026OEC’s This Week in Trees

026OEC’s This Week in Trees

This week we have 36 stories from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Maryland, Arkansas, Mississippi, USA, Scotland, Germany, Japan, India, Myanmar, Philippines, New Zealand, China, World-Wide

Alaska:

1) A Sealaska Timber Corp. executive signed a $1.7 million contract with a Taiwanese businessman in Girdwood on Friday for the export of old-growth spruce, hemlock and cedar logs, according to company and state officials. The signing took place on the second day of an Alaska-Taiwan trade conference at Alyeska Resort. The contract is between Sealaska Timber and Long Haeuser Enterprise Co. of Taiwan. The timber will be cut from Sealaska land in the Hydaburg and Tolstoi areas of Prince of Wales Island. The logs are scheduled to be shipped in October. The Murkowski administration announced the sale in a press release. The agreement is good news for the Southeast timber industry “that suffered sometimes deliberate neglect before Gov. Frank Murkowski stood up for this vital industry and his fellow Alaskans,” said state Commerce Commissioner Bill Noll. Sealaska Timber has sold $5.2 million worth of timber to Long Haeuser this year, he said. Taiwanese buyers are interested in boosting their purchases of Alaska timber by 50 percent, if not higher, Noll said. In 2004, Alaska sold $4 million worth of timber to Taiwan, according to the state Commerce Department. “We’re going to push for that increase to be as high as 200 percent,” he said. “This contract reaffirms Governor Murkowski’s commitment to resource and economic development and his long-standing respect for the people of Taiwan,” Noll said. http://www.adn.com/money/story/6952211p-6851381c.html

British Columbia:

2) Market prices for framing lumber and panel board spiked in the days following the disaster as rumours spread that coastal lumber mills had been destroyed. “They were just flooded out or were without power and they’re all running again,” said Laurie Cater, publisher of Madison’s Canadian Lumber Reporter. Up to 100 million board feet of lumber waiting for export from Gulf Coast ports was also reportedly wiped out. “That was the gap in supply that was fostering the near panic to buy lumber. That seems to have largely abated. The only thing that is still escalating rapidly is panel and that includes OSB (oriented-strand board) and plywood – plywood on the U.S. side and OSB on the Canadian side or generally speaking,” said Cater. Cater and other industry observers say despite expectations New Orleans and other coastal towns will have to be largely rebuilt, the reconstruction effort won’t have a long-term impact on prices or demand for wood products. “We’ve gone back and basically plotted all the major hurricanes versus lumber prices,” said Kevin Mason of Equity Research Associates. “It’s as likely to go up as down but most often the prices several months out are lower than what they were, or at or below the level that they were when the hurricane hit. If there’s an impact, it’s very short term.” That seems unbelievable given the scale of destruction. http://www.adn.com/money/story/6952211p-6851381c.html

3) From a group of Shuswap valley residents, particularly Cherryville, where huge clearcuts are occuring on private land: F.O.R.E.S.T., a group opposed to irresponsible logging, wants to know how it is possible that very large clear-cuts are being permitted without any public consultation, without consideration for environmental protection, and without adherence to regulations established for major and salvage logging. Although these practices appear to be contrary to stated governmental objectives, F.O.R.E.S.T. has been told by representatives of several government agencies that they can do nothing to control this destruction of habitat and community. Approximately 4000 acres have been or are being clear-cut on private lands in Electoral Areas D and E of the North Okanagan Regional District, within a few months, using industrial equipment operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There was no prior development plan, impact study nor community consultation, yet the impacts are long-term and far-reaching. When this destructive logging started, residents attempted to oppose it by requesting that existing Regional District by-laws be evoked, by alerting the local RCMP, by appealing to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, by appealing to the Provincial Ministry of the Environment, and by approaching the riding MLA. All these initiatives were to no avail; the agencies each indicated that this type of logging was beyond their jurisdiction. Given that these logging practices are clearly not sustainable, we wish to know what measures exist, or will be required, to ensure they do not continue nor occur again. http://www.seas.ca

4) German pulp and paper buyers concerned about progress toward establishing eco-based logging on the central coast arrive in Vancouver today seeking answers from business, environmental groups and government on an innovative land-use plan that will change the way coastal logging takes place. The head of the German Pulp and Paper Association and the German Publishers Association, users of B.C. products, are eager to see new logging practices that balance ecological and human needs put into place, say representatives of environmental groups and forest companies that have been working on a collaborative plan for seven years. The plan, which will protect 22 per cent of a vast stretch of coast extending from the north end of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border, is the result of a unique collaboration between environmental groups, business, local stakeholders, first nations and the provincial government. In addition to the new protected areas, an additional 12 per cent is to be off-limits to logging and hydro development. Further, by 2009, logging in the region is expected to take place under strict guidelines termed ecosystem-based management. Bill Bourgois, project manager for six forest companies involved in the plan, said it has taken longer to bring about on-the-ground changes than anticipated but logging companies are voluntarily moving towards ecosystem-based management without the actual plan and guidelines in place. However, there are still examples of clear-cut logging, he said, as roads and cutting plans are developed years in advance. He said companies are not sure what the cost of the new forest management plan will be in dollars and in jobs. ghamilton@png.canwest.com © The Vancouver Sun 2005

