035OEC’s This Week in Trees

This week we have 31 news articles from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Arizona, Virginia, West Virginia, Canada, Cameroon, Vietnam, India, Borneo, and Australia.
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British Columbia:

1) Former Prince George-Peace River MP Frank Oberle was in the city this weekend to promote his second book of memoirs, A Chosen Path, and speak on the issues facing forestry and government today. Under former prime minister Brian Mulroney he served as minister of state for science and technology and minister of forestry. Oberle is a strong advocate for sustainable forestry practices and democratic reform. “We have lived under the assumption we have a 60-year supply [of trees] to sustain the industry,” Oberle said. “Now we will likely see major shutdowns in 10 to 15 years. I want to know where our 60-year supply has gone.” “I just find it exceedingly frustrating that the captains of industry have put all their efforts into making bigger mills, more efficient mills, to sell wood cheaper and cheaper,” Oberle said. “It’s a road to disaster in my opinion.” By selling wood as cheaply as possible, B.C. is getting very low value for its natural resources – resources which cannot be easily replaced, he said. “Given the huge supply we send to the U.S., it certainly would be in our interest to reduce our shipments to the U.S. and drive up the price,” Oberle said. “Sweden is a good model for us. The Swedes access double the volume of wood on half the land base of B.C. and they get four times the value for any given amount of wood.” Sweden actively engages in well-planned sylvaculture to “farm their forests,” Oberle added. In Sweden there is one professional forester for every 15,000 hectares of forest while in Canada there is only one professional forester for every 450,000 hectares, he said. The Canadian forestry system doesn’t encourage companies to make long-term investments in the forest, he said. http://www.pgfreepress.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=26&cat=23&id=508623&more=b

2) The large Maple stands amongst a grove of trees, its gnarled limbs reaching up to the sky, its branches so old that ferns grow on top of the moss layered over its length. The tree stands three feet in diameter, here it has faced the elements and here it has recently had a large block approximately one foot by two feet cut out of its trunk. “Individuals, who cut the maple blocks, generally use a very small portion of the tree, accounting for less than five per cent,” says Corporal Erich Heins with the Forest Crime Investigation Unit in a press release. On Sept. 7 the Hope RCMP stopped a jeep that had numerous pieces of Maple in the rear. “Subsequently the Forest Crime Investigation Unit with the assistance of staff from Chilliwack, Ministry of Forests, determined that the timber was harvested without authority of the land owners and are pursuing charges of under $5000,” says Heins. On October 2 the Hope RCMP located three individuals removing Maple blocks in the Popkum area along the side of Highway 1. Large Maple trees grow abundantly along the Upper Fraser Valley from the Popkum/Agassiz to Hope area. Numerous reports have been made of Maple trees being cut or marked with more recent reports coming from the area around Floods. “Theft of timber in the forests of British Columbia is a serious problem. In particular the theft of curly maple,” says Heins. The curly Maple is sought after by the music and woodcraft industry and a substantial profit can be made through the illegal harvest of it. http://www.hopestandard.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=13&cat=23&id=509400&more=

3) My name is Tousilum I am a member of the Quw’utsun Tribes located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. We request each of our relations to join in with ‘One Mind, One Heart” in Prayer for Mother Earth on October 16, 2005. In our surrounding mountains and rivers the Ancestors are saddened the mountains are bare and the mighty rivers go dry. The four legged and all the animals that are connected have no home, the finned relations can no longer return to their spawning grounds to sustain the generations of life. We only ask that each one come together within your own surroundings and within your own beliefs to have that prayer for the healing of our sacred Mother Earth. There can be no question when it comes from the heart.
Thanking you in advance. –Tousilum

4) I attended the opening ceremonies for both the Clayoquot and Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserves where I listened to municipal, provincial and federal government representatives pay lip service to ecological sensitivity and respect for the environment. Today very little has been done about turning these concepts into a reality. For several years biologists, environmental groups, and local residents have been calling for a wilderness corridor that would connect the only two UNESCO Biosphere reserves in British Columbia with a very real protection zone for the environment. There is an incredible opportunity, in the mid-island region, for such a ‘park’ that would serve wildlife and tourism in a much more comprehensive way than is currently the case. The Beaufort Range is being brutally logged today while Mt. Arrowsmith and all parts south have already been clear-cut and are now being logged for the second time. There is only a very fine ribbon of forest left that could be protected to allow the free movement of wildlife across the island. What is left of the old-growth forest in the Cameron Valley, provides access across the island for Roosevelt Elk, and other threatened species, who need to travel in order to continue breeding with a diverse gene pool. –Richard Boyce [oldforest@shaw.ca]

