072OEC’s This Week in Trees

This week we have 35 news items from: Alaska, British Columbia, Oregon, California, Montana, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Maine, USA, Canada, Congo, Costa Rica, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia and World-wide.

Alaska:

1) Despite the fact that a court ruled last year that the Tongass National land management plan was illegal and over objections by a coalition of environmental groups, the Forest Service was given approval to log 16.4 million board feet over 600 acres in Alaska’s Emerald Bay. Last month, the Sitka Conservation Society, Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace filed an administrative appeal alleging that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy and National Forest Management Acts when deciding to continue with a timber sale in a roadless area of the Tongass National Forest. Unfortunately, last week an appeals officer ruled in favor of the Forest Service and allowed the Agency to proceed with the timber sale although it has not created a new revised plan as ordered by the court. For more information contact Laurie Cooper, Alaska Rainforest Campaign, laurie@akrain.org, 202-544-0475. http://www.sitkawild.org/images_documents/documents/forest_timber/Emerald_Bay_Appeal_II_-_Final.pdf

British Columbia:

2) British Columbia almost gives away its trees. More than a third of the trees harvested in B.C. since 2001 were sold to logging companies for 25 cents a cubic metre (physically, the equivalent of an average telephone pole). More than 85 per cent of the trees in the North Coast Forest District — home to the Great Bear Rainforest — go for this absurdly low price. The full market price for that telephone pole is closer to $5. That is the real issue: what are British Columbians getting for their valuable forest resource? http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=47400

3) When the B.C. government took the private lands out of the Tree Farm Licences, did they have the right to do so? An on-going court case challenging that right has been put on hold until June 8. For some reason the government decided on the eleventh hour to negotiate. Maybe they aren’t on as firm a legal ground as they want us to believe. While it is a First Nations’ legal challenge, the outcome will affect us all. It is the government’s decision to allow Weyerhaeuser to take the old MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. private lands out of the TFL that has resulted in so many of our loggers being put out of work and the volume of logs exported to the US growing exponentially. When HR MacMillan was asked how he got the lands he replied “from Rockefeller.” Was that just a saying or is it true? How did any of the land become private and what were the original conditions of the grant? We know that a lot of the land around the canal was sold for $1 to provide employment in the Alberni Valley at the Stamp Mill. There are a lot of questions and few answers just now. http://westcoaster.ca:8080/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=419

4) PRINCE RUPERT — An environmental group wants provincial endangered-species legislation to protect a breed of hawks on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Endangered-species legislation is a federal responsibility, but Jacques Morin, of the Sierra Club, said there also needs to be provincial legislation. Mr. Morin, who is chairman of the group’s chapter on Haida Gwaii, said the British Columbia government has acted like an absentee parent, leaving it to federal regulators and watchdog groups to step in when situations become dire. Goshawks are large hawks that depend upon mature forests for nesting, and feed on birds and mammals. Research indicates the northern goshawks on Haida Gwaii may be genetically isolated from the mainland populations, and their long-term viability is uncertain. The Sierra Club complained to the Forest Practices Board, warning the goshawks may become extinct if something isn’t done. The board, a watchdog body at arm’s length from government, found “substance” to the Sierra club’s concerns because ” there is no current strategy to protect goshawk habitat at the landscape level.” Bruce Fraser, chairman of the board, said the Sierra Club’s concerns can be addressed through the current land-planning process, which includes several measures for goshawk protection. — Canadian Press Globe and Mail March 3, 2006

5) Guujaaw accused forest companies of pursuing short-term objectives by taking the best timber while they can and barging it south. He said that as the planning process went ahead and the Haida identified areas for protection, companies continued logging them. He also expressed concerns that the new provincial forest policies remove regulatory oversight from forest companies, allowing them to transfer licences without consultation. For the Haida, the plan and discussions are the long-overdue key to transferring control of decisions from outside agencies and corporations to the Council of the Haida Nation. The council has been conducting meetings in resource communities over their plans, and last year gained support from native and non-natives alike in a 40-day blockade against logging. The talks are the government’s attempt to address a deteriorating situation on the islands that has festered for years due to distrust among the Haida, the government, and some of the major forest companies. The land-use planning process, similar to the successful central- and north-coast process, was inconclusive. In the end, stakeholders could only agree to different viewpoints on contentious issues. The plan calls for: 1) Twenty-three per cent of the islands to be protected in parks. 2) Twenty per cent of the islands to be placed in 14 Haida protected areas. 3) Placing approximately five to eight per cent of land with unique features in smaller “study areas.” 4) Retaining the integrity of eco-systems, a term that has yet to be defined. — To the Haida, it means eco-system-based logging similar to a recent agreement for the central coast rainforest. To forest companies, it means sustainable logging to achieve specific goals. “The only planning was the dividing up of the loot.” If the forest industry feels threatened by Haida plans to reduce the cut, it has to look no further than its own past history of over-harvesting for the reason why, Guujaaw said. He described the decline of Sandspit as directly related to over-harvesting. Vancouver Sun–

6) As reported by Canadian Press (Published: Friday, February 10, 2006), TimberWest Forest Corporation has declared year-end figures for 2005. CEO Paul McElligott bravely assured investors that cash distributions have been sustained for another year. If you live in the Cowichan Valley, you will not be surprised to read that the volume of logs being exported is up from 2004 to an all-time high. Many ex-millworkers, their families, and their forest-dependent neighbours are left to watch and chafe as their timber resources exit the valley day after day, at a record pace. On reading TimberWest’s annual report more carefully, two stunning truths emerge. The first is that despite the increased timber volumes being shipped out, TimberWest is actually losing money and share value is in year-over-year decline as company debt rises. (McElligott blames unfavourable foreign exchange rates and downward market pressures.) Not exactly sustainable management. So much for corporate stewardship. One naturally questions whether their attention to forest stewardship is any more credible or sustainable. The second stark feature of note is that TimberWest has announced a more aggressive strategy to expand private forestland sales in an effort to supplement its shortfall from log sales. This means that not only is short-term value being subtracted from communities with the departure of every log-laden truck, but also, more damaging in the long run, value is being subtracted from local communities as more of the forest land base is liquidated and permanently removed from sustainable forestry. –Roger Wiles (YTS Secretary) — From: Darreld Rayner