5) Soon the BC forest liquidation industry, the mainstream media, the RSP enviro’s and the neo-con Campbell government of BC will be celebrating new PR greenwash that protects the coastal forest industry from environmentalism. Please take the time to find out what is really going on here. If it doesn’t work for the bears it should not work for the enviro’s. Why are the RSP enviro’s selling-out the great bears of the Great Bear Rainforest? Download Wayward Course http://www.raincoast.org/files/Grizzly%20Report%20-%20wayward.pdf

6) There is frustration and urgency in Art Sterritt’s voice as he talks on his cell phone while rushing down the highway to catch a boat in Kitimat. As the executive director of Turning Point, a coalition of coast First Nations, he is on his way to meet with log buyers and funders from the United States. They want to know why nothing has changed in the way business is done in the Great Bear Rainforest. Other business people are asking similar questions. Klaus Peter Petschat is one. He represents a consortium of the German paper industry. After first visiting the Great Bear Rainforest in 1999, he and a group Europeans have come back to see whether protesters are still chained to the forest products coming out of the Great Bear Rainforest. They, along with other players in this long unfolding coastal card game, hope the government will soon play their hand and sign off on an agreement dictating the future of roughly 8.5 million hectares of ancient cedar, salmon, wolf and bear habitat in British Columbia’s globally significant temperate rainforest. It is a high stakes game. Between the German paper industry, Home Depot and Lowe’s, a billion dollars in wood and wood products are purchased from coastal British Columbia, says Merran Smith, director of the BC Coastal Program of ForestEthics, one of the environmental groups involved in negotiating a complicated land use agreement. Also at stake is $200 million in financing for conservation-based economic initiatives on the coast. A lack of government action could mean the unraveling of ten years of transformation in the way environmentalists, industry and First Nations work at land and resource management in British Columbia, she says. “The whole solution will start to erode and this will take people back to marketplace campaigns and conflict,” she warns. “The Rainforest Solutions Project view actually represents the [public relations] perspective of the forest industry rather than the informed analysis of less credulous environmentalists and ecologists.,” writes Michael Major. The frustration in Sterrit’s voice rises up again as he ponders those in the environmental world who are fighting the deal he and others have poured blood, sweat and tears into. He is angry and it shows in his comments. “There are environs who would love to see us [First Nations] living like in a zoo with no economy but an ancient one, exchanging trinkets,” he says. “Our communities need a little bit more than that.” Bourgeois has heard the complaints too. He knows there are some who think there is too much conserved and others who think it is not enough. “There will be some on both ends of the spectrum, but we can’t manage for those,” he says. In the end he believes balance between human well-being and the environment will be achieved. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050911/BUSINESS0101/509110345/1001/BUSINESS

Washington:

8) In 1955, Single Weyco tree yields 11,300 board-feet 75 years ago, September 10, 1930, Packing the old Finnish Hall until a “standing room only” sign was necessary, a big crowd turned out last night to help the cooks, waiters and waitresses of local No. 791 celebrate their 25th birthday anniversary in a “Silver Jubilee” dinner and dance. Another towering sentinel of the evergreen forests of Southwest Washington has fallen before the humming saws of Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. loggers. This tremendous Douglas fir — 12 feet, 2 inches through at the stump end — was cut last week in Weyerhaeuser’s Grays River operations in Pacific County. The 24-foot butt log alone scaled 11,300 board feet, which would provide enough lumber for a five-room house. http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2005/09/10/local_news/03news.txt

Oregon:

9) Saws may again be buzzing on federal land set aside for northern spotted owls. As the result of an early August settlement of a lawsuit brought by timber interests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing to revise its land use plans for western Oregon where the owls live. Because the spotted owl perches in pines on BLM land managed by the Klamath Falls office, it too will revamp its plan. “There potentially could be a big shift back,” said Don Hoffheins, environmental coordinator in the Klamath Falls office. Before the current plan, crafted under President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan, went into effect in 1995, 1.2 billion board-feet of timber was taken from the forests. “It basically shut down logging completely in the 1990s,” said Jon Raby, manager of the BLM’s Klamath Falls office. In those same woods, 211 million board-feet were taken last year. While logging won’t return to those numbers, there could be more logging on land now marked off-limits because of the spotted owl, Raby said. Revision of the plan should be done by spring 2008, with the public getting to browse through a draft in 2007. Along with the Klamath Falls office, plans for resources around Salem, Eugene, Roseburg and Coos Bay will be revised. The plans will affect 2.5 million acres of federal land in Oregon, 215,000 acres of which are managed out of the Klamath Falls office. In all, the revision will cost $8 million for all the districts, Raby said. http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2005/09/12/news/top_stories/atop3.txt

10) Gov. Ted Kulongoski has ordered Oregon’s state forester to disregard an attempt by the Legislature to dictate logging levels in state forests. It knocks back the latest in a line of moves by the Legislature to promote cutting in state forests overseen by the Oregon Department of Forestry. House Majority Leader Wayne Scott, R-Canby, said the move disappointed him. It undermines the Legislature’s intent and jeopardizes jobs and the economy, Scott said. State lawmakers attached notes to the budget of the Department of Forestry saying it might be able to keep more than a dozen full-time positions if it keeps cutting at least 250 million board feet of timber a year. New reviews by the department show that the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests cannot keep turning out as much timber as they have this year if they are to supply a mix of habitat for species such as the northern spotted owl. The state forester will have a hard time getting permission from lawmakers to keep the staff positions if he follows the governor’s direction and ignores the Legislature, Scott said. Kulongoski suggested the Legislature was using a backdoor strategy to force new direction on the state forests. “If the Legislature wants to mandate a state forest harvest level, it should use the process for substantive legislation and hear public testimony, and ultimately vote on a bill that will, if passed by the body, go to the governor for signature or veto,” he wrote to Brown. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/112626353979320.xml&coll=7&thispage=2

