062OEC’s This Week in Trees (Part 1)

This week we have 36 articles from: Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, California, Montana, Minnesota, Vermont, North Carolina, USA, Canada, England, Senegal, Kenya, Angola, Sierra Leone, South America, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh India, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, Tropical forests and World-wide.

Alaska:

1) KETCHIKAN — Steve Seley leaves home in the cold darkness of a winter morning and briskly walks to the water’s edge. Chilly fog envelops a fleet of tugboats moored to a dock at the back of his house. Seley, 52, hops into a skiff and motors across Tongass Narrows to his sawmill on Gravina Island. It’s time for work. On the opposite shore, Seley, an Alaska entrepreneur who dodged disaster in an industry that has toppled most others, ties up the boat and slides into a pickup, his dog beside him. Wearing hickory shirt and suspenders — the logger’s uniform — Seley steers the truck up a muddy hill to his mill.Giant piles of old growth logs lie stacked across the 30-acre site. Back in December, men were driving loaders, plucking and moving logs like toothpicks to different sections of the mill where others transformed the spruce, hemlock and cedar into lumber products, including railroad ties and boards for doors and window frames. Twenty-three people worked at the mill — one of the few left in Southeast — up until Christmas. It’s closed now, the latest victim of Alaska’s bitter logging wars. For more than three decades, Seley has made his living off the Tongass National Forest, a 17 million-acre temperate rain forest and national headline grabber for its vicious timber fights. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the Southeast logging industry thrived. Thousands worked in the woods as loggers or skilled laborers at two big pulp mills. Then the ground shifted. In the last decade, market forces, political pressures and environmental lawsuits have whittled Alaska’s timber industry to its hard-luck status of today. The closure of Seley’s mill took politicians, environmentalists and industry supporters by surprise. Seley’s reputation is that of someone who can pull things off when few others can. A timber guy who grew up in Southeast logging camps, Seley is known as an innovator and maverick. He develops unique products with Tongass wood and finds new markets across the globe. “He’s an exceptional deal-cutter,” said Tim Bristol, head of Trout Unlimited in Alaska, who has hammered out compromises with Seley on thorny timber fights. http://www.adn.com/money/story/7400889p-7313006c.html

British Columbia:

2) John Allen Livingston was born in Hamilton on Nov. 10, 1923. He died on Jan. 17, 2006, on Saltspring Island, B.C., after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 82. He had two mottos. The first, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge,” was a quote from Charles Darwin that he hung on the wall of his study. The other was an observation from British satirist Kingsley Amis that he recited frequently: “If a piece of writing doesn’t offend somebody, there’s probably something wrong with it.” Mr. Livingston found the perfect perch for a man of his temperament, skills and passions: teaching in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at the fledgling York University. Although he had few of the paper credentials now deemed essential for an academic post, he had a storehouse of knowledge, a passion for his subject and the performance skills of a veteran broadcaster. The students loved him. One in particular, Ursula Moller Jolin, then a graduate student, found him fascinating. He was “interested in so many things,” and “he knew so many things” and “he had a memory like a mainframe computer. …He was a very inspiring teacher,” she added, remembering one class in particular in which three professors, a trained Jesuit, an atheist (Mr. Livingston) and an economist, gave a class on cultural/historical perspectives on environmental studies. “It was absolutely riveting because there we had a platter of different opinions that were extremely well debated. It generated a lot of excitement among students.” Mr. Livingston continued to write books and essays, but his opinions were becoming more despairing and his arguments more entrenched as he retreated from the opportunistic and pragmatic world of commerce and public policy into a rarefied and idealized philosophical atmosphere. “He was one of the most determined men I’ve met,” said writer Farley Mowat, who names Mr. Livingston as a definite influence on his own thinking about the environment: “We were going to play out our roles as the great exploiters and then we were going to go down the drain.” Unlike “dewy-eyed optimists,” Mr. Livingston “had a bulldog quality, a clarity of vision and he was extraordinarily honest.” Geneticist David Suzuki said Mr. Livingston was crucial from a philosophical standpoint for the whole environmental movement. Back in the 1970s, Dr. Suzuki had an anthropomorphic view of nature, which meant that he believed “humans were at the centre of the action.” Mr. Livingston’s radically different bio-centric stance regarded humans as just another species. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20060128/OBLIVINGSTON28/TPObituaries/