7) The kick-off fundraiser held Sunday to buy a 212 hectare parcel on the mountain raised $21,345. “I don’t know what we expected, but if somebody asked me I’d have said we’d do well to reach $10,000,” said Gail Adrienne, executive director of the Nanaimo Area Land Trust. “I’m feeling quite optimistic – this is a very good start.” The charity must raise $500,000 within two years of the agreement. A purchase agreement is expected to be reached soon. “I really feel it’s a strong statement that residents of Nanaimo really want this land purchased,” Adrienne said. She said the campaign will run similar to the successful Linley Valley campaign. People submitted pledges and had the option to space out payments over three years. “We don’t want to take a lot of money until we’re sure of the purchase but also because it gives people more time,” Adrienne said. She said the land trust will be raising money a variety of ways, with mail-outs and mall displays. A large outdoor concert in July or August is also planned. Canadian rock star Bryan Adams expressed interest last year in performing a benefit concert in Nanaimo to raise money for the Mount Benson campaign. That plan was shelved because a venue large enough for Adams’ show was not available. “We’re really feeling an urgency to pin down whether or not Bryan Adams will be coming,” Adrienne said. “If Bryan Adams can be our highlight that would be wonderful but if not there’s a lot of other really good musicians we can turn to.” But people don’t have to wait for another event to make a pledge. http://nanaimobulletin.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=51&cat=23&id=597367&more=1

8) Last month I received a large gift: an opportunity to go into the field with 11 students to work on ecological restoration projects. As a practice, it is a bit like restoring old furniture. You discover the remnants of a beautiful old piece lying in a dusty place and then you apply all your love and talents to discovering its original form and nurturing it back to its former glory. Ecosystems, of course, are far more complex than old desks. Ecological restoration requires the full gamut of talents from hard-on-yang-bulldozers-rearranging-mine-tailings-back-into-a-mountain to the delicate yin dance of community volunteers tenderly coaxing a subdivision ditch back into a healthy creek for coho. It is an art and science that recognizes there is a time for both strength and gentleness. Strength to rearrange what had been undone in the first place, like stripping off centuries of paint, followed by gentleness to heal the wounds and restore a loving veneer. Ultimately it is an act of yin and yang, humour and faith, love and paradox. First, you spend time in an adjacent Crown parcel observing a mature functioning forest with all its lumps and bumps, shrubs, snags, big trees, little trees, swamps, highlands and wildlife. Students see how wind throws trees down on to the ground, where they rot into nurse logs; and tosses up root balls leaving vernal pools in the depression. They find fire scars and see open pools of light in the forest that indicates past fires opening up places for salmonberries to grow. They find beaver swamps and observe which trees die and which survive there. They look at woodpecker excavations and the health of a forest where woodpeckers abound. They look at the distance between trees in a forest, which is never regular and rarely two metres. Once the lessons of the forest are learned, students go into the plantation and act like the wind, fire, water, beaver, woodpecker or a tree shaking off its cones. As one of the students remarked, restoration work is the equivalent of being told to go mess up your room-and even more fun. To become a wind, Millard figured out all you need are a cable hoist, chains and a pulley. In an hour, you can blow a tree down with infinite love and care. To redistribute the wood piled from the Mac Blo ridges, they hoist the logs on the cable system and gently lower them on the damaged forest floor to create a network of rotting wood, fungi and shelter for newts, slugs and seedlings. To encourage songbirds, owls and woodpeckers, they erect old large logs with more pulleys and hoists. Culverts are pulled up, beavers invited back in. All day there is good restorative work to be done, doing what a forest might take 300 years to achieve. Meanwhile, on the other side of Vancouver Island, Timber West is preparing plans to log old growth forest on the lower half of Muir Creek and the Muir Creek Protection Society are trying to save it. The creek is known even in Ottawa as one of the few locales where the warty jumping-slug is seen.
http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals/monday/

Oregon:

9) The No Whisky logging project lies along the banks of the North Fork of the Clackamas River about 10 miles Southeast of the City of Estacada. Covering nearly 1,700 acres (almost 3 square miles!), the No Whisky proposal adds insult to an already injured forest ecosystem. The forests of No Whisky were clearcut in the early 1920s and in 1929 the railroad used to haul the trees started a fire, burning all but 40 acres of the current logging proposal. To make matters worse, the burned forest was logged again shortly after the fire, destroying any chance of a healthy recovery In addition, these past logging operations opened the area up to illegal off-road vehicle use that has caused significant erosion, pollution, garbage, noise that disturbs wildlife, and unnatural alterations to area streams. Any new logging projects in this area will not help the area recover as the Forest Service suggests, it will only make matters worse in an area that is finally recovering from past abuse. Write a letter today asking the Forest Service to drop the No Whisky Timber Sale. Simply add your personal comments to the sample letter below and mail or e-mail it to: Jim Roden, Clackamas Ranger Station 595 NW Industrial Way, Estacada, OR 97023 E-mail: jroden@fs.fed.us à http://www.bark-out.org