11) Imagine living inside a haven of intertwined branches and reading a book on a chair of bark. Wake up inside an insulated home, where firewood and fruit could be found without going outside. Richard Reames, author and “arborsculptor,” says a livable house grown from trees is possible and practical. “If it’s done right, a real living house that is weather-tight could be grown,” says Reames. Its insulation value would go up every year as the trees matured. These living houses would be almost indestructible and last for much longer than the life of the trees themselves, which could be hundreds or even thousands of years.” At Arborsmith Studios, Reames’ hybrid tree nursery in southern Oregon, he plants and sculpts hundreds of trees. When held in place for years, saplings will stay in a preconceived shape. By binding trees together, after shaving off some bark, the trees grow together from the point where they fuse. Reames has sculpted trees into peace signs, benches, and houses. “The tree itself usually has the best idea of what design it will take,” Reames explains. His work, along with that of other arborsculptors, was featured at The Growing Village Pavilion, part of World Expo 2005, which will take place from March until September. The expo, held in Aichi, Japan, featured 125 participating countries from around the world: http://www.expo2005.com/ http://www.americanforests.org/forestbytes/092005-inside.php#a12

12) Bill Anthony is the Ranger with the Sisters District of the Deschutes National Forest. He led a tour of an area where loggers have almost finished their work. The B&B Complex Fire was the biggest fire in the history of the Deschutes National Forest. Logs are stacked high waiting to be hauled out. The trees they came from were much smaller than what would be considered old growth. But this is an area that the Northwest Forest Plan designated for development of old growth trees. Anthony says the fire was so damaging that human intervention is necessary to restore the forest. Anthony yells ahead to Forest Service tree scientist Brian Tandy who’s hacking into the bark of a partially burned tree. Brian Tandy: But if you also just sort of chop into the wood under the bark you can see it’s dry. It’s just nothing there. The canopy of this tree is still green but it’s one of the salvage trees because Tandy thinks it will die within a few years. That’s one of the complaints from environmentalists in their lawsuit. They dispute the way the Forest Service estimates when a tree will die from fire damage. Ivan Maluski of the Sierra Club says even ignoring that issue; the entire concept of salvage logging just doesn’t make sense. He says the practice is especially damaging to a sensitive area like the Metolius watershed. “You can’t just go into old growth reserves and drive around with heavy machinery and take out all the most important wildlife trees and say that you’re protecting old growth habitat now and in the future.” http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/opb/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=816423

California:

13) Deep in Six Rivers National Forest in the northwest corner of California, a geologist, forester and two assistants were driving up South Fork Road on a fall day to assess salmon spawning habitat, as well as a landslide and the tree-planting program designed to stabilize it. This was along the South Fork Smith River. From Highway 199, South Fork Road extends for about 20 miles along the South Fork Smith, a remote and beautiful canyon, and then forks off on other roads to trailheads leading to the boundary of the Siskiyou Wilderness. The lead scientist was making a point when he glanced to the left and spotted some folks along the river on a sand bar. “Look at those people,” he said. “They’re all wearing pilgrim clothes.” They continued their discussion as they drove on. “You guys all saw those people dressed in pilgrim clothes along the river, right?” the scientist asked. Everybody did, came the answers. “There’s something not right about that. Where did they come from? Did you see any cars parked anywhere? We all know what we saw, some people dressed in pilgrim clothes along the South Fork Smith,” he said. “When we realized what we saw, we went back to check it out and they weren’t there.” Another time when we got a flat tire, we tried to jack up the rig, the jack broke into three pieces. “This is bad,” Jeff said, “real bad.” We estimated we were about 30 to 35 miles from another person. But less than 20 seconds after the jack broke, this ancient pick-up truck with old rounded fenders came around the bend. Without a word, a young man and woman, dressed in historic Native American clothing, got out, pulled out a jack and tire iron, and changed our tire. They said nothing and waved us off when we tried to help. Each was an amazing physical specimen. The man was tall, slim and muscular, wearing a buckskin vest with no shirt. His hair was long and black, his nose hooked, with dark, clear eyes and perfect complexion. The woman was his match, a classic beauty, and what I remember best was her radiant brown eyes and perfect posture. They never acknowledged us. After the spare was on, they got back in that old truck and drove off ahead of us. After a few minutes reviewing our luck, we started our truck and drove on, and to our surprise, we hit the end of the road in about two minutes. “Where’d they go?” I remember Jeff asking. That old truck didn’t pass us coming out. There were no logging spurs to turn on. And it wasn’t at the end of the road. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/11/SPGC7ELQAN1.DTL