Washington:

3) Perhaps the largest volunteer planting event ever staged in East Jefferson County involved more than 180 people on the Olympic Music Festival grounds. More than 2,000 native trees were planted Jan. 21 at a salmon habitat restoration site on Tarboo Creek and, in the process, raised nearly $10,000 for two Port Townsend schools. The second annual Plant-A-Thon was a combined fundraiser and community service project for the Swan and OPEPO schools. Students watched soaring eagles, planted tree seedlings, and searched for salmon redds (gravel “nests”) in the newly restored creek. “I am very inspired by this effort. It is so important to foster a connection with nature,” noted participant John Rush. Northwest Watershed Institute coordinated the planting project. “Today’s planting is part of a larger effort to restore salmon and wildlife habitat in the Tarboo Creek Watershed and ensure long-term protection of clean water in Dabob Bay,” said Peter Bahls, director of NWI, at the start of the day. With funding from state and federal agencies and help from private landowners, NWI has worked to repair salmon passage barriers and restore streams at many sites along Tarboo Creek. A corps of 18 volunteer crew leaders trained by NWI led small groups in the effort, teaching plant identification, stream ecology and tree placement, and guiding small hands as they worked to plant trees. “The Plant-A-Thon is the ideal setting for teaching land stewardship, participation and responsibility. With teachers, parents and children working together, it is inspiring to see what can be accomplished in a day,” noted Swan School Board President Barb Trailer. The project was inspired by the work of Richard Barbe Saint Baker, founder of the international “Men of the Trees” movement, by the work of Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai in Kenya, and by the Portland-based Friends of Trees Honorary Planting Program. “I am impressed with how the kids respond to the plant-a-thon. They feel they’re really making a difference and that the work they’re doing is important. It’s fun to watch my daughter work at something with such enthusiasm and diligence,” noted Ramon Dailey, a Swan parent who served as a crew leader. Prior to the event, students and parents sold “Honorary Tree Certificates” for $5 each. Trees were planted in honor of friends, family, teachers, and other significant people and causes. Local artist Amanda Kingsley designed the cards. http://www.ptleader.com/main.asp?SectionID=10&SubSectionID=10&ArticleID=14206

California:

4) SAN FRANCISCO – State water control authorities have the power to order logging companies to monitor the quality of runoff water, the California Supreme Court ruled today. The justices unanimously ruled that even when the California Department of Forestry approves a logging plan, the Water Resources Control Board can later demand that logging companies monitor the quality of runoff water around the logging site. Pacific Lumber Co. claimed it did not have to do the monitoring because the forestry department did not make the request when it approved a harvesting plan in 2001. The Supreme Court, in upholding an appeals court ruling, said the water agency had the power to intervene. The case involved about 700 acres of redwoods, which Pacific Lumber already logged in Humboldt County along the Elk River Watershed. The Scotia, Calif.-based lumber company complied with the water monitoring order, but went to court in a failed effort to block the water agency from intervening in future logging projects. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/13749171.htm