5) Environmental groups recently ran a full-page ad in the New York Times
urging Victoria to save a vast swatch of the province’s central coast wilderness nicknamed the Great Bear Rainforest. All the B.C. government has to do, the ad claims, is rubber-stamp an agreement reached by environmentalists, logging companies and first nations after years of negotiations. You would think the province would be scrambling to legislate an agreement made between such historic adversaries as environmentalists and logging companies. After all, the ad asks, “Who could be against protecting a rainforest when even logging companies are for it?” For ecologists like ourselves, however, the more pertinent question is, “What, exactly, is being protected?” In 2001, the province appointed a panel of scientists working under the auspices of the Coast Information Team. For two years, these researchers sat with rolled sleeves and sharpened pencils to determine what areas needed to be protected to save the biological integrity of this global treasure which represents a quarter of the world’s remaining temperate rainforests. By 2003 the CIT had developed a set of recommendations to the negotiators, including the recommended level of protection necessary to meet a range of conservation goals: 40 to 70 per cent. Just as important, they carefully defined areas of “high conservation” value, the most ecologically rich, old-growth forests, with the most productive salmon streams, supporting the greatest number of species, including many threatened and endangered plants and animals, like grizzly bears. Those of us who worked on the CIT project were dismayed to learn that the current agreement proposes a mere 28 per cent of the rainforest be partially protected — which includes the nine per cent of the region already protected by previous governments. Thus the negotiations have really only added protection to an additional 19 per cent of the rainforest — a far cry from what the scientific panel proposed. –Vancouver Sun

6) An honorary degrees will be granted in November to Merv Wilkinson, a Ladysmith eco-forester known for his lifelong commitment to sustainable logging practices. Wilkinson has owned “Wildwood,” a 55-hectare woodlot at Yellowpoint since 1938. Inspired by Scandinavian selective logging techniques, Wilkinson embarked on a “productivist” approach to timber harvesting that emphasizes retention of forest structure and the wildlife that depends on it. Since 1945 the pioneering environmentalist has harvested 2.1 million board feet of lumber while the standing volume has actually grown by 10 per cent. Over the years, the university’s environmental studies program has conducted regular field trips to see Wilkinson’s property and hear his philosophy on eco-forestry. He has been previously awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of B.C.. http://www.ecobc.org/newstoday/2005/10/todaysnews1146/index.cfm

7) In 1994, the BC government announced the completion of the Vancouver
Island Land Use Plan, which resulted in 13% of Vancouver Island’s land base being protected (although only 6% of its low elevation, productive forests). Conservation biology studies show that small, isolated protected areas become “islands of extinction” which lose species as development surrounds them. At the same time, the BC Liberal government has attacked the jobs of forestry workers by allowing the gross expansion of raw log exports, eliminating the local milling requirements of companies logging our public lands, and passing numerous anti-labour laws. Similarly, massive cutbacks to the jobs of public service employees (in the Ministry of Forests, Environment, Lands, etc.) has eliminated many of the enforcement, planning, and research staff who use to monitor and regulate the activities of private corporations on our public lands. LET’S TURN THIS AROUND! The movement starts with YOU!! On Saturday, Oct.29, the WCWC is organizing a major rally in Victoria (12:00 Centennial Square, 12:30 Provincial Legislature). http://www.wildernesscommittevictoria.org

8) Two more forestry workers died in B.C. this week, underscoring what loggers are calling an epidemic of death in B.C.’s forests. A truck driver died when his logging truck skidded off a 120-metre drop while backing up to a log loader in the wilderness north of Squamish. And on Vancouver Island, a bulldozer operator died when his machine wen over a steep embankment while repairing a logging road near Telegraph Cove. The two deaths bring to seven the number of forest workers killed within the last five weeks and 30 or 31 so far this year, depending on how the deaths are classified by reviewing agencies. Three factors are being identified in the dramatic increase in fatalities: contractors have replaced company logging crews, loggers are often working longer hours, and logging is moving into increasingly difficult terrain. © The Vancouver Sun 2005

Washington:

9) PESHASTIN – Loggers cut down two large ponderosa pines in the Rollin Rock salvage timber sale area in Derby Canyon Tuesday that had been under guard by protesters of the sale. Boise Cascade purchased rights from the U.S. Forest Service to salvage log the 660-acre parcel that was burned during last year’s Fischer Fire. Environmental groups protested the sale, but it was upheld by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last month. Protesters took up residence last week near two large living trees that were marked for harvest but which protesters felt should not have been included in the sale, said Pat Rasmussen, local spokeswoman for the World Temperate Rainforest Network. Boise Cascade loggers cut the trees down Tuesday after the protesters had gone into town to participate in a conference telephone call about the situation, she said. She said the company had earlier pledged not to cut trees that had survived the fire. Rasmussen said network members planned to protest the action this week at Boise Cascade’s main offices in Boise, Idaho. Boise Cascade officials were not available for comment this morning. The Forest Service closed the Fischer Fire area in Derby Canyon to public access Wednesday due to logging activity on the Rollin Rock sale, said Forest Service spokeswoman Susan Peterson. http://www.wenworld.com/index.php

Oregon:

10) Oregon has more national forests at risk of commercial logging than any other state, according to the latest listing of the most endangered U.S. national forests released Wednesday by the nonprofit National Forest Protection Alliance. Representing some of the nation’s most diverse old-growth forests remaining, these wooded lands in Oregon contain the region’s largest roadless areas, which provide critical habitat for threatened and endangered species. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-14-03.asp

11) Gov. Ted Kulongoski formally asked the Bush administration on Friday to amend its new roadless forests rule to give states greater certainty logging can be kept out of undeveloped areas to protect clean water and wildlife habitat. The formal petition called upon the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to give states the option of adopting the 2001 roadless policy created under the Clinton administration, which barred commercial logging in undeveloped areas of national forests. In addition to ensuring more certainty for a state role, the change would save money for states and federal government. “The administration said when it was going to replace the Clinton rule that it intended to give governors a meaningful role in future roadless protection, but the rule we saw was far from that promise,” said Mike Carrier, natural resources adviser to Kulongoski. He said it created a burdensome and “unnecessarily duplicitous” process without providing the governors any certainty about the outcome. “Laughably, when the administration published its May rule it had a memo that had an estimate of $75,000 to $150,000 for each state to go through the process,” Carrier said. “No state concluded that was a reasonable number.” Estimates ranged from several hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars, he said. “And it’s not worth it when you consider the fact that there is just not the certainty at the end of the day that the Secretary of Agriculture will adopt the governor’s recommendations,” Carrier said. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20051014-1639-wst-roadlessforests.html

12) Nobody decided the last of the Northwest’s giant old-growth trees would be protected, but it’s turning out that way. The moss-draped titans stand at the center of the enduring battles that sent logging on federal lands into steep decline. Forest activists are still fighting bitterly to save some that were slated for cutting to keep sawmills alive. The timber industry wants to cut them. The Bush administration started out insisting they fall. But now, without saying so, it’s contributing to their salvation in the national forests of the Northwest. It’s happening because the administration and Congress are starving the U.S. Forest Service of money to plan sales of the big trees, and fight the inevitable appeals and lawsuits by their defenders. Forest managers say they are no longer pouring their shrinking funds into thankless conflicts they rarely win. “We can’t afford expensive timber sales — the kind where controversy is engendered,” said Gary Larsen, supervisor of the Mount Hood National Forest. “We’re trying to find those where people can agree on the benefits.” It means loggers are increasingly staying away from the more than 1.1 million acres of older forests open to commercial logging from the Cascades west. Roughly 25,000 acres — five times the area of Portland’s Forest Park — were targeted for cutting each year. But less than a tenth of that, on average, has actually been cut. Although the Mount Hood and several other Oregon national forests are cutting some older trees auctioned years ago, they are not selling many more today, and don’t plan to. It heralds a key success for activists, and eases the contention that has long gone hand-in-hand with logging on federal lands. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/112928732731910.xml&coll=7