14) A federal judge has shut down a 2000-acre commercial logging project in Giant Sequoia National Monument because the federal government relied on outdated science to justify a controversial the timber sale. Judge Charles Breyer issued a preliminary injunction late Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, blocking a timber sale known as the Saddle Project while the case is still pending. “Balancing the serious environmental harms which could occur absent preliminary relief with the serious questions that remain as to the merits,” wrote Judge Breyer, “the Court finds that a preliminary injunction is warranted.” The timber industry and U.S. Forest Service had argued that the logging was urgently needed for fire prevention, but Judge Breyer noted in his decision that the agency “waited five years to execute this contract because of unfavorable timber prices.” In the six years since the ‘Saddle Project’ was initially approved, the project area became part of the Giant Sequoia National Monument, and future commercial logging was outlawed. The Bush administration, already under fire for its broad attempts reopen Giant Sequoia to commercial logging, had tried to “grandfather” that project into the Monument boundaries, and the Forest Service began logging the area in late July. Conservation groups charge that the Forest Service has not taken a hard look at the likely environmental harm that the extensive logging will cause, utilizing the significant research and analysis conducted since the project was proposed
in 1999. http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_24998.shtml

15) Pacific Lumber Co. will clash with environmental groups on two fronts this week over logging volumes that company executives contend are necessary to keep the North Coast timber giant in business. Beginning today, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will conduct two days of public hearings in Ferndale on stricter water quality-related requirements the state agency plans to impose on the Elk River watershed in southern Humboldt County. In addition, oral arguments will be heard Friday in the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco on the merits of a Humboldt trial court’s decision to invalidate a 1999 state-federal agreement. The deal assured the company a steady timber harvest rate across 210,000 acres of Humboldt County timberland in return for the sale to the public for nearly $500 million of the “Headwaters Forest.” Sam Johnston of the Environmental Protection Information Center said the company had created its own problems. “Having logged watersheds to the point of collapse to pay huge annual interest payments to its creditors, the company now finds itself the subject of predictable regulatory action,” he said. “For the good of the region, and for the good of water quality, a balanced solution should be implemented,” company President Robert Manne said. The question, he said, is whether Pacific Lumber can provide jobs, support the local economy, improve watershed recovery and meet its financial obligations if limited to harvesting the equivalent of 40 acres a year out of 15,000 it owns in the Elk River watershed alone. “The answer is, it can’t,” Manne said. http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050914/NEWS/509140416/1033/NEWS01

Montana:

16) Last year’s proposal to log about 1,500 acres in the Ray Creek and North Fork Deep Creek drainages has been downsized to a 450-acre project. Townsend District Ranger Mike Cole said that responses to the earlier proposal, which expressed concern about the possible cumulative effects from other projects in the Deep Creek drainage, were one reason the project area was reduced. There also were concerns raised about insect outbreaks in other parts of the Big Belt Mountains. The new project focuses on the need to reduce fuels in areas designated as wildland urban interface. The area is also adjacent to private properties where there are opportunities for collaboration among landowners and the Helena National Forest, Cole said. The redesigned project would reduce fuels on approximately 457 acres within the Ray Creek and North Fork Deep Creek drainages. According to information from the Forest Service, of the 457 acres, 181 would be “hand treated” and 276 acres “mechanically treated.” http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/09/11/montana/a09091105_01.txt

Colorado:

17) Longs Peak shimmers in the afternoon haze at the far northwestern corner of the county. Due west, the Continental Divide rears into the sky. And between is a carpet of millions upon millions of trees, a dense forest of green and brown that is at once one of the county’s biggest assets and one of its biggest threats. The task of keeping a wildfire from consuming those trees, and the thousands of houses hidden among them, is overwhelming. “The safest, most effective wildland fire management strategy is predicated on an aggressive fuels reduction program using a variety of mitigation methods,” the Forest Service declared in its 2005 national fire operations action plan. Under typical conditions, two workers with chainsaws can “treat” about an acre of forest a day. A Hydro-Axe, a bucket-loader-sized machine mounted with a lawnmower-style chipper, can clear about 5 acres a day. Two sawyers with chainsaws cost about $300 an acre, while the Hydro-Axe costs easily double that. But the scale of Colorado’s forests makes the work monumental. The Forest Service’s Boulder Ranger District alone is responsible for managing 160,000 acres of public lands, with about 87,000 acres of private land scattered in between. The Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership, a consortium of state, local and federal local agencies, conservation groups and nonprofits dedicated to reducing fire danger, has identified 510,000 acres in need of mitigation along the Front Range. Mitigation treatments range from clearing and chipping underbrush all the way up to clear-cutting fire breaks along ridgelines or using prescribed fires to burn through an area. http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=3597

Michigan:

18) MARQUETTE – A whole range of forest experience, from axes and mules to timber processors, is represented at the Lumber Congress being held at the Superior Dome through Saturday. Timber Jack, now owned by John Deere, the largest producer of timber equipment in the world, has a virtual harvester set up with the exact cockpit gear of one of its machines hooked up to a display that looks like a flight simulator for lumberjacks. “This is way better than Nintendo,” John Clairmont of Marquette said as he jockeyed the joystick to maneuver the harvester on the screen. “We used to skid the wood with a horse,” said Robert Johnson of Diorite, who worked with his dad jobbing timber as a side job growing up. “But just like everything else things advance. I mean, we’ve got indoor plumbing now and we didn’t have that when I was a kid either.” Johnson was listening in on a discussion about a brand new product on the market, a forest debris bundler. Branches, tree tops and other debris normally left on site is gathered into the machine and wrapped into a bundle of wood several feet long. Ken Knauf, general manager of Nortrax in Escanaba, said the new product could have a demand in the biomass energy market. “Every eight-foot bundle represents a half a barrel of oil in potential energy,” Knauf said. “You can dry and store it, so it’s even better than chips. Anyway, at 14 to 17 bundles wrapped on average in an hour, that’s roughly 8 barrels of oil equivalence in (biomass energy) generated per hour.” http://www.miningjournal.net/news/story/099202005_new01-n0909.asp

