.C., 92 per cent of which show some sign of infection. Woods predicts that as many as half the trees on the worst-hit plantations could eventually die. © The Vancouver Sun 2005

Brazil:

23) Rio de Janeiro – Greenpeace activists invaded the Rio de Janeiro municipality’s head office in the centre and rappelled the building’s 15-floor façade to demand control mechanisms that would impede the purchase of illegal timber by the municipal government. Over a year ago, the NGO denounced that deforested timber from the Amazonia was used by the municipality to construct new decks of the Rodrigo de Freitas Lake. Today, four activists stretched a large banner requesting Rio’s adhesion to the City Friend of Amazonia program. A dozen Brazilian cities have already joined the Greenpeace program, including Manaus and Sao Paulo. The objective is to stimulate the creation of municipal laws and control mechanisms on biddings that avoid that the city purchases illegal timber for its works. For over a year, Greenpeace has been negotiation with the local government but without a response in a month, so the militants decided to radicalize its campaign. Seven activists entered in the building without being noticed. The banner that they hung stated “Rio has delayed. The Amazonia has haste”. They remained hanging from the building for over almost an hour. Once they reached ground, they were held by the Municipal Guard and brought to a local police delegation. http://www.amazonia.org.br/english/noticias/noticia.cfm?id=176023

Indonesia:

24) As of last December, the country had a total of 519 conservation areas, including national parks. Koes said that the most successful empowerment program involved people living in the vicinity of Mount Rinjani, located on Lombok island in the east of the country. Koes Saparji, the director general of forest and natural resources conservation at the Ministry of Forestry, said that currently national parks and other conservation sites throughout the country were facing serious problems. While the government was serious in its fight against deforestation, forest fires, illegal logging and mining, illegal hunting and fishing, and unregulated tourism that could further damage the country’s forests, there was also a need to reach accommodations with local people who claimed to have the right to benefit from forest resources. “We have to empower local people living in and around forests in order to improve their well-being by, for example, designating buffer zones where people can earn a living without touching the forest,” he said. “The people there protect the forest by not cutting down the trees for money anymore. They now make handicrafts. Some of these are even good enough for export. We will introduce similar programs in other areas. I hope we can now build cooperation among all stakeholders to maintain our national forests,” Koes said. However, Christin Wulandari of WWF urged the government not to delay in rolling out empowerment programs. “Based on surveys completed by our colleagues, there are more than 12 million poor people living in the conservation areas. One way to prevent them from abusing the forests to earn their living would be to immediately implement welfare programs,” she said. http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailcity.asp?fileid=20050901.G03&irec=2

25) Burning peat bogs set alight by rainforest clearance in Indonesia are releasing up to a seventh of the world’s total fossil fuel emissions in a single year, the geographers’ conference heard yesterday. Tropical peatlands are one of the largest stores of carbon on the Earth’s surface and setting them alight is contributing massively to global warming, said Dr Susan Page, senior lecturer in geography at Leicester University The carbon stored in the peat, formed by trees growing over 26,000 years ago, is 10 times greater than the carbon stored in the forest growing on top, making it a priority for the international community to stop them burning. The peatlands burn each year during the dry season as farmers clear land, and once lit are hard to extinguish. An area the size of Belgium has been cleared and burned in eight years, according to Dr Page. At the current rate of burning the peatlands could be destroyed before 2040, she told the Royal Geographical Society’s annual international conference in London. Dr Page said: “This situation will only worsen. Although human-activated burning rates have slowed in the last three years, the cleared and dessicated soils are easily ignited during droughts. These occur naturally every three to seven years and will continue to make the problem worse for years to come.” Peatlands were burned on the orders of the former Indonesian dictator Suharto in an attempt to create one of the world’s largest rice plantations. It has since been found that the acid soils are unsuitable for growing rice, making the Mega Rice Project one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters and one that has led to air pollution as far away as peninsular Malaysia and Thailand. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/03/ngeog03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/03/ixnew
stop.html

26) A peace agreement in tsunami-ravaged Aceh province could further threaten Sumatran tigers, orangutans and other endangered animals, conservationists warned Saturday, noting that their habitat could shrink as reconstruction efforts gather steam. More than 800,000 cubic meters of wood will be needed to rebuild the province, which was hardest hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed nearly 180,000 people across Asia, said Nana Firman, an Aceh field officer for the World Wildlife Fund. That could result in the destruction of the unique tropical forest in central Aceh, home to Sumatran orangutans, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, clouded leopards and other threatened species, she and others said. “If we’re not careful … everyone will just start cutting everywhere,” said Firman, noting that an agreement signed last month by the government and rebels to end three decades of fighting adds to conservationists’ worries. The accord gives greater control of the province’s vast natural resources to the people of Aceh, but is short on details. “One of our concerns … is that people will go to the forest and cut, because they think they now have the freedom to do that,” she said. There are only believed to be between 400 and 500 Sumatran tigers left living in the wild, and some 7,000 Sumatran orangutans down from 12,000 in 1993, said Suherry Aprianto, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation program. Almost all live in central Aceh’s 2.6 million hectare (6.4 million acre) Leuser national park. http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=30414