5) Survey and Manage was developed as part of the Northwest Forest Plan implemented in 1994. The plan required that prior to or during ground disturbing projects the impact of such projects on certain rare species was to be studied and mitigation measures taken if a threat was found. On January 9th, US District Court Judge Marsha Pechman issued a final decision rejecting and declaring invalid a Bush administration policy of easing Survey and Manage procedures that required forest managers to conduct on-the-ground inspections for a wide variety of animal and plant species. US Forest Service Shasta-McCloud Management Unit district ranger Mike Hupp said two local projects will be affected: an Aspen restoration project and a “couple of hundred of acres” of the 3,000 acre Pilgrim Project that includes vegetation and meadows restoration, insect infestation control, fuels reduction and commercial thinning that will sell 30 million board feet of lumber. “We don’t have many of the species on the list here. Huge parts of the district are not even considered habitats,” Hupp said. “We will have to go back and do a survey for the two projects. We absolutely are going to comply with the forest practice’s rules. We’ll be looking for a mollusk.” Hupp said the Mountain Thin Project, a 3,200 acre project intended to reduce fuels on the east side of the city of Mount Shasta as a defense against wild fire, will not be affected. “Mountain Thin was done under the Survey and Manage rules. We’re finishing the last comment period. The fact that we had far, far fewer comments this time tells me we have resolved many of the issues and concerns people had on the project. We’ll begin Mountain Thin as soon as the snow melts,” Hupp said. “Most of the current projects are not in habitat or were surveyed under the old rules. http://www.mtshastanews.com/articles/2006/02/01/news/area_news/07surveymanage.txt

6) Thanks to our combined efforts and the courts, we’ve stopped the state’s massive industrial logging in our 50,000-acre public redwood forest since 2001. Now the California Department of Forestry, the supposed steward of our forests, is rushing to resume logging our public redwood forest at the enormous rate of 60,000 trees per year! The environmental impact report (EIR) up for approval is so enormous (1500+ pages!) and so poorly organized that even our experts are having difficulty wading through it. They’ve now seen enough, though, to know that the new EIR is just a bigger, more expensive way of justifying what the state has wanted to do all along — log our public forest for profit. The EIR concludes that the proposed logging of 60,000 trees per year can be done with “less than significant environmental impacts.” Does this seem as absurd to you as it does to me? The EIR states that the one alternative considered that would emphasize restoration toward old growth is infeasible, because of state law and Board of Forestry policy. Does this seem to you as much of a mockery of the EIR process as it does to me? Please send your letter now. We’ve made it incredibly easy for you to help. We’ve prepared a letter that you can edit and send off with just a click: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/jsfeir_2

Montana:

7) Yates is the lead field biologist on a project to study wolverines, and the beaver is his bait. He skied into this remote corner of Glacier National Park with carcass in tow, rattling along behind in a makeshift plastic sled. He crossed through dark subalpine forest, over plank bridges, down snowy slopes and across the frozen expanse of Swiftcurrent Lake to this protected place in the trees, where he kneels, hammer in hand, over the beaver. Nearby sits a tiny log cabin, about 6-by-3 and 4 feet tall. No windows, no doors; just a 200-pound log lid strapped to a contraption of levers and cables. It is a wolverine trap. He uses log traps because an ensnared wolverine, in its dogged ferocity, would snap its teeth trying to chew out of a metal trap. But the problem with this cabin is, if you don’t let him out soon enough, a wolverine will just eat his way out through 8-inch logs and amble off about his business. “They’re all teeth and muscle,” Yates marvels. Even the lid, which outweighs the wolverine by a full order of magnitude, must lock when it falls, because “if they can get any purchase at all, they’ll push the lid up. These animals are just tremendously powerful.” They are also tremendously few and far between, “probably the lowest-density carnivore in North America, maybe the world,” said project leader Jeff Copeland. The California wolverine is gone, as is Colorado’s. A few remain in the Sawtooths and down in Wyoming, but when it comes to dependable populations of wolverines in the Lower 48, Copeland said, “Montana is pretty much it.” He stays in the backcountry almost all winter, until the grizzlies wake up in March or April. “When we see the first bear, we’re done,” he said. After all, it’s tough duty dragging dead beavers around the park with grizzlies on patrol, “and the bears just tear the hell out of the traps, anyway, throwing the lids around and destroying everything.” Amazing, then, that a wolverine can hold its own against a grizzly, that a 30-pound animal the size of a 5-year-old can cover all these wilderness miles, up and down mountains and back up again. “They are amazingly ferocious beasts,” Copeland said. “I’ve seen a grizzly bear go out of its way to avoid a wolverine,” Yates added. “Yet we hardly even know them,” Copeland concludes. “They’re still a mystery.” And with that great unknown, Copeland’s driven back into the winter, skiing beneath soaring peaks with telemetry antennae in hand. Yates is right behind, dragging yet another beaver, tracking an animal he hardly knows, a beast he calls “the wilderness itself.” http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/01/29/news/mtregional/news06.txt