10) With the feds cracking down again on what they darkly call “ecoterrorism,” it’s timely to see some tree-sitters put through the wringer of fiction. Suzanne Matson’s third novel, “The Tree-Sitter,” is set in the Cascades west of Eugene. It starts with a couple of students heading from Massachusetts to Oregon to take part in a tree-sit in the middle of a timber sale. Julia, the narrator, artificially conceived and hothoused by her successful lawyer mother, falls for a cumin-scented MIT student named Neil. He has tired of writing his dissertation on saving the forests and longs for a piece of direct action. Julia goes with him, partly to defy her micromanaging mater, partly because he whispers to Julia that he will make love to her in the trees. With no subplot to speak of (Ginnie, the strong mother, is thoroughly left behind in Boston, and Julia rarely turns on the cell phone she was given), most of the action takes place in Julia’s head. She speculates on what her boyfriend is thinking and what will happen to them. The book jacket warns of tragedy, but nothing very exciting has happened by Page 173. You pray for a fall, Edenic or otherwise, but everything seems to happen in slow motion. Matson says she started writing the book in 2002. While the locale was not new to her — her first novel, “The Hunger Moon” (1997), featured a woman from Oregon, and the second, “A Trick of Nature” (2000), was set in a Portland suburb — her interest in the topic grew over the years as tales of ecosabotage had been reported. That’s when I began my research.” This included a brief stay in Eugene, poking around the headquarters of various ecogroups and collecting Green Anarchy-type newspapers. In the book’s acknowledgments she thanks “a masked young man named Wily Coyote who obligingly lowered himself down from an old-growth Douglas Fir in the Willamette National Forest to show me the ropes.” She asked the man “all sorts of questions” at the North Winberry tree-sit but declined to go up the tree. “I was there for a day in the woods, and I thought, ‘I’ve got two small kids at home, Mommy shouldn’t break a leg here … ’ ” http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=34169

11) FIVE RIVERS — It’s a raw March morning in the Oregon Coast Range, and melting snow is dripping from the trees. Cocooned in a waterproof suit and insulated boots, timber cruiser Pat Barnes sights through his laser range-finder at the slender gray trunk of a Douglas fir. Barnes and his working partner, Vince Hunter, are calculating wood volume for a timber sale on the Siuslaw National Forest. Likely to start in the summer of 2007, the thinning operation will remove a projected 3 million board feet of lumber from a 230-acre tract about 15 miles east of Waldport in Lincoln County. “We’re going to open it up,” Barnes says. And that seems to be just fine with all concerned. Even as environmentalists and timber interests are squaring off for a fresh fight over salvage logging in Southern Oregon’s 2002 Biscuit burn, here on the Siuslaw the two camps are coming together to back sales such as this one. While not entirely a novelty, it’s a sharp contrast to the recent war of words touched off by conflicting studies on post-fire reforestation coming out of Oregon State University. “In this forest I think we are past that point. Sales are not being appealed, there’s nobody sitting in a tree and there hasn’t been for a long time.” The reason is simple, said Todd Merritt, a log buyer for Georgia-Pacific’s Philomath sawmill: “There’s common ground,” Merritt said. “Everybody’s getting what they want.” Loggers get trees to sell to sawmills, and sawmills get an increased supply of logs to cut. The Siuslaw National Forest gets much-needed revenues, all of which will stay close to home under a new government stewardship program aimed at stream protection and habitat restoration. Based on the price of another recent sale, this one could clear close to $500,000. Environmentalists get thinning operations rather than clearcuts, which they see as a step toward restoring an old growth forest that’s been heavily logged. And while thinning means cutting trees, it’s a form of logging that green groups seem to have embraced, at least on the Siuslaw. Even the Oregon Natural Resources Council, a dogged opponent of numerous federal timber sales over the years, has given its blessing to thinning operations here. Doug Heiken, the group’s Western Oregon field rep, said ONRC supports weeding out Doug fir plantations to give the remaining trees more room to grow and suppressed native species a chance to recover.
http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2006/03/05/news/top_story/news01.txt

12) In the twilight of an epochal career as a forest scientist, Dr. Jerry Franklin can still cut through the fog of rhetoric to the heart of a controversy. Near the end of last week’s Medford hearing of the U.S. House subcommittee on forests and forest health, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon). Franklin, now a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources, quietly urged lawmakers not to legislate salvage logging as a cure for every forest fire. Salvage logging, said Franklin, was useful only if the goal was to replace a burned forest with a tree farm for commercial logging. If the goal was to encourage ecologically sound recovery of a natural forest, the weight of scientific research suggests that “salvage logging is not going to be appropriate.” And the difference between those two goals — a tree farm for commercial logging or the ecologically sound recovery of the natural forest — is at the root of the controversy over salvage logging vs. more limited regeneration methods. The concept of tree farms developed in the 1930s as private timber owners sought tax laws that would reduce their taxes until trees were actually cut, rather than pay annual property taxes like other property owners. The Weyerhaeuser Timber Company began a marketing campaign entitled “Timber Is A Crop” in 1937. The first private “tree farms” were certified in 1941. So the agricultural metaphor for industrial foresters is just a little over 60 years old. Many industrial foresters and academics in colleges of forestry are still very invested in the notion. These veterans, and many of the lawmakers they have influenced, are still believers in aggressive human intervention in forest management. Old growth forests were regarded as “dead, dying and decadent, biological deserts” and needed to be clearcut to make way for “vigorous, young forests.” In the 1960s the emerging science of ecology began the serious research that would challenge this article of faith of industrial forestry. Jerry Franklin was one of the pioneers. More than 40 years ago, working for the U.S. Forest Service and later Oregon State University, Franklin and his colleagues began studies in the Willamette National Forest east of Eugene that demonstrated that freshly replanted clearcuts were biological deserts and old growth forests were the most biologically diverse parts of the forest. http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2006/03/05/news/top_story/news01.txt

