326 – Earth’s Tree News

Today for you 34 new articles about earth’s trees! (326th edition – USA & Canada)
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–British Columbia: 1) Surge in support for forest defense, 2) More on Coleman’s land giveaway, 3) Wolves have to have their rainforest, 4) Exporting logs & importing sawdust, 5) The Intemperate Rainforest, 6) Open pit copper mine in Clayoquot? 7) 800,000 hectares agreed on, 8) Forest Practices Board investigation, 9) Protests at Bear mtn., –Washington: 10) Who’s really interested in saving Hood canal?
–Oregon: 11) Western Environmental Law Center and FS long term planning,
–California: 12) Aggressive new bill to limit clearcutting, 13) Tree Smog, 14) RAN writes to WEYCO, 15) Campaign against SPI, 16) Rewriting frog rules, 17) Bohemian club got NAILED don’t let ‘em get out of it! 18) Logging plans in Santa Cruz mountains,
–Montana: 19) $1.4 million for man defending land from Wilderness club bulldozers, 20) FS hatching secret closed-door plan,
–Colorado: 21) $20 million for loggers to solve “beetle” problem
–New Mexico: 22) An ethnography on use and control of forests in N. New Mexico
–Ohio: 23) Soon to be Ohio’s 21st state forest in Vinton County
–New Hampshire: 24) Crisis in New Hampshire’s working forest
–Maryland: 25) Administration prohibits wind turbines in state forests & parks
–Massachusetts: 26) Aerial photos of large-scale FSC certified clearcutting
–Pennsylvania: 27) 2,500 acres of Glatfelter Pulp land sold Conservation Fund
–Northeast US: 28) Forests are now 50-80 years old
–Kentucky: 29) Slippery Elm bark harvest runs amok
–Arkansas: 30) Floods come at trees most vulnerable time of the year,
–USA: 31) Loggers propose forest landscape restoration program, 32) Treeclimbing, 33) Our enormous carbon reserves,
–Canada: 34) Important milestone towards newest National Park

British Columbia

1) Wu, the Victoria campaign director for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, says it has been 15 years since we have seen such a surge of support for the campaign to preserve Vancouver Island’s remaining old-growth forest and ban log exports. And this time, the environmentalists have been joined by people whose sympathies were on the other side of the blockades back in 1993, when the War In The Woods saw 850 protesters arrested over logging in Clayoquot Sound. Pulp mill workers dotted the crowd a couple of weeks ago at a rally at the legislature. Think, if you will, of Rocky III, the title character teaming up with erstwhile opponent Apollo Creed to take on Mr. T/Western Forest Products/Gordon Campbell. Well, maybe that’s going a bit far. “We agree in some areas, but don’t agree in others,” says Brian Butler, vice-president of the Duncan-based local of the Steelworkers union, which represents loggers and sawmill workers. The treehuggers and treesawyers agree log exports suck, but they differ over old-growth logging, the union being leery of the details of the WCWC’s plan to phase out the practice over seven years. And if greens and loggers are no longer fighting, maybe it’s less about love than war-weariness, the number of soldiers on both sides having diminished, the combatants both aging and tired. The average worker in today’s shrunken forest industry is over 50 years old, Butler says. Still, the current green-union relationship is remarkably cordial compared to the old days. (“I tell my guys if they see a spotted owl to shoot it,” forest union warhorse Jack Munro famously declared in 1990.) Of course, whether the environmentalists and the loggers are hugging or slugging is irrelevant if it doesn’t affect what’s actually going on in the woods. Only a quarter of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forest remains, Wu says. What’s left is largely high up hard-to-get-to slopes, not down in the valley bottoms. “They’ve already cleaned out the biggest, best stuff.” The south Island has been particularly denuded. As it is, Wu figures the provincial government is willing to see old-growth red cedar go the way of the Atlantic cod fishery. Butler agrees the province has done an abysmal job of managing the forests — or, rather, not managing them. “Since the Liberals took over in 2001, there’s been about a 1,000-per-cent increase in log exports.” The forest industry has been left to police itself (think of Keith Richards as night watchman in the pharmacy). http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/business/story.html?id=68f4ce31-df4e-49ae-9012-
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2) Coleman last year announced the controversial deal to allow Western Forest Products Inc. to remove private land from management under the Tree Farm Licence system, he promised one of the conditions was “an agreement to work with the Ministry of Environment on protecting ungulate winter ranges.” A stack of documents released to The Tyee through a freedom of information request now shows how the Environment Ministry’s negotiation with WFP actually ended in the government excusing the company from protecting elk and deer on its land, despite Coleman’s promise. Early on, the Environment Ministry staff advocated placing a covenant on the areas that would have protected them even if the land sold. But after months of negotiations, WFP agreed to have new ungulate winter ranges protected on Crown land remaining in the TFL. The new ranges are largely second growth forests, unlike the “very high quality winter habitat” the government gave up. http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/04/10/ElkRange/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_ca
mpaign=140408

3) The red-ochre or salmon-colored coastal wolves along the Great Bear Rainforest or mid-coastline of B.C. are unique and dependent upon intact old growth forests that provide habitat for salmon bearing streams. Wolves, similarly to humans and a few other highly social animals, work co-operatively by utilizing a division of labour. Over the past 300 years in North America humans of European descent have relentlessly hunted wolves. In fact, the B.C. coastal wolf population has been drastically reduced by at least 80 percent. Coastal wolves are the least known subspecies of gray wolves left on the planet. They live in rugged yet picturesque terrain, which receives more than 2,500 millimetres of precipitation annually. Deadly efficient packs of 15 animals lead by an alpha male, move silently through the rainforests – over barnacles, moss and rock. Each pack occupies about 150 kilometres of space or home range including islands, forest covered mountains and caves – critical cover for protection during the winter months. A pack is able to move as much as 70 kilometres a day, most of the travel occurs during the night. One of the most remarkable mutually beneficial relationships I have ever observed in nature exists between wolves and ravens. On Pooley Island, I’ve seen ravens playing with pups by dive-bombing them! Ravens depend upon wolves as they scavenge left over kills. Wolves, on the other hand, rely upon raven alert calls to warn them of intruders. Wolves do not eat ravens. DNA hair analysis has recently revealed two distinct wolf populations: one on the outer-coast and the other on the inner-coast. http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=76b4ac65-7a1d-43ff-815c-6f94ecd93f16