8) “It’s still just a draft,” Roose cautioned, “but it’s a very exciting draft.” The draft calls for some wildland set-asides, havens for wilderness critters and nonmotorized getaways. It also calls for some “stewardship” forestry projects, logging with an eye toward forest health. And it provides for economic development grants to Lincoln County communities, as well as guaranteed access for snowmobilers and others who enjoy the woods astride machines. And, if the money comes through, it envisions locals buying up working woods, creating “community forests” where people can both play and work. “This all didn’t just happen overnight,” Roose said. “We’ve been working on it a long, long time.” It’s been hard, she said, “but we had to find a way to work together. The polarization and viciousness that’s occurred can’t continue. We have to get together.” Conservative members of Congress have said recently that any Western wilderness bills will have to include an economic development element if they hope to succeed, and with nearly 80 percent of Lincoln County’s land base managed by the Kootenai National Forest, it’s particularly tough to separate jobs from the environment here in northwestern Montana. “So we have to believe that we can protect the environment, and we can also create some jobs in the natural resource industry,” Roose said. “All we need is some balance.” The plan presented Monday, she said, is big on balance. It’s been crafted with help from the Yaak Valley Forest Council, with input from T.I.M.B.E.R. (Totally Involved in Managing Better Economic Resources.) The Troy and Libby snowmobile clubs are on board, as are a number of environmental groups. All three commissioners are working on the plan, she said, and so are the mayors of Lincoln County’s three cities. School officials have joined the coalition, as have economic development agencies and backcountry horseman outfits. http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/01/31/news/mtregional/news05.txt

Minnesota:

9) Bits of Minnesota’s north woods have been sold routinely for years, often in parcels as small as 20, 40 and 80 acres. But a year ago, one of the largest timber owners in Minnesota changed how people view such deals. In a move that alarmed conservationists, Boise Cascade sold 309,000 acres of Minnesota timberland. Immediately, many observers envisioned more homes built in remote places, degraded wildlife habitat and the loss of public hunting and recreational opportunities. Fearing other big tracts also might be sold, a broad-based partnership soon formed to protect chunks of the state’s 1 million acres of industrial forest. The latest, and largest, piece of that effort is a request for a $10 million state commitment. In his capital bonding request, Gov. Tim Pawlenty asked the Legislature to approve that amount, which would be packaged with $16 million from other sources to buy conservation easements on up to 75,000 acres of private forest in northern Minnesota. Under that approach, large landowners would be paid a portion of what their property is worth — if they ban future development and commit to managing the land as they do now. “It would change the way we all live and play if we let these large interior blocs go,” said Ron Nargang, state director of The Nature Conservancy. Minnesota has 16 million acres of forest, with 42 percent of it privately owned. But prices on that land have risen 13 percent a year since the late 1980s, making it more attractive for timber companies to cash out of long-held property. http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/13744151.htm