California:

13) There was a time centuries ago when redwoods covered most of the East Bay hills. But that was before logging, before grazing and before development. The hills will never again be so thick with the mighty trees, but some of the splendor they brought to the landscape is returning, little by little, as volunteers spend their weekends reseeding 220 acres of land above Claremont Canyon with redwood seedlings. They were out again Saturday, hacking through underbrush, slogging through mud and climbing over the ubiquitous eucalyptus stumps that litter the hills, looking for just the right spot for each of the 1,100 tiny trees they planted. It’s an ambitious effort to reseed much of the East Bay hills with redwoods, which reached as high as 200 feet when the Europeans first came here. “Redwood trees are a powerful, emotional symbol of coastal California,” said Joe Engbeck, vice president of the Claremont Canyon Conservancy and the man who organized the effort. “We can’t bring the redwoods back everywhere in this urban area, but we can transform this canyon.” The volunteers sought out small creeks, culverts and marshy areas where redwoods are more likely to thrive. Others were planted just below ridge tops near the border between Berkeley and Oakland, where visitors enjoy sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. “You’ve got to look at what you’re doing, each little micro site is different,” Bridget Tracy, a senior forestry major, said as she cleared eucalyptus debris to plant a seedling. “A few inches can really make a difference for their survival.” Tracy was among a dozen students from the Cal Forestry Club who were joined by members of the Claremont Canyon Conservancy. “It’s so cool that what we’re doing today will be around in a hundred years for future generations,” said Eric Meta Smith, a graduate forestry student. “We’re bringing back an important native species and really changing this canyon.” Until recently, much of the land the volunteers are reseeding was covered by thick stands of 100-foot tall eucalyptus trees that were first planted in the East Bay hills about 1910. At the time, people thought the trees would provide timber for homes after the 1906 earthquake. But when the trees, which tend to be brittle, proved useless for construction, they were allowed to spread throughout the hills from Richmond to Hayward. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/06/BAGFOHIUKB1.DTL

14) As my thanks to you, here is an update on Jackson State Forest — no requests for action, just news. Over 6,000 people emailed to the Board of Forestry asking for management reform at our publicly owned redwood forest! We the people keep growing in numbers — and influence. The public comment period for the Environmental Impact Report closed on March 1. The Board received a large number of expert and agency comments critical of the Report. I submitted an analysis that showed conclusively that the inventory estimates used in the management plan and EIR are so greatly in error that the management plan and environmental report are invalid. I have no doubt the court will concur with my findings. Political pressure is mounting for a major shift in management focus at Jackson Forest. You and other owners of our forest have built this pressure by your outpouring of protest and support for change. News, interpretation, my inventory analysis, and the full text of significant comments are available at: http://www.jacksonforest.com/ Working together, we will preserve and restore Jackson Forest for future generations.

15) The council has just toughened the city’s native tree ordinance and now requires residents on a lot of any size — not just big lots — to apply for a permit before removing sycamore, bay, oak or walnut trees with a trunk diameter of four inches or more. The previous minimum was eight inches. That would be more than weekend weeding but could easily come under the heading of yard cleaning. Cut the trees without a permit and you could be fined $1,000, or even face six months in jail. Even with a permit, you’ll have to plant two trees for each one you cut down. And it’s nice to be reminded that our city’s flora consists of more than just one long row after another of palm trees lining the streets. We have real, honest-to-goodness native woodlands interspersed among our houses, yards, apartments and parks. Western sycamores are Southern California icons and define the historic Arroyo Seco. Black walnuts are an unexpected surprise to newcomers in the Hollywood Hills. California bays are especially lush in the ravines and hillsides near the coast. All three now join oaks as protected in Los Angeles. But the new law, on its face, applies to everyone, on any lot, and that includes backyards where a tree may have sprung up from an acorn under a shrub or a hedge. Get out your tape measure. More than four inches? Better get yourself down to City Hall and apply for a permit. Will a city tree patrol haul you into arboreal court if it catches you taking a saw to a scrub oak that got out of hand? Of course not. That would be unreasonable. And when have you ever known City Hall to be unreasonable? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-trees02mar02,0,4090013.story?coll=la-news-comment-edit
orials

16) JACKSON – A year-old law aimed at protecting California’s oak trees from development will require hard work by county governments and probably a number of legal battles if it is to succeed, said government officials, biologists and an attorney who spoke. Wednesday at an oak conservation seminar. And the fights won’t only be over how much county governments should require from developers to make up for oaks lost to housing tracts and office parks. A dispute is also brewing over who gets the job of identifying the species, number and size of oaks on land slated for development. “By law, it is the practice of forestry,” said Eric Huff, the executive officer overseeing forester licensing for the California Department of Forestry. Just as the state requires those practicing medicine to have licenses, so it requires licenses of those practicing forestry, Huff said. He said that the signature of a registered professional forester should appear on plans that calls for removing an oak woodland to make way for development. That logic rankles the biologists, botanists and arborists, many with advanced degrees, who have for years landed jobs preparing environmental studies for local governments, highway projects and private developments. In the Mother Lode, such studies usually include drawing circles on maps to mark oaks and making plans to replace or conserve the oaks. “We’ve built up an entire industry, … and all of a sudden, we’re not welcomed,” said Chuck Hughes, a botanist and arborist employed by Sycamore Environmental of Sacramento. “It’s not the practice of forestry when you are mapping oak woodlands.” California three decades ago set standards for licensing professional foresters. Since then, about 2,800 people have received those licenses, about 1,500 of whom are still active, Huff said. Traditionally, the licensed foresters have overseen plans for logging in commercial forests, where trees are cut to produce lumber and other wood products. The vast majority of California’s commercial logging has been in pine, fir and redwood forests, the so-called “softwoods.” Oaks contribute very little to commercial logging in the state. http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060303/NEWS01/603030327/1001

