089OEC’s This Week in Trees

This week we have 39 news items from: British Columbia, Oregon, California, Montana, Arizona, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Indiana, Vermont, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Maine, Canada, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Liberia, Peru, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia.

British Columbia:

1) Spirit Bear supporters will be disappointed to learn that the new Spirit Bear Conservancy will have second-rate protection compared to a Class A park. Yesterday the BC government introduced legislation that will amend the Park Act to create a new “Conservancy” designation for the new coastal protected areas. The government claims it was created to better recognize First Nations’ rights and cultural needs. However, the conservancies will allow run-of-the-river hydro developments, so called because they do not flood the area but remove water from the stream and pipe it to a generator, returning it back to the streambed. Other conservancies may allow logging roads built to access timber outside the protected area. The government material clearly states that the conservancies will allow ways of making money from protected areas that are not allowed in Class A parks. This would mean private luxury lodge development, sale of hydro power and accommodating timber interests with logging roads. “VWW would have supported a new designation to accommodate co-management and traditional uses of First Nations,” says Anne Sherrod, a director of Valhalla Wilderness Watch. “However, hydro development, tourism lodges and logging roads are hardly traditional uses. None of these concessions was necessary to recognize First Nations’ rights.” Run-of-the-river hydro and tourism lodges have a reputation of being ‘green’ developments, but they are not ecologically safe enough for protected areas. Lodges with electricity and hot water are capable of ruining a park by attracting large crowds of tourists. These tourists will need access by roads or helicopters, they will create sewage and garbage problems, they will destroy wilderness and drive away sensitive wildlife such as grizzly bears, and they will want such things as restaurants, swimming pools, and tennis courts. Some lodges now cater to helicopter bear viewing and heli-fishing that already are driving bears away from critical feeding habitats. In addition, the hydro developments themselves will require access roads to build and maintain them, weirs, dams and excavation for a pipeline to a generator. http://www.vws.org

Oregon:

2) GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Two rare salamanders that live in rocky patches within old growth forests along the Klamath River don’t need Endangered Species Act protection because existing state and federal protections are adequate to maintain their habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday. But environmentalists who sought listings for the Siskiyou Mountains salamander and Scotts Bar salamander said they would challenge the decision in court. They said moves are under way to remove the protections cited by Fish and Wildlife, and the agency itself is embarking on a study to see just how much harm logging does to the salamanders’ habitat. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned in 2004 for Endangered Species Act protection for the two salamanders. The petition cited logging, global warming and inadequate federal protection. The center sued to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to make a preliminary finding on listing them as threatened or endangered. Center biologist Noah Greenwald said from Portland that the California Department of Fish and Game is considering eliminating the threatened species listing for the Siskiyou salamander, and a timber company is planning to log some timber sales that include Scotts Bar salamander sites on the Klamath National Forest. Moreover, he said, the Forest Service has embarked on a process to eliminate the Survey and Manage provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. “This denial comes from an administration that’s provided protection to the fewest number of wildlife species of any administration since the Endangered Species Act was passed,” Greenwald said. “We’re going to sue.” http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/3819703.html

3) From eco-tourism to mycotech to EcostryTM, a global green rush is underway. Please join us for Beyond Logging, a community forum series that will explore new forest-based business opportunities for the Illinois River Valley. If you’re feeling like we need to move in a new direction, we invite you to come learn about emerging alternatives for local economic development. BEYOND LOGGING: Local Forest Wealth In response to the unusual size and permanence of current local timber sales, it is time for us to come together and consider options for more a diverse and restorative local economic model already in successful development in communities around the world. We invite you to join us for very short presentations followed by panel Q&A session. Thursday, 11 May 2006 6:30 – 8:30 pm Cave Junction County Building (102 S Redwood Hwy)