Minnesota:

19) This, Pederson says, is what makes Beltrami Island State Forest such a special place. “Just being out here it’s just an experience,” Pederson said. “Always different. Always changing. And everybody here feels that way about it.” Hogenson and Pederson played hosts on a recent ATV trail ride through the forest. They’re proud of Beltrami, a centerpiece for outdoors life in northwest Minnesota, and they like to show it off. But as ATV enthusiasts, they’re also proud of the work the locals do for the forest. A couple of months ago, Hogenson says, more than 50 members of the Grygla-Fourtown and Lake of the Woods-Roseau County sportsmen’s clubs joined forces to clean up 320 miles of trails. There are a few bad apples Pederson calls ’em “orangutans” that go out of their way to look for mud. But if anyone is out raising heck, Hogenson says, “they get their hind-ends chewed out by the locals.” In other words, he says, it’s not just a bunch of “hillbillies” ripping up the countryside, a perception that seems to play well in more populated areas. “They think we’re running amok and raising (heck) up here, which isn’t even close to the truth,” Hogenson said. As the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources grapples with a plan to manage ATVs and other off-road vehicles within Beltrami forest, that message is important to people such as Pederson and Hogenson. It’s usually the photos of ruts muddied up by ATVs that appear in the media not the pictures of riders enjoying high-ground trails on crisp September mornings. http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/sports/outdoors/12614654.htm

New York:

21) Weyerhaeuser even wanted to fly Charlie out to its headquarters in Seattle. But Charlie is reluctant to fly. The company did win one fight: Officials put up Charlie’s out-of-town brothers and his daughter’s family, who surprised him at his party later that evening. Now, Weyerhaeuser doesn’t do this for every retiring worker. But Charlie’s 50 years of service make him is a bit different. He became the seventh Weyerhaeuser worker to reach that milestone in the company’s 105-year history — and the first in production. Charlie did so in a remarkable way: He never once had an accident or missed a day at work. “I want to clone him,” Teed joked. “It’s so hard to find people who actually come to work every day.” He grew up poor in Corning, the fourth of seven children. He played Little League behind the Corning Packaging plant, which years later was acquired by Weyerhaeuser. He was never good at school, so he dropped out and snagged a job at the plant. As a 16-year-old, he wanted to make money and have the convertibles that were driven by some of the other workers. Did he ever consider leaving the company? “Oh, no,” he said. “I could never do that.” He never understood how co-workers could leave to work for the competition. Even when he got laid off — his plant had shut down to relocate — he turned down a job offer from a competitor.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050911/BUSINESS0101/509110345/1001/BUSINESS

New Hampshire:

22) He bought 2 1/2 tons of wood pellet fuel for the stove to heat his 2,000-square-foot home. But according to wood pellet dealers, manufacturers and forest industry experts, he was wise to get his supply when he did. Pellet supplies may not keep up demand this winter, they warned, as more people buy pellet stoves to avoid paying thousands of extra dollars to heat their homes as gas and oil prices rise. Panic, now that home heating oil prices have spiked, has sent the pellet stove market into overdrive, Fallon said. “We have the highest growth expectations we’ve ever had in 13 years for the next three years,” Walker said. But those projections could be hindered if wood pellet manufacturers can’t make enough fuel and too many consumers are left without, he said. There are 60 wood pellet plants in the United States and Canada that produced more than 1.4 million tons of wood pellets in 2004, according to the Pellet Fuel Institute in Arlington, Va. The institute calls that number inadequate for the growing demand. Wood pellet stove sales also have nearly doubled from 34,000 in 1998 to more than 67,400 in 2004, according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association in Arlington, Va. He also called it important for the wood pellet industry to build more plants and for the logging and timber industry to grow and provide more of the low-grade wood needed to make wood pellets. “Over the long term, it will be very good for New Hampshire,” Bass said. Conservationists agreed. If more plants are built and the state’s logging industry adds jobs, there will be plenty of low-grade wood for wood pellets, said Charles Niebling, vice president of policy and land management at the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests in Concord. New Hampshire has 4.8 million acres of forest. The state conservatively can grow about 2.5 million cords of wood annually, Niebling said. As the demand and price for low-grade wood increases with the demand for wood pellets, Niebling said, more landowners will harvest more timber to feed the plants. http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050911/NEWS0202/109110039

Maryland:

23) Unlike a National Football League game, everyone was able to claim victory — except, of course, the trees. One day after the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission announced that it had reached a settlement with Washington Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder and his wife, Tanya, over removal of 130 mature trees from his Potomac riverfront estate, environmental leaders said serious flaws exist in county efforts to protect slowly dwindling forests. Because he failed to get the proper local permits before chopping the trees last fall, Snyder agreed to pay the county $37,000 so it can purchase and protect three acres in another area of the county. He also agreed to give up his development rights on nearly five acres he owns between his estate and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. The result is an agreement that allows Snyder to claim that he is making a donation of $37,000 to the county as well as a separate donation of five acres that he promises to protect forever. In exchange, Snyder keeps an enhanced view of the Potomac River that some real estate brokers say could add more than a half-million dollars to the value of his home. He is also spared a potentially embarrassing public hearing on the matter. “Thirty-seven thousand dollars is simply not a deterrent to most folks who live along the river there. Given the amount you have to pay to live along the property, that is truly a drop in the bucket,” said Matthew Logan, executive director of the Potomac Conservancy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090801836.html