Montana:

17) The task force was formed by the Flathead County Commission in a response to Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s call for county-by-county suggestions for roadless management. Schweitzer plans to submit a petition with recommendations for roadless areas to the Forest Service by December, as requested by the Bush administration. The task force “generally agreed that we could not possible address specific road locations, economics, environmental effects on over 400,000 inventoried acres in the time available,” says the opinion, which was signed by seven of the 12 members on the task force. “After only two meetings of the task force, it was abundantly clear that every member believed that a majority of the acreage within most mapped roadless boundaries would probably never need a road, but many members could not accept a blanket resolution freezing the existing roadless boundaries as a line never to be crossed with a road or other management practices,” says the majority opinion, which was penned by Fred Hodgeboom, president of Montanans for Multiple Use. http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2006/03/03/news/news03.txt

Michigan:

18) “Horses are slower, there’s no doubt about that,” Strong said. “And the guys with the horses can only make money on certain types of cutting. It has to be high valuable timber for them to make enough money to do it.” Skidding with horses has been increasing in popularity in recent years, as property owners have become more educated about the importance of protecting the soil, said Dave MacArthur, district forester with Decorative Panels International. The practice of logging with horses nearly came to an end when mechanized logging equipment became available, but has been revived in recent years. “It’s gotten so a lot of people want their woods cut with horses,” Burr said. “We can pretty much keep busy all winter long.” Burr said the money generated by skidding helps to pay for the upkeep of his horses. But he skids logs not so much because he can make money at it, but because he enjoys the chance to work with his horses and the chance to spend time outdoors. “It’s kind of peaceful. it’s quiet,” Burr said. Burr said the woods also provide the perfect arena for training young horses with how to cope with loud noises, confined spaces, and interaction with other horses. “They learn more in the woods than they do anywhere else,” he said. http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/base/news-32/114169765738200.xml&storylist=mibusiness&th
ispage=3

Wisconsin:

19) The DNR says chopping more trees is the best way to save Wisconsin forests. On Saturday, land owners in Western Wisconsin met at the University of Wisconsin-Stout for a forestry conference. The Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Woodland Owners Association gave tips on how to better manage forested areas on private land. The DNR says 16 million acres in Wisconsin are covered by almost 10 billion trees. Chris Windstrand of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says the best way to manage forests is to harvest more. “Harvesting is good for the forest,” says Windstrand. “There is a lot that goes to waste in the forest every year and harvesting, the idea behind management and doing harvesting is that the land owner does get some income from the forest. We are taking out products that need to come out for the health of the forest.” Nearly 60-percent of all wooded areas are privately owned. Sponsors of the conference say the event helps educate those owners. http://www.wqow.com/news/articles/article_6141.shtml

New Jersey:

20) We are in desperate need of your help and as many people that we can reach. This frantic situation involves feral cats, deer and wildlife. The area is 17 acres of open land in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It is east on Main Street near JD’s Restaurant (124 Main St.) It was originally owned by The Hemsley Family (Hotels). The property was sold to a builder, Town & Country. Construction has now begun with no regard for the wildlife involved. The area is now fenced with deer having no means of escape. Trees are being cut down and the bulldozers are knocking down everything. The deer are left in an open field with no where to go. The feral cats are just getting caught in all the rocks while the trees come down on top of them. We need a public outcry, as many people we can to intervene to give us time until a HUMANE outcome can be resolved. This is going on right now so there is no time left for them.
Please try to help with publicity or suggestions on who to contact.
PLEASE EMAIL ELAINE: topets@optonline.net

Maine:

21) Someone had cut off all the lower branches of the hemlocks and white pines up to a height of about 15 feet, opening up the space like a church. After my visit I called the landowners, who live elsewhere in town, to find out more about this secret space. Kathleen Maslan explained that she, her husband and two young sons have been using and improving this special place for a number of years, and that the previous owner had started the process of cleaning it up. Several of the big trees have interesting above-ground roots and cavities, which the boys decided were perfect for fairies. They arranged twigs and bark to create little houses for them, and always brought cookies — some to eat, some to leave for the fairies. And when they returned, the cookies were always gone — proof of fairies. The landowners were careful not to disturb native ferns and mosses, and their natural beauty was enhanced by the fact that they had not been planted, or arranged in any way. It felt like a forest primeval, even though someone had removed a fair amount of growth so that one could see the stream, the three “sisters” — ancient gnarly sugar maples — and the young yellow birch racing straight up for a bit of sunlight. So this winter I’ll spend some time in our own woods to see if there is a special place that I can clean up and turn into my own little Narnia. http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2467011.shtml

22) “It’s about diversifying the economy when traditional economies or sources are drying up,” Vail said during the Katahdin Summit at the Katahdin Region Higher Education Center. “They are two sides of the same whole,” Irland, a former state economist who served with the U.S. Forest Service, said of tourism and manufacturing. The center, which helps laid-off wood mill workers retrain for other industries, was a fitting place to hold the Katahdin region’s first economic summit since 2003. Among the attendees were state economists, East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket town leaders and residents. The region’s successes will start small, with companies that don’t need large pools of highly skilled workers found in urban areas, state economist Kate Reilly said. About 51 percent of the state’s skilled workers are in areas such as Portland or Bangor, not Katahdin. This makes it unlikely that large companies will relocate here, she said. “When people in states like Maine and places like Millinocket look around, there’s a great deal of uncertainty about what is going to happen – to their jobs, their communities and their schools,” Reilly said. “But more and more, people are recognizing that large employers aren’t going to save them.” Companies with unique ideas are proving successful in Maine, Reilly said, and many follow in the state’s proud manufacturing tradition. http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=130106