4) So many coastal sawmills have shut down that papermaker Catalyst Paper is turning to American lumber mills for the sawdust they need to make pulp. Catalyst’s search for fibre south of the border comes at a time when coastal mills are shutting down and timber companies are selling their logs by the bargeload to the Americans. Now those barges are coming back loaded with sawdust. The sawdust-for-logs trade shows how badly provincial forest policy has failed, said Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. The problem, Sinclair said, is the coast no longer has enough sawmills to provide the raw material needed to maintain a healthy pulp and paper industry. Catalyst needs sawdust to make short-fibre pulp at its Elk Falls mill near Campbell River. But there are no longer enough lumber mills on the West Coast producing sawdust. Since 2002, at least 21 coastal mills have closed. So the company now imports sawdust from Everett, Wash., according to Ian Simpson, president of Local 1123 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union at Campbell River. “They get about a bargeload a week out of Everett,” Simpson said. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=822f5d65-42cc-40f3-a8a5-6e18a4
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5) Bruce Braun’s The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada’s West Coast is a seriously thoughtful book. Mind you, some of its key insights don’t seem all that shattering to me. He expresses himself clearly, and he pulls ideas together in useful ways, but I’m having a hard time figuring how unique the book’s approach really is. My main quibble – just to get it out of the way – is that he comes across as new to some of the theoretical sources he deals with. Why Spivak, I wonder, for example? There are all kinds of deconstructionist folk, and I don’t see why Spivak is the most useful to Braun’s argument; she’s well known, and her work addresses the related topic of postcolonialism, but otherwise I don’t see a reason why her in particular. The clearest example is that he keeps talking about “Romantic ecology” and never mentions Jonathan Bate or his 1991 book entitled Romantic Ecology; as well, his main environmental history references are several years old, and by 2002 good stuff had been done since the admittedly exceptional collection edited by William Cronon entitled Uncommon Ground, which of course includes Cronon’s own influential “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Otherwise, yeah, this book is well worth reading, and I’ll be including sections in coursepacks for my BC literature courses. A thoughtful person alert to the nuances of the variously posited environmental debate in BC would already be well aware of the perspectival poverty of describing it in binaristic terms, and one of Braun’s key points is that we need to quit being binaristic about this sort of thing, because there aren’t just loggers and environmentalists, and their opinions aren’t entirely opposed. (To which I can only say, I’m not especially binaristic. Are you? I don’t know that many people who’re as crudely binaristic as Braun’s imagined communities….) http://boughtbooks.blogspot.com/2008/04/bruce-braun-intemperate-rainforest.html

6) “To say that we are dismayed at this news is an understatement,” said Joe Foy, Wilderness Committee National Campaign Director. “I could scarcely think of a more environmentally damaging project than an open pit copper mine smack in the middle of the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve. If the Selkirk Metals actually believes this open pit mine project will ever see the light of day then I think they must have rocks in their head,” said Foy “Opposition to this project will be local, national, global and massive,” he predicted. Andy Miller, Staff Scientist at the Wilderness Committee, who has been studying the Catface mine proposal for over a year, echoed Foy’s concerns. “The Catface copper deposit has been known to exist for 50 years. The reason it was never developed is that it is economically marginal because the copper is of such low quality (0.37% copper), so diffuse, and so deep under-ground (up to 350 metres). The only way this proposed open pit mine would be economically feasible is if it is built on a huge scale. The most current recommendations include the development of a new port for container ships, several giant open pit mines, new dams and lakes to contain the most toxic waste products, kilometres of potentially toxic dust-generating conveyor belts, diesel generator power station(s), and roads. The proponent is even considering dumping the waste rock in the ocean, said Miller.” “If this mine proceeds, said Miller, the side of Catface Mountain visible from Ahousaht and Tofino will be reduced to a pile of rubble. The deposit is 1000 feet deep, and 99.7% of the mined rock will be dumped on site as polluting waste.” Copper mines similar to that proposed at Catface have horrible environmental records. The Copper Mines at Butte Montana, for example, are the site of the largest and most expensive toxic waste cleanup in United States history, and cancer rates are off the charts. http://www.wildernesscommittee.org/

7) B.C. government and Lil’wat first nation announced today a land-use agreement encompassing close to 800,000 hectares in the hotly disputed Sea to Sky region. Highlights include the creation of six new conservancies totalling about 39,000 hectares: Callaghan, 100 Lakes Plateau, Upper Soo, upper Birkenhead, Twin Two and Cerise creeks. Conservancies protect biological and culturally important areas and forbid industrial logging, mining, hydro-electric development, new roads and commercial development, but allow for the province and first nation to later agree on “acceptable uses…that would otherwise contravene this agreement.” Duffey Lake Provincial Park, located on Highway 99 midway between Mount Currie and Lillooet, will almost double in size to 4,048 hectares from 2,095 hectares under terms of the agreement. hectares of wildland zones (where mining and commercial recreation and tourism are still allowed) and 47,000 hectares of cultural management areas (managed for cultural values, but remaining within the provincial timber harvesting landbase). Western Canada Wilderness Committee’s Joe Foy, noting that the agreement still falls short of full protection for old-growth dependent species such as the northern spotted owl. The province and the Lil’wat also agreed to: 1) Protect 59 Lil’wat Spirited Ground Areas totalling about 8,850 hectares, which encompass village sites, archaeological sites, spiritual places, gathering areas, campsites and traditional training areas 2) Create new environmentally sensitive areas and old-growth management areas that will address native concerns about logging in rare ecosystems, and those supporting traditional and cultural uses. 3) Provide measures to ensure visual quality management, creation of floodplain plans, and establishment of riparian management areas along the Upper Lillooet River and Lillooet Lake. 4) Offer a lease and license of occupation to the the Lil’wat nation that will facilitate the development of cultural education facilities in Owl Creek. 5) Provide opportunities for the Lil’wat nation to develop commercial recreation ventures in the territory. 6) Continue working together to find a solution for the land-use zones in Ure Creek watershed. The agreement completes the Sea-to-Sky Land and Resource Management Plan and can be viewed here. http://ilmbwww.gov.bc.ca/lup/lrmp/coast/s2s/first_nation_agr.html