13) The U.S. Forest Service is investigating a Brookings lumber producer after finding 117 green trees cut on a timber sale where only dead trees were supposed to be cut in an area burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire. The Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest said it suspended operations Wednesday by CLR Timber Holdings, also known as South Coast Lumber Co., after the company notified the agency of the contract violation on the Wafer timber sale within an old growth forest reserve 35 miles northeast of Brookings. The case was the third logging mistake in salvaging timber from the Biscuit fire, which burned through 500,000 acres, making it the largest forest fire in the nation in 2002. Earlier this year, the Forest Service admitted it wrongly marked the boundaries of a timber sale so that dead trees inside a botanical reserve were cut. Last year, loggers cut trees within the Kalmiopsis Wilderness that were supposed to be left standing. The loggers had worked their way up from the bottom of a ridge, where all the trees were dead, to the top, where some of the trees within the unit were still green, she said. The Forest Service does not mark the trees to be cut. It marks the boundaries of the sale, as well as trees to be left for wildlife and buffers along streams. The contract stipulated that no trees with any green needles were to be cut. “The Forest Service is treating this matter seriously,” Rogue-Siskiyou Supervisor Scott Conroy said in a statement. “The Forest Service will continue to be vigilant in administering this and other Biscuit fire salvage sales, and will investigate thoroughly how this incident occurred.” http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1129160941251071.xml&storylist=orlocal

14) Though different scandals at Biscuit may have different causes, it is clear that the Forest Service needs public oversight now more than ever. Despite this, logging industry lobbyists and politicians in Washington DC are pushing to gut laws safeguarding agency accountability to the public and environmental standards. It is expected that Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) will introduce legislation to increase logging after natural disturbances like fire in coming weeks. The bill will likely also mandate the creation of artificial tree plantations. Plantations are highly susceptible to fire, ecologically impoverished and notoriously costly to taxpayers. In fact, government agencies, conservationists and forest workers are cooperating with each other in many parts of the Northwest to restore tree plantations to a safer, more natural state. The expensive back-log of maintenance on millions of acres of tree plantations. CLR Timber Holdings, (aka South Coast Lumber Company) of Brookings, Oregon has been cited for breach of contract by the Forest Service. Logging at the Wafer timber sale has been suspended as a result. CLR Timber Holdings also bought the four Biscuit logging sales including Berry, Chetco and Steed. http://www.siskiyou.org

15) Yesterday the Siskiyou National Forest and Oregon Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands were named to a list of “most endangered” federal forests in the country. The report, entitled “America’s Endangered National Forests: Lumber, Landfill or Living Legacy” named twelve federal forests as endangered based on threats from logging, mining and other mis-management. The report also explores economic issues concerning federal forest logging. Findings show that while logging on federal forests contributes very few useful products to Americans (about 2% of the wood products used annually) it comes at a heavy cost to taxpayers, clean water, recreation resources and wildlife. The Biscuit logging project, mining proposals, Port-Orford-cedar disease and other factors resulted in the Siskiyou National Forest listing. Oregon BLM lands, which include Medford District forests in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers area, were listed because of old-growth logging projects such as the Kelsey Whisky, Cotton Snake and East Fork Coquille timber sales. You can learn more and read the report at: http://www.forestadvocate.org/endangered/index.html

California:

16) The San Jose Water Co. expects to file a plan with the state this week that, if approved, would allow logging on 1,000 acres of company land in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Not so fast, say critics such as Kevin Flynn and Rick Parfitt, who live in the mountains. Residents of Chemeketa Park, Aldercroft Heights and the Summit Road area, where some of the logging is proposed, have banded together to fight the plan. The company has divided the land into nine units. Under the Non-industrial Timber Management Plan it is filing with the state, each unit could be logged every 15 years. Andrew Gere, operations director for San Jose Water Co., said proceeds from the company’s first logging endeavor would pay for fire prevention measures not only in those 1,000 acres but also in the additional 5,000 acres of company property in the mountains. But some nearby residents who oppose the proposal began meeting almost as soon as they “got notice of a plan by San Jose Water to log the redwood forest literally in our back yards.” Flynn estimated that 2,000 people live within 800 yards of the proposed logging. Some residents formed Neighbors Against Irresponsible Logging (NAIL). The group has held community meetings to plan opposition to logging. They say questions of fire safety, water quality and infrastructure need to be answered. In the plan, 20 percent of conifers 12 inches or larger in diameter would be subject to logging. This number, Gere said, includes 40 percent of trees 24 inches in diameter or larger. That creates a problem, say NAIL leaders, who say cutting out the big trees will increase fire danger. “It is not a common practice to log a watershed that is used to supply drinking water,” Parfitt said in an e-mail. “Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Marin County and Santa Cruz all prohibit logging in their watershed. It’s a good time for San Jose to make the same commitment to protecting their drinking water.” http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/12889879.htm