USA:

23) A pair of Democratic senators today plan to reintroduce legislation that would codify the Clinton-era designation of 58.5 million acres of national forest as roadless, placing them off-limits to roadbuilding, logging and other development. The bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) would restore the Roadless Area Conservation Rule the Bush administration suspended in early 2001 and eventually replaced with a plan requiring states to petition the Agriculture Department and Forest Service if they want to retain roadless status for federal lands within their state borders. Cantwell sponsored similar legislation in the 108th Congress, and a companion bill was introduced in the House last July. No vote was taken on either bill. The only full House or Senate vote on the issue came in 2003 during debate over the fiscal year 2004 Interior Department spending bill; the House defeated an amendment to codify the Clinton rule, 185-234. Also today, a coalition of environmental groups filed a petition signed by 250,000 people asking Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to reconsider the Clinton rule repeal under the Administrative Procedures Act. The legislation and Administrative Procedures Act petition are part of a multipronged effort by environmentalists and congressional Democrats to reinstate the Clinton-era rule and cut the state petition process short. Democratic attorneys general from California, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming have challenged the roadless rule repeal in court, as have 20 environmental groups. Forest Service officials have repeatedly said the best way for states to protect roadless areas is through the petition process. “We’ve said before that we believe the quickest way to protect roadless areas is through the state petition rule rather than trying to resurrect a rule already struck down by the courts,” agency spokesman Dan Jiron said earlier this week. — Dan Berman, E&ENews PM reporter

24) WASHINGTON, DC – More than 250,000 Americans Thursday formally petitioned the Bush administration to reinstate the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, seeking reversal of one of the administration’s most controversial environmental decisions. In an unprecedented move, conservationists, concerned Americans and more than 100 current and former Olympians employed the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) to petition for a policy reversal. The APA grants citizens the right to request the government issue, amend or revoke federal rules. Backers say the unusual step was necessary after the Bush administration failed to honor the overwhelming public support for retaining the 2001 rule evidenced during a public comment period drive. Traditionally, citizen participation is limited to comments during rulemakings, but conservationists argue that the comments of 1.7 million Americans were disregarded by the Bush administration in its repeal of the Clinton administration rule. In a letter to the Forest Service, over 100 local and national conservation groups who organized the drive demanded a response to the petition as required by law. The groups said the government not only ignored strong public support for the rule, but they have skirted federal environmental law. These legal violations are the subject of two lawsuits in federal court. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-03-09.asp

Canada:

25) Since environmentalists’ major victory last month preserving B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest, the battle over logging practices is shifting to Ontario. Conservationists who were instrumental in lobbying B.C. have launched a high-profile fight with logging companies over the future of Ontario’s last untouched tract of wilderness, the vast boreal forest that stretches across the northern half of the province. In an opening salvo, environmentalists are trying to hit Ontario companies where it hurts most — on their bottom lines — by urging U.S. buyers of forest products to reconsider purchases from some of the province’s biggest operators, including Abitibi Consolidated Inc. and Weyerhaeuser Co. Environmentalists are also targeting the two giants because of a bitter dispute the companies have with natives over logging practices around the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. ForestEthics, a B.C.-based group, and the Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, have written to more than 500 companies in the United States that buy paper or lumber products from Ontario, warning them that their orders “may soon become embroiled in the growing controversy about Ontario’s boreal forest,” according to one of the letters. “We’re putting both the Ontario government and industry and major customers of Ontario’s forest products on notice that they all have a responsibility and a capacity to take action to protect Ontario’s forests,” said Tzeporah Berman, a program director at ForestEthics. Among the highest-profile uses of Ontario forest products in the United States is in newsprint for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Environmentalists want the province to place a moratorium on logging in boreal forest areas that provide habitat for caribou, a species that has been wiped out from half of its historical range in Ontario because of its need for large tracts of mature forest. The moratorium would allow time to develop conservation plans for the remaining uncut land, which stretches north from about the Red Lake area in the west to Cochran in the east. Environmentalists also want Ontario to end clear-cutting in favour of smaller-scale, more selective harvesting. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060302.FOREST02/TPStory/TPNational/

Congo:

26) MBIHE-MOKELE — Scientists are struggling to save the fast-disappearing bonobo, the gentle “hippie chimp” known for resolving squabbles through sex rather than violence. The animals are known for greeting rival groups with genital handshakes and sensual body rubs. Bonobo spats are swiftly settled often with a French kiss and a quick round of sex. Despite all the sex, however, female bonobos give birth to a single infant only once every five years, making the species especially vulnerable. The bonobo, or pan paniscus, is native only to the vast rain forest in this huge central African nation, living high off the ground in treetop nests. As few as 5,000 may now remain in Congo, down from an estimated 100,000 in 1984, said Ino Guabini, a primatologist with the World Wildlife Fund. “There is no question that bonobos are seriously threatened,” Guabini said, speaking over a shrill forest symphony of birds, animals and insects. “We need urgent measures or there is no way we can protect the species.” But for poor villagers, bonobos can be lucrative business, with much of the meat heading for expensive, clandestine meals at restaurants in the cities. One bonobo can earn $200 for Richard Ipaka, a 50-year-old part-time poacher who lives in the provincial capital, Mbandaka. “That’s enough money for two months,” he said. Like many Congolese, he said he did not know bonobos are found in the wild only in his country. And like many others, he was skeptical that the ape is endangered. “Our ancestors have been eating bonobos for centuries. How could they disappear?” Ipaka said. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1690106