Kentucky:

24) Kentucky’s forest products industry, despite being the number one agricultural program in the state, is the Rodney Dangerfield of the agriculture world. The industry does not get the respect or support it deserves. Most likely, the reason for the lack of respect has more to do with perceptions than reality, the concept that many Kentuckians believe that logging is a purely extractive industry, like coal mining. Most of us deeply appreciate the majesty of a tree, especially the Kentucky hardwoods, and some simply cannot understand why the trees are cut and sawed. The misunderstandings are sometimes noisy, especially when issues such as burning and clear-cutting surface. Trees do not live forever. The marketable hardwoods are often stunted or choked out by species of trees that are not productive, though the definitions of “productive” vary with each landowner. To those who want wildlife habitat, a bunch of knotty hickory trees are good den and mast providers. To a hardwood producer, the hickories are useless and interfere with the growth of marketable trees. Good logging practices are everybody’s concern, and one program aimed in the right direction is the “master logger” practice, the requirement that one person on any site be trained in best practices. All romance aside, trees are Kentucky’s number one agricultural resource, and forests need management to be fully productive. For those who would earn their livelihood from growing and logging trees, we need to offer our support. And some respect. Rodney Dangerfield is not a Kentucky woodland owner, to my knowledge, but his familiar comedy routine defines much of the current situation. The more you learn about the forest industry, the more you’ll respect the thousands of Kentuckians who depend upon managed growth and logging for their present and future. http://www.maysville-online.com/articles/2005/09/09/opinion/local_columns/247barker.txt

Arkansas:

25) Today the National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation are filing a lawsuit in federal district court in Little Rock, challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to spend $319 million to take water from the White River and give it to farmers. The Environmental Defense Fund, another advocacy group, plans to issue a policy report soon blasting a nearby Corps transportation project on the White River.”We are asking the court to stop the rush to judgment by federal agencies more determined to build the irrigation project than to consider the damage it will do to the bottomland hardwood forests where the ivory-bill was found,” said David Carruth, president of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation. “The ivory-billed woodpecker reminds us that is a very special region. Protecting it means protecting an irreplaceable part of our country’s wildlife heritage for future generations.” Federal officials said that while they could not comment in detail on the suit, they were confident that the Grand Prairie irrigation project — which plans to draw 158 billion gallons annually from the White River and distribute it to about 1,000 area rice farmers — would not jeopardize the woodpecker’s environs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702100.html

Mississippi:

26) The sound of chain saws has replaced the song of the cicadas on Judd Brooke’s 4,000-acre timber ranch. In the days to come, hundreds of thousands of Southern pine trees will be hauled to small-town mills to be turned into lumber, plywood and, if badly damaged or small, pulp for making paper. In the days after that, Southern businesses and homeowners will take those products – 2-by-4s, plywood sheets and wood for decking – and, with nails and staples, begin to restore the storm-battered gulf. Timber growers such as Brooke will count their losses. The hurricane took about 70 percent of his timber ready for harvest; trees worth at least $2 million before the storm. Brooke doesn’t know how much he’ll salvage. “It will alter my finances dramatically for the rest of my life,” he says. That tale of woe is echoing across Mississippi as the hurricane’s damage is assessed. The Mississippi Forestry Commission says Katrina caused $2.4 billion of tree damage, more than half in commercial timber spread across 1.3 million acres. In the worst-hit areas, the coastal counties, almost half the timber may be damaged. Forestry consultant Joe Pettigrew says landowners such as Brooke will be lucky to get a quarter of what their timber was worth before Katrina struck. “It’s a grim situation,” he says. There will be huge rebuilding needs, all along the Gulf Coast. That is good news for the saw mills as they resume production. But the devastation to the South’s forests will make a lasting dent on local ranchers, loggers and mill workers. Hood Industries’ president, Grimm, worries some mills may close eventually because so many trees were wiped out. “We can rebuild a mill pretty quickly. But you can’t quickly rebuild a forest,” he says. http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=national&story_id=091405a1_katrina_timber

USA:

27) Today The Wilderness Society is launching an online campaign to protest the Bush Administration’s decision to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The campaign website, http://www.wilderness.org/roadless, encourages visitors to sign a petition urging the Secretary of Agriculture, Michael Johanns, to revoke the decision to roll back the Roadless Rule. Visitors to the site can sign the Citizen’s Petition for a National Rule to Protect National Forest Roadless Areas and find out more information about the effects of this dangerous policy on our National Forests. “Make no mistake about it, this policy means that nearly one-third of our precious national forest land may now be opened to new and destructive activities, like logging and oil and gas drilling,” said senior policy analyst, Mike Anderson. “Under the Roadless Rule, Americans were assured that the last pristine forests would be preserved,” said Michael Francis, national forests program director. “This decision makes it very unlikely that future generations will see these forests in the same unspoiled condition they are in today.” http://www.ems.org/nws/2005/09/13/group_launches_o

Scotland:

28) One of the earliest remains of Scotland’s natural native woodland has been found under six feet of water. Archaeologists working in Loch Tay, Perthshire, have discovered the remains of a drowned forest and say it dates from the neolithic period, about 5000 years ago. Preliminary investigations have uncovered hazelnuts, twigs and moss mixed with other organic material. Samples of the timber are expected to help with tree-ring studies which, together with analysis of the sediments, plant remains, and pollen, can also assist with climate change studies. Samples of the timber are expected to help with tree-ring studies which, together with analysis of the sediments, plant remains, and pollen, can also assist with climate change studies. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/46814.html