Malaysia:

27) Against illegal logging, the law extends far indeed. But its reach has seemed maddeningly to exceed its grasp. The National Forestry Act is 21 years old. Its latest amendments, instituted in 1993, were hailed at the time as the most far-sighted and comprehensive legislation governing tropical timber resource management of any producer nation. Half-million-ringgit fines, 50 times higher than before, were specified for illegal logging, along with a seven-fold increase in maximum jail terms to 20 years. The police and armed forces were ordered to help forestry authorities monitor and operate against illegal loggers. For everyone else, rewards of up to 12.5 per cent of the value of seized illegal timber were offered. It seemed to work well, at first. A 2001 World Bank/WWF Malaysia report stated that the average number of forest crimes in peninsular Malaysia “dropped from 223 for the period 1987-1993 to about 28 for the period 1994-1999”. Unfortunately, five years on, we can see that the apparent decline in this sector of organised crime was more a phase of mergers and acquisitions: the crooks consolidated. Technology has helped, however. As Najib noted, remote-sensing satellites have rendered illegal logging activities much more visible to high-tech eyes in the sky. Meanwhile, back on earth, the stringent provisions of the Forestry Act will be hopefully upheld by the skills-enhancement of public prosecutors, which the Attorney-General’s Office has been asked to see to. This latest impetus in timber management rightly addresses conservation needs by limiting the extent of forest open to logging, but there would be great satisfaction too in clear-felling the crooks and sending them down the river to the mill to be nailed and boarded up. http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Friday/Columns/20050902085005/Article/indexb_html

Cambodia:

28) People in this north-eastern corner of Cambodia farm the land collectively. There are no fences. The land belongs to all and they say: “The forest is our market.” There are eight different ethnic groups living in Ratanakkiri. They have their own languages, and most of them are followers of animism, worshipping spirits in the trees, rocks and rivers that surround them. Several years ago, the government recognised that the indigenous people collectively owned the land – and should do so in perpetuity. But the registration process has been painfully slow, leaving the way open for land-grabbers. These land-grabbers can be powerful opponents. As a bunch of local men gathered on the porch of a wooden house in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadaw district, they chewed over the problems they faced. “Brokers connected to rich people come here to convince people to sell land,” one of them told me. “And because people need money, some of them agree. But then the land is fenced off – and that makes our lives very hard.” “We can’t protect our forests and land by ourselves,” another said. “We need government involvement. But local officials have been involved in selling land too.” The locals said a village chief connived with district officials to sell the land illegally to some well-connected people from Phnom Penh. They persuaded the villagers to agree to the deal by throwing a party, getting them drunk, and producing documents for them to thumb-print. The government’s own dealings have not sent out the best signals. Despite a moratorium on logging, the wood for the new National Assembly building will come from freshly felled trees in Ratanakkiri. Workers have already marked the trees to be cut. A Forestry Administration official at the site explained that the National Assembly project would only take carefully selected trees, and would be strictly limited in its scope. But he admitted that the very presence of the concession had encouraged other, illegal loggers – who also claimed to be taking wood for the assembly building. Local village chief Bran Godreng was unimpressed. He said the loggers were disturbing a spirit forest sacred to the Kreung people, and complained that no one had asked for permission or shown him any official paperwork. Villagers have staged protests, and attempted to block the loggers’ vehicles, but they have little chance of reversing the decision. Traditional ways of life in Ratanakkiri are likely to face an increasing number of challenges in the next few years. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4208676.stm

Australia:

29) Nine people were arrested and charged with a variety of offences last week after protestors erected cabling across an access road to the disputed Wandella forest and constructed and manned a tripod type tree-sit. The cabling and the tree-sit near the intersection of Brassknocker and Yowrie Roads prevented logging trucks from leaving the area. The protestors refused police officers’ directions to clear the road and a Police Rescue unit was called from Cooma to dismantle the obstructions. The arrests follow last week’s Bega Valley Shire Council meeting where a motion was carried to respect the rights of people engaged in lawful work as well as the right of people to maintain lawful and peaceful protests. Inspector Jason Edmunds of Bega Police said no police presence was necessary at the site over the week, although he would continue to monitor the situation. http://bega.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&category=general%20news&story_id=421048&
y=2005&m=9

New Zealand:

30) Ban illegally logged timber and protect local manufacturing. The Green Party wants a ban on the import of illegally logged timber to protect native forests in third world countries and keep local businesses working, in the third Green Solution announced this afternoon. “We have a responsibility not just for the chainsaws we hold but for the products we buy,” Green Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says. “A ban on illegally logged timber would send the message that New Zealand is opposed to environmental destruction wherever it happens, and in the process we’d benefit local manufacturers trying to do the right thing. “In the past month, two New Zealand furniture factories in the South Island town of Waimate have shut up shop, blaming cheap imports many made from illegally-logged timber. “We have protected the last of New Zealand’s publicly owned forests from logging. Now we have to stop destroying the forests of the third world through our consumption. Forests in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia are being ripped off by illegal logging operations that provide no benefit at all to the host country, destroy their forest and ignore the rights of indigenous people. “This timber and furniture is being imported to New Zealand and is undercutting our sustainably produced timber and furniture makers who are trying to use sustainable products.” The timber ban is the third in a series of Green Solutions that the Greens are unveiling during the election campaign. The Green Party wants an immediate ban on imports of all illegally logged timber and products made from it, and would phase in a requirement for all timber and timber products to come from certified sustainably managed forests, Ms Fitzsimons says. “The Indonesian government has asked for help. 90 percent of the logging of its forests is illegal. If there is no market for this illegally logged timber, the environmental destruction will stop. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0509/S00022.htm

Africa:

31) The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched the second phase of the community Management of Protected Areas conservation Project (COMPACT) in its efforts to support conservation of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Ms. Luguga said the first phase of COMPACT was a response to an aerial survey, which was conducted by UNDP in collaboration with United Nations Foundation, Global Environmental Facility and UNEP, which revealed disturbing findings. On the forest reserve, the survey showed the magnitude of extensive forest destruction most of which attributed to human activities like illegal logging, forest fires, charcoal production and quarries. She challenged communities living around the mountain to realize that continued degradation of the mountain’s natural resources would lead to loss of biodiveversity, drying up of rivers and decline of agricultural activities that depend on water and favourable climate from the mountain. http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/observer/2005/09/04/48715.html

South Africa:

32) “I had to go to the lower parts of the farm and drag up tonnes of soil that had been eroded and washed away,” he said. The previous owners had removed all of the natural vegetation from a river system running through his property but he is allowing native trees to reclaim it. Hohls also ploughed up “contour banks” — raised ridges of soil across his fields — which channel the water down natural courses as well as grassed channels he built himself. “If you don’t do this the water will take the shortest route through your field and take the soil out,” he said. The changes are costly and the work hard — at a time when margins are narrow — but Hohls said they make the farm more efficient. “You are less wasteful with your water and you don’t lose your soil,” he said. It’s not just good for farmers. The benefits of ecologically-friendly farming can be glimpsed in the Dlinza forest, one of the last fragments of coastal scarp forest left in South Africa. Coastal scarp is a particularly rare forest type that grows on plateaus near the sea. Moisture rolls in from the coast and up escarpments, making the forest rich in plant and animal life. Good rainfalls and soil also explain why so much has been cleared for agriculture and commercial timber plantations. A walk along the aerial boardwalk suspended above the forest floor at Dlinza takes you briefly back to an era before the region was transformed by modern agriculture and urbanization. Trumpeter hornbills, striking birds with massive beaks, sit atop ancient hardwoods like sentinels of the forest. From a lookout in the canopy one can see purple-crested loeries glide through the trees, their scarlet wings a vivid contrast with the surrounding foliage of dark green. In the distance, one can see the sugar fields that have radically altered the local landscape. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19631351.htm

Tropics:

33) As human populations and their impacts on the world increase, tropical forests are changing in many different ways. Forests are being cleared, burned, logged, fragmented, and overhunted and an unprecedented pace, and they are also being altered in insidious ways by global climatic and atmospheric changes. “The evidence for global effects suggests that a massive reorganization of the structure and dynamics of tropical forests is already underway” writes ecologist S. Joseph Wright, “The tropics support over half of all species and over two-thirds of all people. Without an appropriate commitment from the scientific community, the two are unlikely to continue to coexist,” concludes the scientist. Tropical forest landscapes are changing rapidly in the eyes of scientists working on tropical monitoring plots around the globe, while human populations and their economic activities grow. Old-growth forests become agricultural lands, degraded land is abandoned, urbanization intensifies, and the populations of tropical countries will increase by two billion over the next 25 years. But what is happening in protected areas? Globally, 18% of all tropical and subtropical moist forest and 9% of all tropical dry forests are nominally protected by governments. Increasingly, even these areas seem to be bearing the indelible marks of human activity. Basic research will help us to understand the dimensions and mechanisms of forest responses to anthropogenic forcing. Conservation scientists must help to mitigate the number of species lost to extinction by enhancing the effectiveness of the network of protected areas. According to William F. Laurance, Wright’s colleague at STRI and frequent spokesman for conservation efforts in Africa and the Amazon, “the commitment of tropical biologists must go a step further to include effective communication of their findings to decision makers and the general public. It is those who will eventually demand that governments invest in research and conservation of tropical forests and who will work to slow the rapid, unsustainable growth of human populations in the tropics.” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-09/stri-smo090205.php