Costa Rica:

27) SAN JOSÉ— Eduardo Carrillo was on a field trip to Corcovado National Park with a group of his biology students last November when he realized that something was wrong. In just over a mile, the group found five dead monkeys. Three more were in agony, he said later — emaciated, near death, sitting on the forest floor unable to climb a tree. “I had never seen something like this,” said Dr. Carrillo, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Costa Rica. At first he suspected yellow fever, which swept through monkey populations in the 1950’s. So he hurried back to San José, the capital, and convened a team of scientists, which included wildlife biologists, a microbiologist, a geneticist and a veterinarian. Conclusion: The weather caused several problems for the monkeys. Some fruit trees did not bear fruit during the rainy months. Others produced fruit but it fell to the ground early, leaving nothing on the trees for long periods of time. Compounding the problem, researchers say, was that monkeys were unable to look for food because of the incessant rain. “If you have a long period of days where it’s raining, raining, raining, they just stay in the tree waiting, and they don’t eat,” said Grace Wong, a wildlife conservation researcher at National University in San José. “The monkeys need sun to dry off,” said Ronald Sánchez Porras, an ecologist at the University of Costa Rica. “You can see in the tree when the monkey moves his body to try to shake the water off. But when it rains like this, it’s impossible.” In addition to being hungry, the monkeys that died were severely dehydrated, apparently having been unable to venture down from the trees for water. This may have stressed their immune systems to the brink, causing parasites and infections that occur normally to become deadly. Feces collected from the park showed elevated levels of usually benign parasites, a sign, Dr. Guttiérez-Espeleta said, that the animals’ immune systems were not functioning properly. Four species of monkeys live in Costa Rica, and all four are found in Corcovado. The squirrel and capuchin monkeys rely on a diet of fruit, insects, leaves and stems; howler monkeys mainly eat leaves. The spider monkeys consume a diet almost exclusively of fruit, leaving them the most vulnerable. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07costa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Brazil:

28) Revenue from the contracts will help finance a new forestry service, which is to help enforce environmental regulations and concession contracts. Several leading environmental groups and opposition parties supported the law. “It returns public forests to public hands and increases the chances of effective government control – we support the law,” Sergio Leitao said, head of public policy with Greenpeace in Brasilia. Under the measure, only Brazilian companies can bid for logging contracts. Nationalist hard-liners in Congress said they feared multinationals would set up legal fronts to participate in what they called the privatisation of the Amazon to foreigners. Brazil’s president has approved a measure offering huge chunks of the Amazon jungle to timber companies that comply with tough restrictions aimed at preserving the world’s largest rainforest. Under the law signed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Government will tender 40-year contracts allowing the highest bidder to log trees under a sustainable development plan. Some 13 million hectares, or 3 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, will be available to private Brazilian companies. Logging is barred in nature reserves and territories for Indians and descendants of slaves. The law is aimed at undermining more destructive wildcat timber companies, government officials say. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200603/s1582971.htm

Indonesia:

29) Jakarta – National Police Chief General Sutanto pledged here on Thursday that he would take firm action against any policeman involved in illegal logging. “Certainly, any policeman involved in illegal logging must be punished most severely. A case like that must be dealt with immediately,” he said at the national police headquarters. He said he would not make any discrimination in dealing with cases of illegal logging, and that both police officers and ordinary civilians would be dealt with on equal basis. “They will all be processed according to the law, be they police members, public prosecutors or state forestry officials if they are involved in illegal logging,” he said. The head of the Center of Processing and Analysis of Financial Transactions, Yunus Husein, earlier reported to the National Police Headquarters and the Attorney General`s Office 14 suspicious financial transactions believed to be origninating from illegal logging financiers. Out of the 14 transactions, 10 were linked to police personnel, the military and a timber businessman. One of the transactions is worth Rp2 billion. http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=9647

30) Manado – At least 7 million trees are to be grown in North Sulawesi in a bid to rehabilitate forests and green barren lands in three cities and six districts in the province, regionasl Forestry Office chief Moes Lengkong said here on Monday. He said a large number of trees would be grwon as part the National Movement to Rehabilitate Land and Forests (GNRHL) program on 7,300 hectares of land in the province. Lengkong said the program would directly involve various elements in the prvoncial community, especially farmers who live in villages around forest areas. With an active participation of the local farmers, Lengkong said the program was expected to contribute positive impact on the efforts to ptotect and to conserve the forest as the sourse of life. He added that according to the lates data from Citralandship Satelite from 2003-2004, 59 percent of around 788,000 hectares of forest in North Sulawesi had been damaged. The causes of the damage, according to him, were illegal logging and the conversion of forest area into plantation area. Lengkong added that the local government would continue to encourage the people and the reforestation projects, including GNRHL, to keep the forest areas from further damage. http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=9760