Germany:

29) Swinging protest in Frankfurt – An activist from the environmental organisation Robin Wood sits in a tree in a sealed-off forest called Bannwald on yesterday as construction work began on a new runway for Frankfurt’s Rhine-Main airport. The extension of the airport has upset environmental activists who have launched a protest. http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=2874067 This is a protest action against the construction of a hall for the new Airbus A380 (A giant plane for more than 800 passengers!). For this hall 21 hectares of forest are supposed to be cut and another terminal plus runway is already planned. I think the airport of Frankfurt is the largest of Germany and there are many people living next to it. Of course they want to keep their forests. Certainly Germany is overcrowded. We are 80 million on an area less than half the size of BC. The noise of all the cars, trucks, trains and planes makes us sick! But we ourselves cause it… So, who is to blame? 30% (increasing!) of our country is covered with forests – but we don´t have primeval forests and very old trees. From HankoHaus@aol.com

Japan:

30) For decades, Kisuke Kubota was a logger when the work was more muscle than machine. He climbed into the mountains surrounding Hinohara village in the western suburbs of Tokyo. He chopped down trees. He dragged and slid logs down to the river for their journey to waiting lumber mills. Those days are gone-chainsaws buck and leap in the hands of modern loggers; huge machines collect the logs and pour them into trucks. There is a word for old-time loggers like Kubota. Called kiyashi, they did everything by hand, risking their lives to supply the nation’s large appetite for timber. Logging was and is a dangerous business. Kubota, 80, is considered the last kiyashi in Hinohara village. Fifty kilometers from Tokyo, the village remains surrounded by deep forest. Kubota is probably the only man in the village that remembers what it was like to bring down the trees the hard way. For the past several years, Kubota has given monthly workshops to city slickers interested in learning about old logging methods. “At first, when I was asked to hold a workshop, I felt I was too old,” Kubota says. “But, I realized that if I didn’t talk about my job now, in the near future, no one would know what we did-how loggers in the old days got the logs down the mountains.” “My playground was the mountain and the river,” Kubota says. Of course, he wanted to do what the men did. He learned to peel bark off the logs with a bamboo tool. More fun were his log-rolling adventures, climbing aboard logs in the river and trying to keep from falling off. “I got soaked every day. In winter, I froze,” he says and laughs. Logging in the area peaked in 1960, with Kubota and about 200 of his neighbors working in the mountains, according to the Hinohara village office. And with good reason-Kubota says kiyashi earned about three times more than the average office worker. There were about 5,000 people living in the village then. “After finishing elementary school, my father said to me that I should continue my education. But I wanted to work the mountain because I love it there.” To get to work he rode a bicycle four or five kilometers to a steep trail. The two-kilometer hike up the mountain was tough for a young boy. On his back was a wicker basket holding his lunch, saw, hatchet and other heavy tools. “I learned everything by watching what other people did,” Kubota says. By 12, he could drop a tree where he wanted it with an ax. http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509100111.html

India:
31) The picturesque dark maze formed by trunks and branches of innumerable dry, leafless trees cast against the grey September sky along various Patna thoroughfares might be photographers’ or poets’ delight, but in official circles these have been described as “hazardous” for traffic, and, therefore, are now being felled. Accordingly, a dozen labourers, fully armed with ropes and saws, have been put on job by contractors with sanction from the road construction and forest departments. Along the city’s Serpentine Road, about a dozen workers were on duty, while a nominee of the contractor concerned, sitting on a motorcyle, supervised the felling of a tree. A man perched on the branch of a dry “shirish” tree was rhythmically running his saw through a thick branch. The branch being felled was tied to a rope in a manner to ensure it did not fall on people below. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1227192.cms

Myanmar:

32) At a fork in the road, our guide points to the right. “That’s the main road there,” he says. “We’ll go on this smaller road, deep into the jungle.” A glance to the left reveals a narrow, unpaved track, which he tells us is used primarily by logging trucks. It’s the dry season in Myanmar, and dead leaves hang like bats above us. The truck’s idling motor blends with the cacophony of insects. I’m sitting next to one of Asia’s most dedicated elephant conservationists, Sangduan “Lek” Chailert. In 1995, Lek sold her home and car, using the proceeds to start the Elephant Nature Park sanctuary in her native Thailand. She also runs a program called Jumbo Express, bringing free medical care to the animals and their owners in the countryside. Lek’s nickname means “little.” She barely tops five feet, and looks to weigh around 100 pounds — yet she’s spent her adult life throwing a shoulder against the monumental downhill slide of Asian elephants. Lek — whose shaman grandfather was once awarded an elephant for saving a man’s life — has heard that the animal’s numbers in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) are relatively stable. That’s a stark contrast to the rest of Asia, where populations have been shattered by poaching and deforestation. “This country,” she tells me, “is one of the last places of hope.” Myanmar is one of the last places in the world to see the centuries-old Asian tradition of domesticated elephants and their keepers working side by side. There are said to be hundreds of animals laboring throughout the country, but the very thing protecting elephants there may one day do them in. Many of them are used for logging; the country is home to more than half of Southeast Asia’s remaining closed-canopy forest. As we plan our visit to logging camps in the central hinterlands, we know we will see a practice riddled with irony: these creatures are surviving because they’re shielded from harm — solely for the purpose of destroying their own habitat. “In Asia, elephants are a very mystical creature, a holy animal,” she said, important to both Hinduism and Buddhism. “But the elephant is also used for work and making money.” That contradiction means the animals are both revered and violently subdued throughout Asia. It’s no surprise the government keeps an eye on logging. In 2004, the timber trade brought in $430 million — 15 percent of the country’s export earnings, according to the U.K.-based Global Witness. Of that, $300 million came from teak; Myanmar provides 75 percent of the international supply of that popular wood. http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/09/13/hile/index.html?source=daily