8) A Forest Practices Board investigation into the conservation of wildlife habitat and old-growth forest in the Squamish and Chilliwack forest districts has shown government’s measures to protect biodiversity face significant challenges. The investigation looked specifically at progress in creating wildlife habitat areas for species at risk, old-growth management areas, and winter range areas for ungulates – mainly deer and goats – in the two forest districts. Both government agencies and forest licensees have spent considerable time and effort on these planning processes. In both forest districts, wildlife habitat and old-growth areas are largely established up to government target levels, although only 60 per cent of the old-growth areas have been legally established. Ungulate water ranges have been established in the Squamish Forest District, but not in the Chilliwack Forest District. Goat winter ranges were established last month, but the forest industry and the Ministry of Environment have been unable to agree on where to locate deer winter range, despite having started the process in 2001 has occurred in some of the candidate areas, reducing available options. “What concerns the board is that the process of designating conservation areas is a slow and cumbersome process in comparison with the more rapid decisions that result in granting of cutting permits. Once proposals for critical wildlife habitat have been identified, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that they will remain intact while they are assessed. The result is that valuable wildlife habitat can be logged, reducing options for the future,” said board chair Bruce Fraser. In its report, the board is recommending that the Ministry of Environment designate the deer winter range in the Chilliwack district as soon as possible and that a proposed provincial policy to abandon the legal designation of any additional old-growth management areas be reconsidered. The Forest Practices Board is B.C.’s independent watchdog for sound forest and range practices, reporting its findings and recommendations directly to the public and government. The board: 1) audits forest and range practices on public lands; 2) audits appropriateness of government enforcement; 3) investigates public complaints; 4) undertakes special investigations of current forestry issues; 5) participates in administrative appeals; and 6) makes recommendations for improvement to practices and legislation. http://www.fpb.gov.bc.ca

9) Blasting near the Langford Lake Cave was scheduled to start this morning at 9 am, but instead workers at the controversial interchange project got some time off. A small crowd rallied on the Trans-Canada Highway while seven people occupied the Bear Mountain Interchange site for most of the morning. The action forced authorities to postpone blasting for an hour and a half while police negotiated with trespassing neighbours and local environmentalists. West Shore RCMP arrested one man for “mischief” and released him without charge. The rest were threatened with arrest and escorted out of the area, and around 11 am, the first explosions rocked the bluffs on the north side of the highway, 200 meters north of Langford Lake Cave. Today’s delay likely cost the project thousands of dollars in extra wages for the blasting crew and security. A recent news report quoted Langford Mayor Stew Young as saying that even though the municipality hasn’t set up the funding for the interchange, developers had kicked in around $200,000. That’s why the work is going forward without financing. It remains to be seen how much work they can do for $200,000, especially if people keep interfering. It also makes us wonder – if the developers are so flush with cash, why don’t they fund the project themselves? Why is Langford acting as the bagman and making taxpayers liable for this colossal mistake? The Canadian legal system contains little or no protection for endangered species and First Nations heritage. Sites used for spiritual practice for generations, like the Langford Lake Cave, are routinely bulldozed and blacktopped. In British Columbia, an individual or group needs to prove legal standing in order to take a rogue developer – or a rogue municipality – to court. We have not ruled out a last-minute miracle to save the cave and the wetlands and stop the d estruction. The environmental damage has left a huge scar on the landscape and much worse is planned. Even if Langford and Bear Mountain “win” this battle, they will lose in the long run. Tree-huggers have long memories, and folks in Langford never forget. The developers and the City Council will be saddled with this concrete monstrosity forever. Their legacy is an albatross that will hang around Len Barrie and Stew Young’s neck for the rest of their lives. ef.vancouver@gmail.com

Washington:

10) Fighting corporations often has been at the crux of my life’s work, protecting old-growth forests, protesting the World Trade Organization, promoting 55 mph state speed limits, saving eel grass, mobilizing action on global warming and extolling the virtues of limiting our consumerism to reduce environmental impacts. Yet it was clear upon closer scrutiny that this particular project’s environmental benefits outweighed the alternatives of increased trucking, or mining British Columbia shorelines to supply our sand and gravel. Barging dramatically reduces fuel use and carbon emissions, frees up crowded highways and makes roads safer. A barge replaces 600 trucks-with-trailers; a single ship over 2,000 trucks-with-trailers. All barges would go under Hood Canal Bridge’s broad eastern span, originally designed to barge ammunition to Bangor. Sand and gravel is a benign cargo, and beach restoration groups are eager to barge sand from a source capable of repairing damaged beaches, eelgrass beds and near-shore salmon habitats throughout Puget Sound and Hood Canal. Fred Hill’s pledge of 500,000 tons of sand and gravel will kick-start several beach nourishment programs. So instead of fighting the project, I enlisted. For five years, I’ve watched wealthy waterfront homeowners, parading as environmentalists, appeal to politicians, intimidate government officials and exploit the review process. None are more culpable than the guest authors of “Project Threatens Hood Canal” (April 2). Retirees Larry Mayes and John Fabian arrived from Bellevue and the East Coast, built their waterfront homes and set out to protect their living room window views under the guise of saving Hood Canal, which their shoreline septic systems pollute. http://www.wharfedaleobserver.co.uk/news/newsroundup/display.var.2186019.0.pool_residents_stump
ed_by_tree_felling.php

Oregon:

11) Conservation groups said they will be back in federal court to again challenge the rule, which was tossed out by a federal judge last year on procedural grounds. They argue that the Forest Service refuses to analyze the potential for causing harm to the environment after taking out a long-standing system of protections for fish and wildlife habitat. “This is the same clown in different shoes,” said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, which represents some of the plaintiffs in the case. A 1982 forest planning rule laid out how the Forest Service would implement the National Forest Management Act, the 1976 law that governs management of the national forests. Under that rule, each national forest must adopt a new long-term management plan every 10 to 15 years. That rule set up a system of protecting so-called indicator species for various habitats. The most famous of those is the northern spotted owl and old growth forest. That led to court-ordered cutbacks in logging in the Northwest by more than 80 percent in 1994 to protect habitat for the spotted owl and salmon. Similar logging cutbacks rippled across the nation. This latest revision gets rid of that system, replacing it with provisions for a variety of types of fish and wildlife habitats across the landscape. Collins said it gives forest supervisors more latitude, while freeing up personnel to do on-the-ground projects rather than preparing planning documents, but still holds them to standards that protect fish and wildlife while giving the public a say in decisions. The timber industry agrees. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004338999_fillerlogging10m.html

California:

12) Assembly Bill 2926 (Lieber) faces its first vote today in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. A.B. 2926 seeks to limit the destructive logging practice known as clearcutting by reducing the size of clearcuts from 40 acres to 10 acres in size. The bill also prohibits clearcutting of forest adjacent to a previously clearcut area until 50% crown cover has been attained – current law allows for these adjacent ‘buffer’ zones to be clearcut after 5 years. A.B. 2926 is strongly opposed by the timber industry.
http://yubanet.com/california/Vote-On-Bill-To-Limit-Destructive-Logging-Practice-Known-As-Cle
arcutting.php

13) Scientists said the hydrocarbons produced by trees and plants may be contributing to smog. Valley trees and plants produce 360 tons of hydrocarbons — the key component in smog — every day. That’s four times more than the hydrocarbons released from cars and trucks. Scientists still aren’t sure what effect nature’s hydrocarbons have in creating the bad air, but need the answer to help meet smog cleanup targets over the next 20 years. http://www.kcra.com/news/15873896/detail.html

14) Rainforest Action Network (RAN) issued a letter to Weyerhaeuser CEO Steve Rogel today calling on him to follow the lead of Boise Inc. and suspend his company’s contract to buy wood from the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwest Ontario. In February, Boise Inc. notified logging company AbitibiBowater that it would cease purchasing wood fiber from Grassy Narrows until the community’s consent could be obtained. The Canadian Parliament voted this week to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which prohibits industrial activity on Indigenous lands without the native communities’ free, prior and informed consent. Grassy Narrows community members have been peacefully protesting clear-cut logging on their land since 2002; last fall, the province of Ontario appointed former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci to negotiate an end to the dispute. Since then, community members allege that clear-cut logging on their traditional territory has intensified. “Both Boise and the Canadian Parliament seem to recognize that logging in the face of unanimous community opposition is wrong,” said Brant Olson, director of RAN’s Old Growth Campaign. “Steve Rogel has not only failed to acknowledge the human and environmental toll of his company’s presence in Grassy Narrows, he’s now profiting from ramped up logging there – likely because he knows that the era of unwanted clear-cut logging on Indigenous lands in Canada is coming to an end.” http://sanfrancisco.dbusinessnews.com/shownews.php?newsid=155850&type_news=latest

15) Simultaneous press events will take place in Redding, near SPI headquarters, and in San Francisco. As an alarm is sounded around the globe in recognition of the speed at which human-caused activities are bringing climate crisis closer, a lumbering giant in California has not progressed from the last century, raking in profits while the situation literally heats up. Deforestation is the second most significant cause of greenhouse gas emissions causing climate instability, second only to fossil fuel emissions. ForestEthic’s report compiled dramatic data from California Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFIRE), the regulatory agency that oversees private lands logging in California to compare logging methods such as selection logging and clearcutting employed on SPI’s 1.7 million acres. The data is publicly available, but has never been compiled and presented in this way. Figures show that from 1997-2006, SPI filed plans for clearcutting and plantation conversion on nearly a quarter of a million acres. “SPI’s clearcutting, and conversion to plantations, has been known for a long time,” said Susan Robinson, a Forest Watch board member. “However, this report shows for the first time the magnitude of this destruction and their undeniable impact on global warming.” ForestEthics is calling on consumers, contractors and building professionals to steer clear of SPI products until their policies are reformed. ForestEthics has released the names of over 525 businesses that have signed a letter calling on SPI to end its destructive clearcutting, including many California-based wood products businesses (available upon request). ForestEthics also points out that becoming certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) would be a step toward corporate responsibility for the largest land owner in California, and the second largest private landowner in the U.S. http://thepinetree.net/index.php?module=announce&ANN_user_op=view&ANN_id=6316

16) On March 25, 2008 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) came out with a new set of California red-legged frog guidelines (and new guidelines for the San Francisco Garter Snake-someone figured out the snake probably travels through forests to get from one pond to the next). The frog is currently federally listed as threatened and on the state list of species of special concern. This document was modified from a February 1, 2008 version in responses to CALFIRE’s comments on clarity and consistency in terminology. NOW, however, these guidelines are once again undergoing revision, BECAUSE the timber industry decided they could not live with the new regulations. Discussions are underway in Sacramento. I don’t know if the environmental community has been invited to participate in these talks and I seriously doubt the frogs have been asked if they can live with the proposed changes from industry. I did learn that DFG has met with the Service and provided their comments, which would help clarify the requirements and strengthen them. Apparently, the Service finally realized that the timber industry was not being held to the same standard as other industries (i.e., developers) and decided to raise the bar. — Jodi Frediani, Director, Central Coast Forest Watch — JodiFredi@aol.com

17) If you’ve been following these Updates, you will remember that the Bohemian Club (the male movers and shakers of this country) have an NTMP in the CALFIRE pipeline on their Grove retreat property along the Russian River. it appears that the Club owns more than the 2500 acre timberland limit for NTMP landowners. NAIL (stopped the SWJC NTMP on acreage) folks and yours truly have been working with the Boho Grove NTMP opposition folks and advising them on the acreage issue. Apparently comments submitted into the plan have given the Bohos pause. They have contacted their friends at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation about a conservation easement on 160 acres of Grove redwood forest. This would ostensibly make the land unavailable for harvest and, according to some, no-longer meeting the statute definition of timberland. This would allow the Club to proceed with the NTMP. The Sierra Club, including the Redwood Chapter and Carl Pope, has written letters to the Elk Foundation making it clear that the easement would be on acreage already protected by the Club from logging (an old growth stand and cabins) and would simply allow for harvesting of the remainder under the poorly constructed NTMP. The Elk folks don’t seem to think that is a problem for them. However, the lawyer for the NTMP opposition, Paul Carroll, recently sent the Elk Foundation a letter claiming that the conservation easement as proposed would be in violation of California State Law. With enough public outcry against this shady tactic, it could be stopped. Let the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation hear the following from you: 1) By accepting this easement they are risking the trees not saving them. Current fire science has proven that cutting down the big trees in a forest poses a greater chance of large scale forest fire. If the foundation accepts this easement they are allowing that kind of logging to go on and that kind of fire risk to occur.2) Do they want to be known as a foundation that allowed a private men’s club to get around proper environmental impact studies just to make money off of trees? This will cause The Elk Foundation a great deal of negative publicity and affect future donorship. Toll-free: 1(800) CALL ELK (225-5355) — Jodi Frediani, Director, Central Coast Forest Watch — JodiFredi@aol.com