31) Sumatra – Following the apparent poisoning of a herd of endangered Sumatran elephants last week, the Indonesian Forest Protection and Nature Conservation Agency (PHKA) and World Wildlife Fund, announced plans to immediately begin implementing a protocol to reduce human-elephant conflict in central Sumatra. PHKA also called for an immediate stop to the clearing of all natural forests remaining in Riau Province, site of ongoing human-elephant conflict. The protocol is a conflict management strategy designed to reduce the number of incidences of human-elephant conflict and minimize damage to people and elephants should an incidence occur.As an immediate first step, PHKA and WWF will assemble a rapid response team of rangers and domesticated elephants to patrol the conflict areas, modeled after WWF’s successful “flying squads” used near the new Tesso Nilo National Park. “The human-elephant conflict mitigation protocol is very important and has to be implemented immediately to address the escalating conflict evident from the recent cases,” said Adi Susmianto, director of Biodiversity Conservation at PHKA. “We expect implementation of the protocol to reduce human-elephant conflict cases, avoid death of humans and elephants, and minimize material losses.” Six elephants were found dead last week in an oil palm plantation at the border of Riau and North Sumatra, apparently poisoned. At least 17 elephants (and as many as 51, according to some reports) have repeatedly raided one village in Rau’s Bengkalis District. Both cases appear to be a direct effect of forest clearing in Riau’s Libo Forest, one of the most important of the few remaining retreats of the Sumatran elephant in Central Sumatra. Libo is rapidly being converted into plantations, fields and settlements, often without the necessary licenses. A multinational paper company, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), uses timber cleared in this forest block for its Riau mills. “All conversion of natural forests has to stop immediately,” said Adi. “Conversion of forest into plantations, fields and settlements and rampant illegal logging are threatening some of the most important habitats of our endangered elephants and tigers.” Both species have run out of places to go. Pursued by plantation managers and villagers, Riau’s elephant population has been reduced from an estimated 700 to 350 individuals in the last seven years. An emergency meeting will be held tomorrow to determine how to best contain the herd of 17 elephants, which have destroyed a number of houses and oil palm trees in the past two weeks. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=61853

Australia:

32) THE Rann Government has pledged to plant 2.5 million trees along the ailing Murray river system to combat erosion and salinity in a move likely to secure Greens preferences for Labor in the March 18 poll. Mike Rann also announced yesterday that a re-elected Labor Government would offer a $400 rebate to connect rainwater tanks to houses. The Premier said his vision was to create a “Water-Smart State” by spending $6 million on the Murray River forest and the $400 rebate to each homeowner to plumb rainwater tanks into their houses. The forest would include planting 2.5 million trees along the river from Morgan to Renmark to counteract erosion and salinity. “This will be the biggest regional forest ever planted in the history of this state,” Mr Rann said. “Now we’re going to have a regional forest that’s about helping to protect the River Murray.” In 2002 the Rann Government pledged to plant three million trees within Adelaide’s urban boundaries. They have so far planted 850,000 trees. The Murray announcement came just one week after John Howard said not enough was being done to save the lengthy river system. Environment Minister John Hill said Labor would spend $2million over the next four years to allow homeowners to plumb rainwater tanks into existing homes or renovated dwellings. The Rann Government has already introduced legislation requiring new-home builders to plumb rainwater tanks into houses from July. It estimates 18 billion litres of water — equivalent to 18,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — could be saved by 2025 if each South Australian house had a plumbed tank. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18360815%255E2702,00.html

33) The Wilderness Society claims Tasmania’s image is being hurt by the continued logging of old-growth forests. The society today unveiled two television advertisements, which aim to put the issue in the election spotlight. The ads call for an end to the replacing of native forest with plantation forest and the banning of the poison 1080. Wilderness Society campaign coordinator Geoff Law says people cannot drive around Tasmania without seeing the impact of the two practices. “The 1080 poisoning of native animals is still occurring, the destruction of old-growth forests it’s inescapable,” he said. “The log trucks are still in convoys down the streets and we are still seeing our native forests trucked off to places overseas.” The ads also accuse timber company Gunns of securing political influence through donations to the Liberal and Labor parties. A spokeswoman for Gunns says the company complies with all laws covering political donations. It has accused the Greens and the Wilderness Society of seeking to impose one set of rules for Gunns and another for the rest of the population. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200603/s1582703.htm

34) SAN FRANCISCO — “Tasmania’s world-class trees like the giant Eucalyptus — the tallest hardwoods in the world — are up there with the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands and worth far more to humanity as forests than woodchips. Gunns is trashing a global treasure in Tasmania to make disposable paper products and turning paradise into a toxic Hell on Earth in the process.” Outraged world citizens today protested at Australian embassies and consulates in America, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom to decry the destruction of old-growth forests and the undermining of democracy in the country’s island state of Tasmania by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, Ltd., a rogue billion-dollar logging giant whose practices rank among the world’s worst according to recent reports. The IUCN compares Gunns’ operations to rampant illegal logging in the Third World. Demonstrators delivered a letter signed by leading international sustainability groups to Prime Minister John Howard demanding that the government act in accordance with scientific recommendations to protect Tasmania’s virgin forests from a well-documented arsenal of logging tactics deployed by Gunns and industry-controlled Forestry Tasmania. In the wake of massive clearcuts by Gunns, the industry routinely scorches the Earth with napalm firebombs to eradicate all remaining life. “Gunns does not act alone,” said Ilyse Hogue, director of the Global Finance Campaign at Rainforest Action Network. “They are backed by investors and commercials banks both in their everyday operations and projects like the unpopular Bell Bay Pulp Mill proposal. As the trajectory of the global finance sector moves toward a sustainable and just economy, banks like ANZ that continue to fund rogue corporations like Gunns will find themselves forced to account for their decision to their customers.” http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20060306.054310&time=07%2040%20PST&year=2006&public=0

World-wide:

35) Myth: Freshwater habitats are being conserved at the expense of people.
Fact: WWF case studies from Colombia, Brazil, South Africa and China have shown increased income, employment, and fish yield in conjunction with nature conservation projects by local communities. More than a third of the world’s 100 biggest cities – including New York, Jakarta, Tokyo, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Nairobi and Melbourne – rely on fully or partly protected forests in catchment areas for much of their drinking water. Well-managed natural forests minimize the risk of landslides, erosion and sedimentation. They also substantially improve water purity by filtering pollutants, such as pesticides, and in some cases capture and store water. Countries would do well to adopt a forest watershed protection strategy as this can result in massive savings in the cost of water supply, as well as improve the health of local populations. http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9989