Philippines:

33) Illegal logging even in protected areas has continued despite a six-month-old log ban imposed in all but two regions of the country, the World Wildlife Fund revealed. WWF president Lorenzo Tan said the log ban imposed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in March has failed to curb illegal logging in supposedly protected areas. Speaking at a briefing of the Philippine Tropical Forest Conservation Foundation, Tan showed a photo of logs floating down a river in the north Sierra Madre Natural Park. “I don’t think the ban has made a difference. Even as we speak now, there is logging in protected areas like Sierra Madre,” Tan said when asked if he felt the DENR log ban has been effective. He said the government would never be able to address the problem of illegal logging until it offers alternative livelihood opportunities to communities that have long depended on logging for a living. “We should stop depending just on the DENR to do this. The government has only one forester for every 4,000 hectares. You cannot expect them to stop logging,” Luna said. The Philippines, which used to have 21 million hectares of forest in 1900 now has only 7.16 million hectares of forest left, which is less than the 40 percent forest cover required for ecological sustainability. Of the 7.16 million hectares, only 800,000 hectares are considered old-growth forest. This could drop to 320,000 hectares in five years if logging remains unabated, the PTFCF said. The DENR adopted its limited log ban policy in March following flash floods that killed hundreds and displaced thousands of families in Southern Luzon provinces last year. Massive deforestation has been blamed for the killer floods. http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=2&story_id=50081

New Zealand:

34) The forest and logging industry has destroyed $5.5 billion of capital in the past eight years, badly hurting the economy, says the New Zealand Timber Industry Federation. It contends that the industry has been too focused on achieving scale at the expense of other considerations. “The industry would have made a substantial return if it had not planted trees,” the newsletter said. The land itself would have risen in value in line with other property values in New Zealand. “We need to improve the quality of what we do, not the quantity”. Questions also needed to be asked about the credibility of forest valuation techniques and the ethics of forest investment schemes. Parts of the forest industry owed their existence to government interventions, through such things as tax breaks, rather than economic fundamentals. For too long government support had been targeted at the idea that New Zealand industries needed scale because they were in a small country. It was a fallacy that scale equated to economic value. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3407075a13,00.html

China:

35) Two and a half hours out of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in central China, down a one-lane road – and over lots of potholes – lies the village of Xiang Shujia. Not far from one of China’s oldest panda reserves, at Wanglang, Xiang Shujia is among a handful of former logging villages where ethnic Tibetan Baima people are putting down their saws and embracing the panda’s bamboo forest habitat to practice ecotourism Chinese style. The Baima people – a minority tribal group of some 1,400 people who for centuries have lived in northern Sichuan and southern Gansu provinces – have long depended on the forests as their main source of income. But since a logging ban in the upper basin of the Yangtze River was introduced in the late 1990s to fight yearly flooding, the villages have had to look for alternative livelihoods. Several are now in the process of developing a small tourism industry as their lands are rich in forests and natural landscapes, and borders on the home of the giant panda. Xiang Shujia, in particular, is becoming a popular bed and breakfast centre for the droves of tourists heading to Wanglang to see China’s iconic wildlife species close up. “We are not earning as much income as we did as loggers, but the number of tourists is growing,” said Baima leader Li Qin. “We realize that to attract foreigners we have to show our cultural side, offering more traditional singing and dancing and ensuring our houses are built in the traditional way.” Relations between the Baima and the reserve were tense following the 1998 logging ban as villagers had to make a new living, which included entering the Wanglang reserve to collect wild mushroom and herbs, often at the expense of disturbing the panda’s habitat. But things dramatically improved as villagers started receiving training on how to market their communities to tourists. The government-run, WWF-supported Wanglang Panda Reserve – covering an area of 320km2 – lies in the Minshan Mountains in northern Sichuan Province. Up to 20,000 visitors come each year to admire the 32 pandas living here, as well as other endangered species such as black bear, red panda, musk deer, and golden monkey, and to walk in one of China’s few remaining virgin forests. Wanglang is very much about low volume, high-value tourism. A small, 12-roomed lodge – certified by the Nature and Ecotourism Accreditation Programme, an international accrediting organization that identifies genuine ecotourism and nature-based tourism operators – is built on the site of a former logging camp. http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2529

World-wide:

36) The Conservation Commons is the expression of a collaborative effort to improve open access to and unrestricted use of, data, information and knowledge related to the conservation of biodiversity with the belief that this will contribute to improving conservation outcomes. At its simplest, it encourages organizations and individuals alike to ensure open access to data, information, expertise and knowledge related to the conservation of biodiversity. The Goal of the Conservation Commons is to promote conscious, effective, and equitable sharing of knowledge resources to advance conservation. http://www.conservationcommons.org/