10) Minnesota’s forests can handle the increased demand from a major expansion of the Blandin paper mill in Grand Rapids, a DNR environmental review has found. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on Monday released the environmental review of the proposed $800 million project. It would be the largest single expansion of the state’s timber industry. A new papermaking machine would replace an outdated machine and would increase paper production at the mill from 450,000 tons to 760,000 tons annually. The mill produces glossy paper for publications like Time Magazine. To make all that extra paper, the mill’s consumption of trees would more than double, from 197,000 cords annually to 400,000 cords. But the 800-page DNR report found the increase would have little or no effect on the health of the state’s forests or the animals that live there. The mill expansion would add 23 jobs and the modernization effort would help preserve the mill’s current 525 jobs, supporters say. The expansion would bump tree-cutting in the state from about 3.675 million cords per year to about 3.875 million, still within the limits that state guidelines say is sustainable. The report expresses concern, however, that the increased Blandin appetite for trees will push the industry’s demand for Minnesota aspen, or popple, trees near capacity. The 2002 aspen harvest of 2.21 million cords is close to the state’s sustainable harvest of 2.42 million cords, the DNR report notes. The Blandin expansion would add about 100,000 cords annually. “The fact that the statewide harvest is nearing the maximum sustainable level of aspen harvest is a source of concern,” the report noted. “The marketplace is much smarter now. Instead of going out 150 miles for wood, it’s going out 600 miles,” Ek said. “A lot of the smaller operators (mills) have consolidated or closed shop. And the bigger players know how to get what they need.” Several environmental groups have argued that the increase in paper mill and board plant capacity in Minnesota during the past 15 years has put too much pressure on the state’s forests, with trees cut in some areas at a rate that damages bird and wildlife populations and that threatens long-term ecological health. http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/13753622.htm

Vermont:

11) The tiny town of Goshen in western Vermont seems to have more than its share of access to public forestland. It borders the 22,000 acres of preserved Moosalamoo Foundation land, and the Green Mountain National Forest makes up half the town. Even so, Goshen has a forest of its own, a 1,000-acre tract, most of which was left to it about 20 years ago. Tony Clark, a town forest trustee, says the land isn’t widely used by the town’s 260 residents for recreation, and he suspects half the residents don’t even realize the town owns the large parcel. But all the residents benefit from the town forest whether they’re aware of it or not. Goshen has put $280,000 from timber sales into a fund, and Selectman David Gale says interest from the principal is used for town projects, such as the restoration of the town hall and construction of a new “town barn.” The town also borrows money for highway equipment from the fund. “The timber cuts have been pretty lucrative, because the timber price has been so high,” Gale says. The money helps offset the loss of property tax revenue the land would have generated had it remained on the tax rolls. And a sugarmaker in the past has traded use of the forest’s sugar maples for syrup, which was doled out annually in token half-pints to each household. Clark, who owns Goshen’s only business, a 12-room inn and cross-country ski center called Blueberry Hill, hopes the public will reap more benefits from the forest: He’s proposing a half-cord of firewood for each resident. “I’d like to see that happening on the next logging job,” he says. http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060129/NEWS/601290360/1002/NEWS01

North Carolina:

12) What Babs and Bob Strickland began as a memorial to their daughter several years ago evolved into a long but rewarding journey. The Sunny View couple’s efforts led last year to the largest easement for land conservation in the history of the Pacolet Area Conservancy (PAC). Now other rewards are following. PAC’s board of directors recently named the Stricklands the 2005 PAC Conservationists of the Year for their work to permanently protect an 894-acre tract of land, which is now known as Walnut Creek Preserve. On March 11, 2005, the Stricklands granted to PAC a conservation easement in the Sunny View area, which protects the “magnificent 894-acre tract of forested watershed and covers almost half of what was once one of the largest tracts of Champion Paper Company land in the county,” according to PAC. This donation was the culmination of an arduous journey by the Stricklands. They began the journey when Babs’ only child, Anne Elizabeth Suratt, was killed in a plane crash in 1997, at the age of 22. Her professional goal was to be an astronaut, and she was majoring in remote sensing as a tool for reading land masses from space. She loved the outdoors and had served as a volunteer researcher at the Bent Creek Research Station in Asheville during a college summer. As a memorial to her, the Stricklands sought unsuccessfully to purchase, first from Champion and then from its purchaser International Paper Company, 100 acres of a 1,952 acre forest tract adjoining their Serenity Farm. The idea was to create an educational forest in Anne’s name. http://www.tryondailybulletin.com/news/18243.asp

USA:

13) With the exceptions of some operating rates and Canadian demand, North American newsprint statistics released last week by the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC) indicate another bad year for the industry. Key to the decline was a 7.3% year-over-year drop in newsprint consumption by U.S. dailies in December, bringing the year’s total to just over 7.5 million tonnes, off 5.4% from 2004. Total U.S. consumption was down a bit less, just 3.5% http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/forestwebs_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001921653