18) Two new harvest plans: 1) A problematic 60+ acre THP was submitted by RPF Gary Paul along Bear Creek, but was returned and has not resurfaced. This plan has an existing road in the stream, or the stream is in the road. In either case, it will be part of the access road for the timber, though I believe the plan proposes realigning the instream portion of the road. Good thinking. Another ½-1 mile of new ‘temporary’ road is proposed to be constructed up onto the ridgetop. That is, a section of road is proposed to be created simply to get out the timber. What makes anyone think the abandoned road will be maintained any better than the instream segment is anybody’s guess. Will wait to see if the plan gets re-submitted. In response to my verbal concerns about this plan, Rich Sampson suggested that the only alternative would be helicopter yarding, but that after the St. Francis investigation, Columbia Helicopters had decided they would no longer do helicopter yarding in Santa Cruz County. However, another source shared with me that Columbia had been found to do similarly poor quality work (trees cross-felled over streams, and over-cutting in the riparian corridor on several other plans elsewhere in California. Maybe they won’t be doing anymore helicopter logging work in our fair state. Instead they will focus on moving cooling units into high-rise buildings. 2) Retree Properties has submitted a plan to harvest on four of their parcels (APNs 80-121-17, 19, 21 and 63-021-35) in the San Vicente Creek Watershed in Bonny Doon. The 60 acre plan was accepted for filing on April 3, 2008 as THP 1-08-045SCR. From a cursory review, it looks fairly mild with no winter operations proposed and a 30′ no-cut riparian buffer along the Class II stream. Also, the plan intends to keep stump height below 10″. Looks to me like a ‘beauty’ cut before development. Says it will generate 100 log loads per year and will haul out onto Pine Flat and Bonny Doon Road. — Jodi Frediani, Director, Central Coast Forest Watch — JodiFredi@aol.com

Montana:

19) He was in a Seattle shipyard, making his way north to the Alaskan fishing fields where he earns a living. “I’ve put in 65 months on the most deadly and dangerous waters up there, just to pay for this place,” he said of his Montana home. And so when his wife called, “all crying and upset,” to say a big yellow dozer was tipping his trees, McKay turned right around and hauled it home, work or no work. “I couldn’t be in Alaska while my wife was back here in a Hatfield and McCoy situation,” he explained. If the McKays were the McCoys, then the Hatfields were a resort-community development known as the Wilderness Club, and the two were surely locked in a modern-day land feud. On Friday, April 4, the feud ended when a jury ordered Wilderness Club to pay $1.35 million to Craig McKay and his wife, Lisa. It is, he said, quite literally more money than he can actually imagine. “But this case isn’t over,” said attorney Sean Frampton, who represented Wilderness Club in the dispute. “We absolutely will be appealing.” Wilderness Club is a sprawling and somewhat controversial gated golf community, expensive and exclusive and emerging from forest and farm land just west of Eureka. For somewhere between a quarter- and a half-million dollars, the Canadian developers behind the project will sell you an empty lot and the promise of luxury life alongside the links. The Wilderness Club comes with a vast timbered lodge, a clubhouse, spa, pools, tennis courts, all with a concierge to book your restaurant reservations or to organize a day of fishing, skiing, boating, whatever your taste. “The Montana land rush is on!” cried the developers, after having sold $18 million in real estate in their first five hours on the market. It is, according to their online brochure, an “authentic northwest Montana getaway.” “Making the most of the glorious backdrop of three mountain ranges,” the brochure promises, “the homesites of Wilderness Club are oriented to glean the best views of the Rockies, tree-lined fairways and Wilderness Lake. Homes are tucked back into each site, balancing the unhindered views with privacy.” http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/14/news/local/news02.txt

20) Sen. Jon Tester today told the U.S. Forest Service to stop hatching a secret, closed-door plan that could alter the landscape of Western Montana without local input. Tester demanded that the agency let Montanans in on the decision-making process before moving ahead with the controversial agreement, which would grant the Plum Creek Timber Company more leeway to cross Forest Service land—even for non-logging purposes. Several commissioners in Western Montana counties worry the agreement will allow Plum Creek to sell its forestry land for housing development. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest private land owner, owns 1.3 million acres of land in Montana. The company has announced plans to sell up to 2.5 million acres of its land nationwide for residential and business development. “Montana’s local leaders deserve a seat at the table when major decisions are made about their communities’ future,” Tester said. “No Washington agency should make deals in secret about Montana without our say so.” Tester is concerned that selling off and developing timber land will prevent Montana hunters from accessing some of the state’s best hunting grounds. Tester also noted that as more timber lands are taken out of production, logging and timber mill jobs are lost. “The conversion of this land will lead to increased housing density in the wildland urban interface, leaving local and county governments with higher firefighting costs, fragmented habitat and increased road maintenance and infrastructure costs,” Tester wrote to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey in a letter sent today. In his letter to Rey, Tester called on the Forest Service to immediately release its draft agreement. He also asked for an opportunity to allow Montana and local governments a chance to weigh in. And he asked for a review of its cost within six months. http://www.clarkforkchronicle.com/article.php/20080411155932984

Colorado:

21) Senate Bill 221 would allow the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority to issue bonds on behalf of water providers, acting effectively as a bank giving a loan. That money — Romer is hoping for as much as $20 million a year — would be used to remove trees killed by beetles, clear out undergrowth, thin forests and do other fire-mitigation practices in the participating providers’ watersheds. The providers would pay back that money to the authority by most likely charging a fee to their customers. Denver Water manager Chips Barry said in a meeting this week with The Denver Post’s editorial board that Denver Water is looking at charging such a “watershed maintenance fee.” Denver Water has spent tens of millions of dollars cleaning out debris in its reservoirs that was washed down after 2002’s Hayman fire and other major wildfires. “We think we need to get out in front of this,” he said. Denver Water Board president Tom Gougeon said discussions of a possible fee are only conceptual and said Denver Water is deciding how best to help the forests that cradle its water. “How you pay isn’t the first question,” he said. “The first question is, ‘What would be effective?’ ” Because multiple water providers often share the same watershed and could also bear the burden of protecting it, the bill is appealing to small providers that would be able to do only so much to promote forest health on their own, said Gary Severson, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. “This is very creative,” said Severson, whose organization includes 28 local governments and water providers in the northern and central mountains. “It’s brand new. We haven’t seen anything like this.” Currently, the state has limited resources to deal with looming forest health issues such as the pine beetle epidemic, which has already killed more than a million acres of lodgepole pine in the state. Sen. Dan Gibbs, a Silverthorne Democrat and wildland firefighter who is one of SB 221’s sponsors, said the state spends about $1 million a year right now removing the beetle-kill trees that could fuel a major forest fire. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8884349