17) On September 9th, Justice Charles Breyer from the US District Court for the northern district of California halted logging on a 2,000 acre commercial logging project called the Saddle fuel reduction sale. However, the ruling left open the fate of the Ice, White, and Frog timber sales, all of which are areas contiguous with or in the immediate proximity of the Saddle project. The focus of Breyer’s ruling was the absence of credible scientific evidence in the Forest Service’s guidelines for these timber sales. Of particular concern was the critical condition of the Pacific fisher population in the southern Sierras. Sierra Nevada Earth First! activists were in the woods again this past weekend surveying timber sale units in the Frog, White, and Ice sale areas. On Sunday at 5 pm, in one of the Ice units, we witnessed helicopter logging first hand. We were all nearly in tears. In fact, it made us sick to our stomachs. We had just hiked through pristine forest, some of the best, oldest and most beautiful forest we had seen so far–heavy canopy cover, cool and damp down below with lots of moss and lichens, an open forest floor without too much undergrowth or small trees—these were steep slopes with old, rotting trees, a thick forest carpet, big trees. Perfect habitat for the endangered pacific fisher, and a home to innumerable animals and plants. Then we heard the choppers and headed up the road. We moved in carefully and watched as an identical forest area, a half a mile or so away from where we had just been, was torn to shreds. A red and white helicopter swept in low; men in orange vests hooked up the big trees to the helicopter’s cable and the chopper flew them out to the loading area. With a few limbs still attached, the poor trees looked like corpses, or lynching victims, or cows with hooks in their heels, hanging above the killing floor, waiting to be slaughtered. You don’t think too much about how much a ninety foot tall, 200 year old Ponderosa Pine weighs. But you sure do when a chopper drops it in the loading area and the ground just shakes. We’re a pretty loud and outrageous crew of forest defenders, but nobody had much to say after seeing that level of chaos and destruction. The car ride down the mountain was pretty fucking quiet. Maybe everybody was thinking what I was thinking—“what are we doing to ourselves?” Or maybe they were wondering what anybody could do against that level of an attack on Mother Earth. Or maybe they just couldn’t think of any words to fit the magnitude of that destruction. I know we were also meditating on how to stop it, cause that’s all that counts. http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1773786.php

18) You don’t have to be a timber company to help sustain the Sierra forests. That’s the theme of a special conference starting Oct. 22 that will emphasize local input and concerns from all sides of the forestry issue. The Forest Sustainability Conference sprang from the concept of the Nevada County’s Forest Breakfast Group, a diverse group that has met for five years about keeping area timberland alive. They range from poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder to Tim Feller, district manager for Sierra Pacific Industries, a timber company that owns thousands of acres in the state. The conference will feature expert speakers from the environmental, educational, government and timber industry perspectives. http://www.theunion.com/article/20051015/NEWS/110150128

Montana:

19) As the director of a grassroots organization that has invested nearly 2,000 hours working with a diverse set of stakeholders to help develop a common-sense fuel reduction plan that would provide effective and efficient community wildfire protection for the East Fork community near Sula, it’s necessary to respond to this misinformation. Engstedt is spreading the false notion that the entire East Fork community and Bitterroot Valley stands behind the Forest Service’s proposal to cut down thousands of acres of old-growth forests in prime elk and bighorn sheep habitat under the guise of “fuel reduction” and “forest restoration” and that the only opposition to this misguided project is coming from what she characterizes as “outside forces.” This is absolutely false. The truth is that some residents of the East Fork community and longtime Bitterroot Valley residents (citizens with roots so deep in the valley that ridges and lakes are named after their ancestors) are opposed to this project. These citizens have diverse backgrounds, including former Forest Service district rangers and wildlife biologists, professional foresters, former and current loggers, WW II veterans, restoration workers, hunters and anglers. Engstedt also knows that Ph.D. scientists with expertise in entomology, soils, fire and fuels, forest ecology, aquatics, fisheries and wildlife are opposed to this project, including a number of prominent Ph.D. faculty members at the University of Montana’s School of Forestry. Let’s also not forget that the Bitterroot National Forest belongs equally to all Americans and many people outside of the Bitterroot Valley use and care about the Bitterroot, as was demonstrated when 11,500 people provided officials comments on this project. Of these, over 98% opposed the Forest Service’s proposal, nearly 80% of the Montanans who commented. http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/3824/C8/L8