Canada:

14) FREDERICTON – While escalating electricity rates are of grave concern for the province’s forestry industry, a university forestry economist says dealing with a cheap wood supply will be the industry’s greatest challenge over the next decade. Van Lantz, an associate professor of economics and forestry management at the University of New Brunswick says the industry, already in crisis from a variety of factors, needs to revamp itself in order to deal with significant global competition. One of those areas is an emerging wood supply in South America, where plantations in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay provide alternatives to higher quality but more expensive timber in North America. “The big problem is the plantations in South America,” said Mr. Lantz. “Their growth rates are so fast that they are going to be able to produce a cheaper pulp and flood the market in the future and we are not going to be able to compete with them any more.” http://canadaeast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060130/TPMONEY04/601300319/-1/MONEY

England:

15) A few days ago, after a furious argument, I was thrown out of a wood where I have walked for over 20 years. I must admit that I did not behave very well. In my defense I would plead that I was overcome with unhappiness and anger. The time I have spent in that wood must amount to months. Every autumn I would spend days there, watching the turning colours or grubbing for mushrooms and beechmast and knapped flints. In the summer I would look for warblers and redstarts. I saw a nightjar there once. It was one of the few peaceful and beautiful places in my part of the world that’s within a couple of miles of a station. No one tried to stop me in those 20-odd years because no one was there. But now there is a blue plastic barrel every 50 yards, and the surrounding fields are planted with millet and maize. The wood has been turned into a pheasant run. Having scarcely figured in the landowner’s books, it must now be making him a fortune. And I am perceived as a threat. It struck me that this could be a perverse outcome of the legislation for which I spent years campaigning: that the right to walk in certain places is seen by landowners as consolidating their relations with the public. The surge of money foaming through the south-east of England. A thousand woods can be filled with pheasants and still there are not enough to serve the people who have the money required – the many hundreds of pounds a day – to shoot them. We were told that the rising tide would lift all boats. But I feel I am drowning in it. Two weeks ago, writing in the Financial Times, the economist Andrew Oswald observed that “the hippies, the Greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement – all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists.” As I qualify on most counts, I will regard this as a vindication. A group of very wealthy people, who already have an endless choice of activities, have one more wood in which to shoot. The rest of us have one less wood in which to walk. The landowners tell us that by putting down birds they have an incentive to preserve the woods – this was one of the arguments the gamekeeper used as he was throwing me off. But what good does that do us if we are not allowed to walk there? http://www.monbiot.com

Senegal:

16) At the request of village leaders and local forestry officials I began working with these Senegalese farmers in 2001 while serving as an agroforestry extension agent in the Peace Corps. They were ready to listen to anybody with a workable plan. To develop a plan that would accommodate their needs, expectations and capabilities, I knew I needed to listen carefully to what these traditional people had to say. Planting trees is the first line of defense, but it is not an end in itself- it is a preventive strategy to address many environmental, social, and economic problems simultaneously. For that first year, I mostly listened. I learned that the Wolof people are tired of working – literally and figuratively – for peanuts. Soils have lost strength, and the scant remaining topsoil is badly eroded by fierce winds in the dry season. Fertilizers are expensive, and farmers get only one payday per year. The first year, I worked with a few farmers to surround their field with thick hedges of seedlings. We planted thorny trees on the outside to keep animals out, and we planted fast-growing trees on the inside to establish a tall windbreak. Everyone was surprised by the rapid rate of growth of these species- many grew more than 20 feet in 16 months, starting from seed! I had selected trees that quickly grow back after branches are cut, trees whose leaves drop lots of nitrogen into the starved soils and trees and shrubs that produce beans, fruits and high-protein animal forage (leaves and seed pods). Halting the erosion of the Sahara has direct benefits for people in the Western hemisphere who suffer health problems from the increasing amounts of airborne dust being carried across the Atlantic by trade winds. We live in a profoundly interconnected world, and in the long run, there is no place to hide from the serious consequences of environmental degradation anywhere on the planet. John Leary is the International Program Manager for Trees for the Future, www.plant-trees.org, http://www2.townonline.com/newton/artsLifestyle/view.bg?articleid=419390&format=&page=4