4) Led by support from the timber industry, Ron Saxton has raised more money than Gov. Ted Kulongoski or any of the other candidates for Oregon governor. Forest products executives and companies have provided one of every five dollars given to Saxton’s campaign. The Portland attorney raised $1.67 million through the end of March as he seeks to win the Republican nomination that eluded him in 2002. Ray Wilkeson, a lobbyist for the Oregon Forest Industries Council, says Saxton appears to have more support from the industry than all of the other candidates combined. “I think the issue is getting someone who is electable,” said Allyn Ford, president and CEO of Roseburg Forest Products, which has given $40,000 to Saxton. With $1 million in his campaign account as of March 30, Saxton is using the money to air frequent TV and radio ads in his May 16 primary race against Republicans Kevin Mannix and Jason Atkinson. He and the other candidates will file one more report next week on their campaign finances before the election. Ballots are mailed to voters starting Friday. By comparison, Mannix has raised $1.33 million and Atkinson $271,261. Kulongoski has raised $1.26 million, with his two Democratic challengers far behind. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1146106535275580.xml&coll=7

5) A new tug of war is about to erupt over the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests because a 2001 strategy will not allow as much logging in the Coast Range forests as timber companies and coastal counties counted on. The strategy was sold to the public five years ago as a balanced approach that would provide for wildlife while also turning out plenty of logs. But early projections turned out to be inflated. Foresters discovered they could not cut so many trees if the forests are also to foster a mix of wildlife habitat. A thorough review completed last month by the Oregon Department of Forestry verified the shortfall. Coastal counties that receive millions of dollars in logging revenue are pushing for more intensive cutting that more closely would follow timber industry lands, where trees are planted and felled in more rapid cycles. It would eat away habitat for wildlife that use big, older trees. “The status quo is not acceptable,” said Tim Josi, a Tillamook County commissioner. “We’re financially strapped here in Tillamook.” The Oregon Board of Forestry, which oversees state forests, now faces a volatile choice: Stick with the 2001 strategy even if lower logging leaves counties short of cash, or promote more logging by relaxing or ending wildlife measures. “It’s the perfect microcosm of the issue facing the region,” said Guido Rahr of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland, which sees the Tillamook region as a crucial stronghold for healthy salmon. “The issue is what kind of a landscape we want for our children.” State lawmakers tried to mandate more logging, while activist groups pursued a ballot measure to reserve habitat for wildlife, water and other needs. The Forestry Department temporarily upped logging to satisfy the Legislature, while the ballot measure failed. Counties with state forestlands will ask the board to set logging levels within 10 percent of the maximum allowed under the state Forest Practices Act, the bottom line for logging on private lands, Josi said. The 10 percent margin would allow for reductions in logging to meet environmental needs, he said. Counties realize state forests have a higher obligation for environmental protection than private lands, he said. But the added logging would mean dropping many wildlife protections that now exceed the Forest Practices Act. Trees would be cut on a shorter cycle that gradually would remove taller and older trees, state forest officials said. http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1146108312313920.xml?oregonian?lcfp&coll=7&thispage=3

California:

6) About 200 gathered at the Veterans Memorial Building to hear the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board staff’s rationale for permits that would slash Pacific Lumber Co. logging in the watersheds. Most of those in attendance were Palco employees, but also on hand were a bevy of scientists, lawyers, watershed residents and environmentalists. The board itself first heard from members of the public, including Susan Davis with the Rio Dell-Scotia Chamber of Commerce, who said much of the area’s business depends on the company. ”We need to keep these guys here,” Davis said, “we need to keep Palco here.” Palco claims that the reductions could cost the company $15 million a year, and would lead to the layoffs of 150 employees, along with harm to contractors and the general economy. Others, including one former board member, said the degraded watersheds need a break. ”Do your job,” said Bev Wasson. “Fulfill the need of water quality in these watersheds.” Until 2004, the California Department of Forestry had allowed Palco to cut on 500 acres in Freshwater and 600 acres in Elk River. Intense wrangling over the causes of increasingly frequent flooding and sedimentation over years has led to the most recent attempt by the water board to curtail logging, although the permits say nuisance flooding won’t be solved by the reductions. Last summer, the board staff recommended that logging be cut to 144 acres per year in Freshwater and 318 acres in Elk River. http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3749383

Montana:

7) Two conservation groups sued two federal agencies on Monday, seeking to stop a planned logging project near Big Timber that they say would affect important fish and wildlife habitat without effectively reducing wildfire risk. The Main Boulder project calls for removing trees and reducing other wildfire fuels on roughly 2,500 acres on the Gallatin National Forest in southern Montana, the federal lawsuit filed in Missoula by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council contends. More than 7 miles of temporary roads could be built also, the lawsuit claims. The lawsuit names as defendents the regional forest supervisor, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Michael Garrity, the alliance’s executive director, said in a statement that the Forest Service ignored the advice of agency experts to limit logging to areas around houses and church camps in the area. “Instead, the Gallatin National Forest proposed to log 2,500 acres in a futile attempt to fireproof the Main Boulder river canyon,” Garrity said. Garrity claimed the project also would release “dangerous” levels of herbicides and sediment into the Boulder River. The groups are asking that the project be stopped until a number of federal laws and regulations are complied with. http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/04/24/news/state/38-forest-plan.txt

8) MISSOULA – Today a lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Missoula by Friends of the Bitterroot, Native Forest Network and the Ecology Center to protect the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, wildlife habitat, watersheds, soils and public process as related to the Bitterroot National Forest’s Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project, the first Healthy Forest Restoration Act project in Montana. “We tried for the past 18-months to work with Supervisor Bull to implement an effective community fuel reduction project up the East Fork. Our proposal – which was favored by 98% of the 13,000 public comments received on this project – would have reduced fuels on 1,600 acres of national forest land, pumped $1 million into the local economy and provided 45 local jobs. Unfortunately, this common sense plan was rejected by Supervisor Bull,” stated Koehler. “Our primary concern and goal is to protect the soil, watersheds, fish and wildlife, especially old-growth wildlife habitat. Excessive damage to these resources would harm the public good, and would cut short future forest productivity and timber harvest. We believe that the goal of effective community fire protection can be accomplished without undue, illegal harm to public resources, and we offered a plan that would have done that,” stated Miller. “The attempt by Supervisor Bull to cover-up public knowledge of excessive soil damage in the project area by altering the best-available scientific data and by purging project file documents related to soils is a blatant attempt to white-wash this damaging proposal and cannot go unchallenged,” explained Campbell. http://www.nativeforest.org/middle_east_fork/lawsuit_release.htm

9) In a summary judgment Tuesday, a Missoula federal judge rejected three Bush administration-era regulations that for three years have shielded U.S. Forest Service projects from public scrutiny and appeals. Ruling on a lawsuit filed by several like minded conservation groups against the Forest Service, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a nationwide injunction against the regulations, declaring them unlawful and calling them “invalid and contrary to the ARA (1992 Forest Service Decisionmaking & Appeals Reform Act).” That statute requires the undersecretary of Agriculture, Mark Rey, and the chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, to establish and maintain a public notice and comment process for any national forest projects moving forward. But according to the 2003 lawsuit, brought by the Wilderness Society, American Wildlands and Pacific Rivers Council, the government was skirting and subverting the public comment process by exploiting legal loopholes. “It was a closed-door, secret process where the Forest Service was essentially thumbing its nose at the public,” said Doug Honnold, an attorney who represented the conservationists in the case. In his order, Molloy bolstered a legal precedent by reversing three regulations previously invalidated by a federal court in California. One of those regulations required that members of the public submit “substantive comment” prior to a Forest Service project, or else lose the right to challenge that project. But according to Honnold, the “substantive
comment” requirement was a “serious problem,” and members of the public often wouldn’t know whether a project threatened their interests until the deadline for redress had passed. Molloy’s decision immediately replaces the illegal rule with another statute that governed the Forest Service appeals process for nearly a decade – from 1993 until the Bush administration revised it in 2003. “Public lands are a big part of why a lot of us live in Montana,” he added. “Pulling the public out of those decisions I think is undemocratic.” http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/04/26/news/local/news04.txt

Arizona:

10) Susan Lang asked forest officials to conduct the tour and invited some neighbors and friends. She was concerned about how many trees the contractor was cutting next to her Loba cabin where she writes books. “I’m concerned with the trees I love being killed,” Lang said. “I understand Susan’s pain,” Rawlings said. “When you walk somewhere every day, you know every bush.” Lang was especially upset that the logging company pushed over an oak tree that was more than a century old. That was a rare mistake, Fox said. The oak stood next to a log skid trail, and a piece of the swing arm that pulls logs along the trail broke, causing it to swing too wide. The contract requires the logging company to reseed the trail and do other restoration work, Fox said. “Time will tell” if the project was a good one, said Lang, who concluded that she felt better after the tour. Nina Perlmutter, chair of the philosophy and religious studies department at Yavapai College, said she had mixed feelings. “I believe in thinning the forest,” Perlmutter said. “But this looks way more thinned than other areas and I don’t know if that’s appropriate.” Her husband Tom Brodersen, a Prescott College librarian, said it’s disturbing to see what the forest looks like during a timber sale. “In the long term, it’s a good thing, but in the meantime, it’s shocking,” he said. http://prescottdailycourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=39519&TM=27147.27