20) A preliminary proposal to thin trees and restore northern- spotted-owl habitat on 5,000 acres on the south side of Mount Ashland in the Klamath National Forest has won initial support from both the timber industry and environmentalists. The joint project by the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service involves thinning trees with trunks less than 20 inches in diameter on 2,500 acres of forest and carving fuel breaks along ridges on 1,700 acres to defend against wildfire. Hand-thinning and burning of brush, saplings and other wildfire fuel are proposed along streams on 400 acres. Fuel would be removed through underburning and chipping on another 300 acres. About nine miles of temporary roads would be constructed for logging equipment and closed after the completion of the project. Another 30 miles of existing roads would be also be closed at the conclusion. Harvest methods would include helicopter removal on 600 acres. About 80 percent of the project is in Oregon with the other 20 percent in California. http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/1015/local/stories/07local.htm

Arizona:

21) The Kaibab National Forest, on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, has been deemed a “threatened” forest in a report released this week by the National Forest Protection Alliance. The groupsaid the Kaibab was home to the highest density of old-growth Ponderosa pines in the nation. Noting that the forest’s isolated location has helped protect it from more logging, the advocacy group cites continued old-growth cutting and timber sales as key problems. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1015B3-env-forest14.html

Virginia:

22) Donna Wilson, spokesman for the George Washington-Jefferson, said the report [America’s Endangered National Forests] does citizens a disservice. She also says the groups drumming up the negative image of the Forest Service are “focusing on the past.” “It doesn’t focus on the real threats the U.S. Forest Service is dealing with,” said Wilson from the George Washington-Jefferson’s headquarters in Roanoke. “What we’re dealing with is illegal use of off-road vehicles, reduction of fire fuel, invasive species and preservation of open space. Those are the real problems and threats. “Instead, they’re choosing to focus on a philosophical difference … an old issue of commercial logging.” The says the George Washington-Jefferson logged more than 45.8 million board feet between 1998 and 2003. The report also says the Jefferson’s new plan proposes a 20 percent increase in timber cutting over the next year. But Wilson says this isn’t true. She says the Forest Service is logging “less and less” of the George Washington-Jefferson. “[The groups] are stuck in the past,” Wilson said. “In the 1980s we were cutting between 6,000 and 7,000 acres, but now we’re down to 1,500 and 2,000.”: This disputes the forest protection groups, including Wild Virginia and Virginia Forest Watch. Steve Krichbaum, of Wild Virginia, says that while the George Washington-Jefferson isn’t one of the more heavily logged forests, several of its old-growth forest stands are cut each year. “Timber sales are a problem in the forest, and it’s absurd to do it at all,” Krichbaum said. “They think that because they’ve always been doing it, that it’s OK. But I’m not surprised by their [reaction]. They always say they’re not logging anymore and they don’t want to consider timber sales as logging, yet they are intent on continuing these practices.” Wilson says that the groups that put the report together should focus on helping the forest, rather than putting it in a negative light. She added that the U.S. Forest Service’s practices have always been to preserve the land, not meant to destroy it. http://www.dnronline.com/news_details.php?AID=1088&CHID=2

West Virginia:

23) Anderson hops out and hikes downhill. Then he spots it: a long-fallen, rotting tree covered in a blanket of brilliant green moss some 2 inches thick and several feet long. Quickly and gently, he rips up a long section of the living carpet and stuffs it into one of eight woven-plastic sacks he’ll fill in an hour. “They told me money don’t grow on trees. They was lying to me,” he says, grinning through his black beard. “I know better now. It grows on rocks, too.” Moss is the all-purpose sponge of the forest, storing water, releasing nutrients and housing tiny critters. But across Appalachia and in the Pacific Northwest, it’s more than that. It’s a way to make ends meet when jobs are few. Picking is hard work on a hot day. Sweaty. Dirty. And it pays only about $5 a sack. But for 33-year-old Anderson, who lives simply as a single father to twin boys, the solitude and independence beat the construction jobs that often pay the bills. “I don’t like dealing with people, actually. I don’t deal well with being told what to do,” he says, hefting another 20- to 30-pound sack over his shoulder. “I guess it’s a superiority complex.” What Anderson picks could end up in a floral arrangement or a craft project, maybe even on a movie set. Along the way, it will support more than a dozen jobs, from people who sort it, dry it and package it to those who ship and sell it. But biologists, businessmen and pickers themselves say the good stuff is getting harder to find — and the money harder to make. Moss is not commercially grown, so buyers depend on the wilderness. Some state and national forests, though, have already banned harvesting, worried about what they are losing when moss leaves the ecosystem. http://www.insidebayarea.com/businessnews/ci_3116302

Canada:

24) In his throne speech officially opening the new legislative session, Ontario Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman said, “To symbolize the value we place on our natural environment, and the power of people to make a positive difference, your government will be creating a new park in the Rouge Valley – the Bob Hunter Memorial Park.” Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1941, Hunter passed away May 2, 2005 after losing his battle with cancer. Bobbi Hunter and their son Will were in the legislative gallery for the throne speech. “To his children and his wife Bobbi, we say: Bob’s passionate defence of the environment blazed a trail and left a legacy. It will not be forgotten,” Bartleman said. The new memorial park will be on 500 forested acres in the Toronto suburb of Markham, north of the city. It will be bordered by the Rouge River, along which Bob Hunter canoed – the stretch of river about which he reported development pressure while he worked as an ecology specialist for the CityPulse show on Toronto’s CITY TV. “For him to have a portion of this planet named after him, he would say there’s no greater honor,” his wife Bobbi told CITY TV. “Bob always looked at the trees as being sort of the lungs of the planet.” Canadian journalist and broadcaster Bob Hunter, circa 1980. (Photo credit unknown, Wikipedia) “What he didn’t like when he looked around was all the dirty air that they had to breath and I think that we have to start respecting that,” she said. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-12-06.asp

25) We’re gearing up for the big one! The Great Boreal Day of Action, November 3, 2005. Get involved, organize a demonstration, make a difference! We can save this vast wild place but we need your help (as always! Canada’s Boreal is an ecological gem, a refuge of wilderness in a world where more than three quarters of all original forests have been lost or degraded. Home to approximately 500 First Nations communities, numerous species, such as woodland caribou and wolves, and billions of migratory birds, Canada’s boreal forest should be protected permanently for future generations. This global treasure is under threat. Logging companies, such as International Paper, Weyerhaeuser and Kimberly Clark, are converting this ancient ecosystem into disposable products, such as catalogues, tissue paper and copy paper, primarily for the U.S. marketplace. Going by current rates of destruction, the boreal forest will be gone in 50 years. http://action.ran.org/ctt.asp?u=3927605&l=107939

26) When yellow blaze marks appeared on the towering trees of Clear Creek Forest, marking the hardwoods for death by logging, Mathis Natvik decided the forest had to be saved. Natvik, a naturalist who grew up alongside the forest in Chatham-Kent, contacted the Nature Conservancy of Canada and urged it to purchase the property, which features some the finest examples of old growth forest in Southwestern Ontario. The conservancy agreed the property was worth preserving and in 1998 launched an ambitious campaign to purchase the initial 231-hectare segment. After six years and $2.4 million in fundraising, the conservancy had added three smaller properties to the initial purchase to bring its Clear Creek holdings to more than 400 hectares. The most stunning feature of Clear Creek is a large, wooded section that contains a mix of newer-growth hardwoods and old-growth trees that seem to soar to the clouds. “The forest has some of the largest hardwood trees in Ontario,” says Natvik. “There are very big oaks, maples and beech trees.” http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2005/10/15/1263291-sun.html

Cameroon:

27) Can you share your vision for the long-term future of the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center? I foresee that the center itself will continue to be supported by grants, donations, and our adoption/sponsorship program, with our ultimate goal being to build an endowment from which the interest would support operations at the center. The Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has proposed — with our encouragement — that the Mbargue forest, where the center is located, become a wild “chimpanzee sanctuary.” With this level of legal protection, any activities deemed harmful to chimpanzees would be prohibited in the forest, and we hope the government of Cameroon would take responsibility for enforcing the regulations. On the other hand, if we do find two suitable field sites for reintroduction of our two subspecies of chimpanzees, this would be a large, national project for which we would seek — and might realistically expect to get — funding through the United Nations, and from the United States, European Union, and Cameroon governments. http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2005/10/10/speede/index1.html?source=daily

Vietnam:

28) The project’s goal is to protect forests while prudently allocating portions to agricultural use to facilitate poverty reduction and hunger eradication. Under the plan, 2 million hectares of forest would be planted to prevent land erosion, and another 3 million ha would be planted for productive use. The goal of planting 5 million hectares of forest is a national long-term project. It is being implemented throughout the country in the form of hundreds of small projects. Many difficulties have been faced in implementing the project, including the limited ability to utilise advanced technologies and scientific methods in the selection and deployment of ideal tree breeds and timber varieties. Agricultural extension systems in rural areas are also poorly developed or non-existent, and have further limited programme benefits for local communities. As project activities tend to be located in remote and disadvantaged regions, these activities face many operational difficulties due to poor infrastructure and high poverty levels. Additionally, investment in the forestry sector remains small and co-operation among projects and programmes throughout the region is poor. The National Assembly has capped the project’s annual capital outlay at VND 30 trillion (US$ 1.9 billion). However, this level of funding is insufficient to meet programme needs each year. How does illegal logging impact the project? From 1997 through the second quarter of 2005, 478,000 violations of forest protection regulations were documented, 92,000 of which involved illegal logging. In three years from 2002 to 2004, Viet Nam lost more than 200,000ha of forest, mainly in Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands) region. The policy direction and decisions of the Prime Minister on forest protection have not been strongly implemented. Some narrowly believe forest protection is solely the responsibility of forest rangers and ignore the broader aspects of illegal logging. http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01COM131005

India:

29) The Wildlife Society of Orissa (WSO) expressed their disappointment over the Orissa government’s decision to resume green felling in rich forest areas of the state after a 15 year long moratorium. “It is a sorry state of affair when the state government fails to look beyond the basic timber yield and see the much more valuable environmental services the standing forests provide,” said the WSO secretary Mr Biswajit Mohanty. He blamed the government for ignoring the efforts of thousands of local forest protection committees who had been protecting the forests since the last 10-20 years and issuing orders for cutting down green timber and bamboo in 24 forest divisions of the state. According to the secretary of Wildlife Society of Orissa, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests had on 20 September directed for the resumption of timber operations in the forest divisions of Ghumsur north, Ghumsur south, Bamra, Deogarh, Baripada, Balasore, Karanjia, Rairangpur, Nabarangpur, Bonei, Kalahandi North and Kalahandi South, Boudh and Dhenkanal. The forest officials in charge of the divisions had been asked to identify and cut trees which have a circumference of 4 to 7 feet. Apart from the orders for timber working, the forest department also plans to cut bamboo from forest divisions in most parts of western and central Orissa. These forests are habitat to a variety of wildlife including tigers, elephants, sambhar, deer, barking deer, chowsingha, leopards, bears, pangolins etc. http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=9&theme=&usrsess=1&id=93011

Borneo:

30) Leading environmental and wildlife agencies called on Friday for a united effort to protect the habitats of Borneo’s orangutans whose survival is threatened by mass deforestation. Aggressive destruction of jungles has caused a breathtaking decline in orangutan numbers and action is urgently needed to lift the threat of their imminent extinction, non-governmental organisations and Indonesian officials said. “We would like to develop an action plan putting together all stakeholders,” said Jito Sugardjito, representing Fauna and Flora International (FFI) at a meeting in the Borneo town of Pontianak. Asia’s only great ape – which translated from the local Malay language means “person of the forest” – could be wiped out within 12 years, environmentalists have warned. The red-haired apes, close kin to humans, are found only on Borneo, which is shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Borneo, the number of orangutans is estimated to have dropped from 200 000 to 50 000 in the past decade.”Large-scale and co-ordinated actions are needed so that the limited resources available for securing Bornean orangutan can be used efficiently and effectively,” said Indonesian government conservation official Adi Susmianto.
Friends of the Earth warned in a report in September that wildlife centres in Indonesia were over-run with orphaned baby orangutans that had been rescued from forests cleared to make way for new palm oil plantations. http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=143&art_id=qw1129272840347B253

Australia:

31) Australian rockers Magic Dirt will visit anti-logging protesters in Tasmania’s Weld Valley during a short tour of the state this weekend. The band planned to “go bush” between two gigs at Hobart’s Republic Bar, playing an acoustic concert around midday on Saturday in the Weld Valley’s tree-sit village. Huon Valley Environment Centre spokeswoman Jenny Weber said the performance would be a huge boost to the protesters, who set up camp in the World Heritage-nominated area last month. “People take notice of what Magic Dirt’s doing and they’re on their national album tour so it might just bring some more attention to the Weld Valley and our campaign,” she said. Protesters were trying to stop a road being built in the southern Tasmanian forest. They were also calling for the protection of 2,000ha of forest bordering a World Heritage area. Magic Dirt have already shown their concern for the environment by supporting Greens senator Bob Brown during his election campaign. “We just emailed them and they were psyched. They’re totally keen,” Ms Weber said. The band joins a long line of Australian and international artists to support the protection of Tasmania’s forests. John Butler, Jimmy Barnes, Ani Di Franco and Michael Franti all appear on a compilation CD to fund the cause. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=67246