Kenya:

17) About 30 suspected Maasai tribal warriors attacked squatters from the Kikuyu tribe who were evicted by the authorities from the valley’s Eburru forest three days ago and had set up a makeshift camp just outside, police said. Hundreds of people were killed in the 1990s in the Rift Valley after politicians seeking electoral advantage exploited tensions over access to land and water rights in some of the worst violence in the country’s post-independence history. “The two died from wounds inflicted from spears on various parts of their bodies and we have taken their bodies to the area mortuary,” Simon Kiragu, a regional police official, said. “We believe that the attackers are Maasai herders who are currently in the forest with their animals,” he told Reuters. “We have sent police to the area but no arrests have been made so far.” One of the squatters, Charles Mbuthia, said youths armed “with all kinds of crude weapons” had carried it out. He added: “We have called the police, yet no action has been taken.” The incident took place after police on Thursday burned down the homes of some 4,000 people in an effort to stop them squatting in the Eburru forest, according to residents. Police set more than 300 houses on fire in an attempt to keep them from returning. But most of the squatters set up camp nearby and police said they must leave from there as well. Settlers and squatters, like those in Eburru who cut down trees to make way for their farms and making charcoal, have been blamed for Kenya’s increasing deforestation and the environmental damage that it causes. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29394637.htm

18) Timber traders have called on the Government to lift the ban on logging, saying that some trees in the forests may rot. The Association of Timber Manufacturers chairman, Mr George Gitonga, said in Kitale at the weekend that trees such as pine needed to be harvested immediately upon maturing. But he thanked the Government for allowing saw-millers to harvest trees at the Ndoinet forest in Nakuru District, saying that this was earning the Government Sh95 million in revenue annually. The Government banned logging five years ago, arguing that saw-millers were destroying forests. Mr Gitonga said the continued ban would be counterproductive as mature trees would go to waste. Another association official, Mr Zakayo Maina, said the ban was punishing thousands of families who depended on the industry through employment. He said saw-millers were now taking an active part in reforestation to replenish the forests. Mr Jacob Mwanduka of the Friends of Mau Water Catchment lobby group suggested that private management of government forests be encouraged. http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=3&newsid=66164

Angola:

19) Cabinda is 2,800 sq. m.. (7,300 sq. km.) of sweaty tropical forest and less than 200,000 inhabitants strong (counting more than 20,000 refugees in Congo). Nominally, it is an Angolan province separated from Angola by a Congolese corridor leading to the Congo river and thence to the sea. It is inordinately rich in natural resources: hardwood, cassava, bananas, coffee, cocoa (cacao), crude rubber, palm products, phosphate, manganese. quartz, gold, potassium, and, above all, oil (about 500,000 barrels per day). Huge rigs have been producing most of Angola’s GDP off Cabinda’s luscious shores since 1968. Cabinda has the second richest variety of forest trees after the Amazon. Unending strips of invaluable species such as black wood, ebony, and African sandal wood still harbor (protected) mountain gorillas. Wood of Cabinda origin is avidly sought by connoisseurs in Portugal, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Had Cabinda been an independent state and had all 400,000 Cabindese repatriated – GDP per capita would have still amounted to $7000, making it the richest territory in Africa. Small wonder that many of the bloodiest battles in Angola’s protracted war of independence from the Portuguese (1961-1975) took place here. Yet, even after the coveted independence was achieved, very little of the oil bonanza trickled back to the disgruntled Cabindese. They still depend on subsistence agriculture for a living. Infant mortality is among the highest in the world and only 3 in 10 people have access even to rudimentary health services. The average life expectancy is 47 years and the literacy rate is 42%.