New Mexico:

22) The politics of nature are at play in forests and nations, as well as within contested memories and variably shaded skin. By tracing the connections between these realms, we can learn how difference becomes racialized in cultural politics. This is Jake Kosek’s argument in Understories, an ethnography of the virulent struggles that have raged over the use and control of forests in northern New Mexico. Aligning himself primarily with a Hispano community in Truchas, New Mexico, while also reaching out to local forestry officials and environmentalists, Kosek conducted ethnographic fieldwork and archival study into the conflict that has pitted advocates of conservation, scientific management, and local subsistence use against one other. Kosek found that race was a powerful but frequently avoided factor in the dispute, and rather than shying away from race as a politically sensitive subject, he takes this as a motivation for writing. The book represents a successful example of engaged anthropology, since the analysis is both ethnographically innovative and politically useful to those he studies. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1840812

Ohio:

23) More than 3,200 acres in Vinton County are on track to become Ohio’s 21st state forest. Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials said Wednesday that they plan to acquire the privately owned Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest with money from a pollution settlement with Columbus-based American Electric Power and the Conservation Fund, an environmental group based in Arlington, Va. The land could cost nearly $5 million. “It’s arguably the most valuable forest land in Ohio,” said Andy Ware, assistant director of the agency’s Forestry Division. “There’s more than 50 years of research going on there.” University and other research projects managed by the U.S. Forest Service would continue, Ware said. They include long-term studies of how forests recover from logging and controlled fires. The research was done with the permission of the Mead Paper Co., which in 2005 sold the Vinton Furnace and 12,650 acres of forest surrounding it. The land has changed hands several times since then. In 2006, the state spent $6.3 million to buy the preservation rights for the 12,650 acres of surrounding forest. The new agreement keeps the land under the ownership of the Forestland Group, which manages it for logging. The agreement also opens the land to campers and hunters and ensures it never will be developed. Ware said the state couldn’t buy the Vinton Furnace tract if it weren’t for the AEP settlement. In December, the power company agreed to spend $6.6 billion to reduce pollution at 16 coal-burning power plants to end a federal air-pollution lawsuit. Of that amount, $10 million was to be spent on forest preservation. Documents filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday say AEP has proposed spending $1.85 million to help buy the Vinton Furnace forest. The Conservation Fund would tap as much as $3 million in matching grants and private money to complete the purchase and transfer ownership to the state. Pat Hemlepp, an AEP spokesman, said the U.S. EPA must approve the Vinton Furnace project proposal (as well as six others in West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky) before the money is spent. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1207816448277960.xml&coll=2

New Hampshire:

24) As one who has been active within the forest community, I believe there is a crisis in New Hampshire’s working forest. When I talk about the working forest community, I am thinking about the forest landowners, tree farmers, maple producers, loggers, truckers, foresters, chip and saw mills, wood-to-energy plants and all the employees, as well as all those businesses that support our forest industry, such as the equipment manufacturers, sales and part suppliers, banks and fuel suppliers. The state Department of Resources and Economic Development (DRED) shows annual revenue of $1.2 billion just in the forest products industry. This number more than doubles when you factor in the dollar impact our forests have on recreation, hunting and fishing, tourism and other positive benefits to our state. This is one of the many reasons New Hampshire was just ranked as the most livable state in America. Let’s review some facts: In 2006-07 the Fraser pulp mill in Berlin closed forever. Three months ago, the Wausau paper mill in Groveton closed, and a few weeks ago cutbacks were announced at the Fraser paper mill in Gorham. Hundreds of mill workers lost their jobs. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. The men and women working in the forest, supplying the nearly 1.3 million tons of wood fiber to these mills, have also taken a hit. Some try to hang on; others are gone. With fewer loggers working, there are fewer logs available, which has put an additional strain on our saw mills, and if that isn’t enough, the so-called environmental groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service and have all but stopped logging in the White Mountain National Forest, which many of our mills count on. We have lost important low-grade markets and now we are losing our infrastructure. What’s happening is not unlike what happened to the New Hampshire shoe industry decades ago, except the collapse of our forest industry and its connection to the many forest benefits would have a much greater impact on our state’s economy. Everyone in the forest food chain is being squeezed to the point of no return. http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Tom+Thomson%3A+The+New+Hampshire+working+fores
t+is+in+crisis&articleId=473eed64-6b30-4efe-ad77-344c14622657

Maryland:

25) Gov. Martin O’Malley plans to announce today that his administration will prohibit the construction of wind turbines in Maryland’s state forests and parks, according to administration sources. The decision ends a hotly protested proposal by a Pennsylvania company to clear about 400 mountaintop acres in two Western Maryland state forests to build 100 wind turbines. O’Malley is scheduled to announce his decision this morning atop a scenic mountain overlook in Savage River State Forest that would have been altered by 40-story windmills. U.S. Wind Force’s proposal to lease state land in the Savage River and Potomac state forests was strongly opposed by Garrett County elected officials and citizens, who feared the industrialization of Western Maryland’s scenic views. “Wind turbines on state land would have absolutely destroyed for generations to come the pristine nature of our state forests,” said John N. Bambacus, a former mayor of Frostburg and Republican state senator who led the fight against the turbines. “It’s great news, and it’s truly an indication that the governor is listening to the people up here.”
The idea of leasing state forests for turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty was also opposed by some environmentalists, who did not want private construction on public land. But climate change activists argued that the state should allow the turbines in order to help fight global warming. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.wind12apr12,0,3583807.story

Massachusetts:

26) A new website launched recently reveals the destruction of Massachusetts public forests by clear-cutting, even though they have been FSC certified. Clearcutting MA Public Lands shows a series of aerial photographs taken by a local activist. The more than half million acres of Massachusetts Public Forests, including the Savoy Forest, were certified by Scientific Certification Systems Inc, in August 2004. SCS evidently had difficulty in massaging the state public bodies through the certification process: of the 17 ‘conditions’ which SCS had attached to the certificate between 2002, when assessment began, and 2004, only two conditions had been ‘closed out’ by the time the certificate was issued. SCS’s Public Summary Report of the certificate reveals that, at the time of certificaton, the various public bodies responsible for managing forestlands had no landscape level forest management plan, very few actual forest management plans, no means of identifying or delimiting areas of High Conservation Value Forest, had no credible calculations of annual allowable harvest, and had failed to identify, designate, or map representative ecological reserves. However, in a pattern that has been identified with numerous other SCS certifications, the largest of the Mass. forest managers, the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), responsible for 285,000 acres of forest, managed to just scrape past SCS’s ‘pass-mark’ score of 80/100: for eight of the nine applicable FSC Principles, DEM scored only 85 or less. Contravening FSC’s current rules – which require compliance with all Principles, SCS awarded the certificate on the basis only that the state public forest land agencies “while having observed deficiencies, are on balance substantively compliant with each of the relevant FSC principles” (emphasis added). http://www.fsc-watch.org/archives/2008/04/13/Clear-cutting%20of%20Massachusetts%20public%20fore
sts

Pennsylvania:

27) The roughly 2,500 acres of forest Glatfelter Pulp Wood Co. sold to nonprofit group The Conservation Fund last month for $12.5 million is nestled deep in western Adams County, connected to the 85,000-acre state forest as well as Strawberry Hill Nature Preserve. Although the land has a reputation for its forest, trees are not the only form of wildlife that has put down roots on the land. Trout, bobcats and turkeys have settled in the area as well. And while the land is not yet open to the public, its clear waters and wildlife likely one day will be open to visitors. Todd McNew, Pennsylvania representative for The Conservation Fund, led a tour of the former Glatfelter property for officials from conservation groups and members of the Hamiltonban Township Board of Supervisors. The Conservation Fund plans to turn the property over to the state when enough money is raised to reimburse the fund or the purchase. Wandering the property reveals the intricacies of a tract once considered Glatfelter’s “tree farm No. 1.” Some patches have neatly arranged rows where the Spring Grove-based paper company once planted trees, while other sections show signs of long-ago cuttings. The headwaters of Toms Creek and Middle Creek also can be found there. Once the land becomes state property and opens to the public, fishermen likely will be able to cast their lines into the waters. The tour stopped at several streams, which could be home to trout and quench the thirst of wild animals. “(These) streams are about as pristine as you are going to find in Pennsylvania,” Sampsell said. http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_8908867?source=most_viewed

Northeast US:

28) So now, the forests in the Northeast are 50-80 years old, with a high diversity of tree species that may be 20-25 meters tall. Many of these species (sugar maple, red oak, black cherry) are highly desirable for furniture, flooring, or other household uses, have now reached a merchantable size, and are owned by rural residents who often need a few thousand dollars to pay real estate taxes, send their kid to college, or buy single-malt scotch. If you contact your state forester, and every state has one assigned to your geographic area, he or she will come to your property armed with good information to help you decide what to do, depending on YOUR goals for your woodland. It is perfectly fine to do absolutely nothing. Just let nature take its course. They are born, they live, and they die. And as a conservation biologist, I am strongly supportive of anyone who adopts this management approach. I happen to heat my home with firewood, so I thin my 50-year old forest, leaving good specimens of a variety of species to enjoy the additional sunlight for more rapid growth. Some of my trees are now large enough that I have them rough-cut into lumber for future building projects. (I will discuss this more in future posts). But the old-time foresters, who have mostly retired from state and federal agencies, were all about timber, timber, and only timber. Their recommendations were easy to define: remove all species of trees of low economic value, remove all specimens that are rotten, stunted, or crooked, and harvest the biggest and best for commercial sale. Of course, these “poor” specimens are home to woodpeckers, nuthatches, wood-boring insects, lichens, and dozens of other species that comprise our forests’ biodiversity. Management of all natural resources has undergone an evolution, maybe even a revolution during the past few decades. The young forester who led us through the forest today is an example of that new generation. This is encouraging to a student of the natural world. The earth’s biota is under tremendous pressure by people everywhere, but our collective improvement in the “wisdom” behind her management is a reason for optimism. http://www.moli.com/p/blog/v2SClk9ci7BRvd61P90aD5MQ../read/v2bi03yInTDdTcOTauRkhskDYu3Zd1NQDnZ
9SrzcX1ypsGy2scC7TtFg../NTk4Ng==

Kentucky:

29) Frankfort — State agricultural officials are asking people to stop stripping bark off slippery elm trees after hundreds of trees were damaged last year. The slippery elm bark can be used a safe and effective treatment for sore throat or respiratory symptoms such as a cough. The bark can also be used for decorative applications, such as parts of a rocking chair or banister. However, stripping large portions of the bark can kill the tree, forestry experts warn. Smaller strips one or two inches wide are better because the tree can recover. Officials said about 100 trees on individual homes and many more on federal property in the Daniel Boone National Forest were damaged due to bark stripping. http://www.kentucky.com/471/story/375806.html

Arkansas:

30) “Even after five hours of standing in a couple inches of water, trees start shutting down photosynthesis,” said Dr. Tamara Walkingstick, an extension forestry specialist and associate professor for the division of agriculture. Trees that can’t tolerate flooding include hickories, southern red oak, dogwoods, shortleaf pines and eastern red buds. Spring is a time when trees are especially vulnerable. “This is their big time when they are expending a lot of energy blooming and putting out leaves,” Walkingstick says. “The key problem is that the flooding rapidly depletes the oxygen in the soil,” she says. “They have to have oxygen in the soil for root respiration.” When the oxygen is shut out, anaerobic processes begin. The foul smell is the first clue the process has started. “That produces toxins in the soil and the absorbing roots begin to die,” Walkingstick says. “Everything shuts down.” Some species handle the water better. “They’re adapted to the flooding,” she says. “They’ve evolved in wet ecosystems.” These include cypress, willows, sweet gums, green ash and maples. Other species that are somewhat tolerant of flooding include some hackberries, oaks, loblolly pines, birches and elms. Some trees can tolerate 30 to 80 days of root submergence. In addition to species, how the tree copes with the water depends on age, health and how leafed out the trees are. http://nwanews.com/nwat/Living/64138/

USA:

31) A Senate proposal to establish a new forest landscape restoration program has received the blessing of the Bush administration, which claims the proposal would enhance the government’s existing efforts to protect forest health. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said S. 2593 would work well in concert with the agency’s current efforts and the ecosystem services demonstration projects included in the president’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal. “Each would help different groups find their common interests and leverage resources to get work done,” Kimbell told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday. The bill establishes a collaborative and science-based forest landscape restoration program that would prioritize and fund ecological restoration treatments, which Kimbell said would help land managers prioritize landscape-level restoration work. Sponsors claim the bill would lead to an overall reduction of wildfire management costs by focusing funding on collaborative, sustainable projects that would offer the greatest protections against devastating wildfires. “As wildfire activity and suppression costs have grown dramatically, as the effects of global warming are posing an ever-greater threat to forest and watershed health, and as the economy struggles, the time is right for this approach,” said Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). Federal land managers would work with state and local authorities to identify parcels of at least 50,000 acres comprised mostly of National Forest System lands that need active ecosystem restoration. The projects must include several stakeholders representing multiple interests. The bill would also require that the projects be in proximity to current or future wood-processing facilities that would be able to use the collected biomass. Those forest restoration byproducts would offset the treatment costs. — Written by ERIC BONTRAGER, Land Letter

32) Teitelbaum, a solid man in his 50s with climbing-honed forearms, stands, feet rooted to the spot, meditating on the personalities of trees. “Douglas firs, they’re really nice to get all the way to the top,” he says. “You can feel it swaying. And cottonwoods have their own personality, solid, even at the top.” He smiles as he describes his namesake. “Ponderosas have a lot of character, great smell.” He leans in, scratches the bark and inhales the faint vanilla aroma. Today, he’s climbing “Gus Otis,” a ponderosa pine with a base three feet in diameter. The tree is more than 90 feet high, big enough to inspire vertigo, but it’s dwarfed by Methuselah, an 1,800-year-old California redwood in San Mateo County. Methuselah is 14 feet in diameter at the base and about as tall as a 20-story building. It’s a celebrity in the tree-climbing world: Several YouTube videos have shown folks climbing it. The sport of tree climbing originated in Georgia three decades ago, but only recently became popular in the West. Now, climbing schools are popping up all over the region. Still, tree climbing remains under most people’s radar. But if the sport grows at even a fraction of the rate of its older cousins – mountain biking and rock-climbing – forests could soon bend under the weight of thousands of eager climbers. It’s a prospect that some find alarming, because just one climber’s boot can disturb the delicate ecology of an individual tree. If rock-climbing and mountain biking are any indication, conflicts will sooner or later arise between environmental purists and these new outdoor-fun junkies. The National Park Service has already banned tree climbing, and various cities have put their public trees off-limits. http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17635&utm_source=newsletter1&utm_medium=email

33) A report released today by The Wilderness Society emphasizes the enormous carbon reserves held by forests in the contiguous states – roughly equivalent to more than 20 years of current United States greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and other sources. Across the U.S., public and protected forests generally store the most carbon. The analysis also cautions that existing carbon measurement tools have significant limitations due to gaps in the underlying data: old growth forests, in particular, may be undervalued. “This analysis shows that public forest land, and especially reserved lands, typically store more carbon per acre than private forests,” noted Ann Ingerson, an Economic Research Associate at The Wilderness Society and co-author of the new study. “While it is evident that protecting and restoring forests promotes carbon storage, some common carbon measurement tools use data designed primarily to track timber supplies and may not fully reflect important stores like dead and down wood and soil carbon.” On average, public forest lands such as National Forests and State Forests appear to hold more carbon per acre than private lands. Also, reserved forest lands, where timber harvest is prohibited such as in Wilderness, National Parks, and National Monuments, typically hold more carbon per acre than non-reserved lands. Existing measurement tools are based on models of intensively managed forests and may underestimate carbon stores on older or unmanaged forests; while also not accounting for old growth forests often being more resilient in the face of climate change. Distribution of carbon varies across the landscape, but, in general, the amount of carbon stored above ground in trees – what we can measure with the most confidence – is less than half the total. “Mature and old growth forests can store or sequester extraordinary amounts of carbon, such as in the forests of the Pacific Northwest,” said Dr. Jerry F. Franklin, a Professor with the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources. “An analogy would be that older forests can be viewed as having very large capital reserves, whereas younger forests have high cash flow, or carbon uptake, but contain very little capital, such as sequestered carbon. There’s also a high ‘transaction cost’ when you ‘liquidate’ this stored carbon by harvesting the forest. The harvested sites are significant carbon sources leaking carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for many years to decades following the harvest.” http://newsblaze.com/story/20080409102719nnnn.np/newsblaze/NEWSWIRE/NewsBlaze-Wire.html – http://www.wilderness.org/NewsRoom/Release/Analysis-Shows-American-Forests-Contain-Enormous-Ca
rbon-Reserves.cfm

Canada:

34) OTTAWA – Larry Innes, Executive Director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, joined other conservationists in celebrating today’s announcement of plans to develop a new national park in the headwaters of the Nahanni. Innes congratulated the Government of Canada, the people of Tulita and the territorial government for reaching this important milestone towards Canada’s newest National Park. “We celebrate the importance of what the Tulita Dene and Metis communities have undertaken with the governments here today,” said Innes. “The proposal to establish the Naats’ihch’oh National Park Reserve is truly a gift for future generations of Canadians and indeed, people around the world.” Today’s announcement grants interim protection for 7600 km2 (1.8 million acres) in the headwaters of the Nahanni River, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The proposed new National Park will be called Naats’ihch’oh, which means “stands like a porcupine” in the local Dene language. The new National Park will be larger than Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies or the Grand Canyon National Park in the United States, and encompasses spectacular wilderness and important habitat for the endangered mountain caribou. Since January 2007, the federal governments, working with First Nations, the territorial government and local stakeholders through the NWT Protected Areas Strategy and regional land use planning initiatives, have designated 40 million acres for conservation in the Northwest Territories. “I think that future generations will come to consider the Nahanni National Park and the future Naats’ihch’oh National Park in much the same way as we now look at Banff and Jasper.” Communities within the Sahtu region, together with the territorial and federal governments are also considering additional lands to complete a conservation network in the region through both the Northwest Territories Protected Areas Strategy and through the Sahtu Land Use Plan. The goal is to balance conservation with proposed development in the region. http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2008/week15/Tuesday/0408027.html