11) New competition from foreign paper makers, a recession at the turn of the century and new technology — such as e-mail and online advertising that have tamped down demand for paper — have hurt an overbuilt industry throughout the U.S., said John Mechem, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Assn. in Washington. Nationally, 95 paper mills have closed and 123,000 jobs have been eliminated since 2000, he said. Since the late 1990s, Wisconsin has lost more than 17,000 jobs, or 30% of the workforce, at paper mills, pulp mills and converting operations, and five mills have closed or are in the process of closing, according to the Neenah-based Wisconsin Paper Council, an industry organization representing 25 paper companies with factories in the state. Ratzlaff said he had been aware of that trend but had seen it as a positive for him and the Park Falls mill. “You were always hoping that was enhancing your ability to stay open,” he said. “Many of those that have shut down were competitors for this mill.” Patrick Schillinger, president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, said more job cutting was likely. The lost jobs — some of the highest-paying manufacturing careers in Wisconsin — are gone forever, he said. “You will probably see more consolidation or mergers within the industry,” he said. According to Schillinger, the number of paper- and cardboard-making jobs in Wisconsin peaked at 54,300 in July 1999 before plunging to 36,800 at the beginning of this year. The job losses, in part, occurred as a once mostly regional industry faced new competition and lower prices from paper makers in China and South America, industry experts say. Printers can buy paper from China that is cheaper than what is available at a local mill, Schillinger said. For some products, prices have fallen back to 1996 levels just to compete, he said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-paper25apr25,1,70062.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

Texas:

12) DALLAS – Environmentalists and religious groups will try to nudge Kimberly-Clark Corp. to use less virgin timber and more recycled paper in its tissues and paper towels. The groups will offer a resolution at Kimberly-Clark’s shareholder meeting Thursday calling on the company to report by Nov. 1 on whether it could phase out the use of fiber from old-growth Canadian forests that environmentalists say are threatened by clear-cutting operations. Greenpeace estimates that Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers, gets 20 to 30 percent of its pulp from boreal forests in Canada. Pamela Wellner, a Greenpeace official working on the shareholder resolution, said the company should instead use more recycled fiber. “The company keeps saying all Americans want is whiter and softer tissue,” Wellner said, “but once they learn there is destruction to the forests, they will use recycled products.” Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council commissioned a poll by a Gallup subsidiary to bolster its claim that consumers would pay more for products that use recycled fiber. Kimberly-Clark’s directors unanimously recommended that shareholders reject the Greenpeace-backed resolution. Less than 30 percent of Kimberly-Clark’s fiber comes from recycling, the company said in its proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/14434879.htm

Wyoming:

13) “Factoryville lost about 50 century-old sugar maples all at once,” said Ratchford, Factoryville Shade Tree Commission chairman. “The impact was noticeable immediately. People hadn’t understood the value of those trees to their properties.” Removing trees does more than thin the community forest canopy, said Pitkus. “Our wildlife needs these trees,” she said. The Baltimore orioles, thrush and grackles that once visited the borough have left as the community forest has been opened up to their predators. People have become disconnected from nature, said Pitkus. They may not want to be bothered picking up twigs and raking leaves, and don’t realize the value of trees in catching stormwater runoff, cooling an area and raising property values. “We have to get over that – trees give us so much in return,” said Pitkus. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and pollutants, provide winter food for wildlife and act as windbreaks. One mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen in one season as 10 people inhale in a year. A tree’s leaves deflect rain from hitting the ground all at once, helping to control runoff. http://www.newage-examiner.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16536389&BRD=2310&PAG=461&dept_id=487403&rfi=6

Wisconsin:

14) Last year, the Environmental Law & Policy Center won three federal lawsuits which required the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider their plans to cut thousands of acres of timber in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Now the Forest Service released their proposed, revised plan to do exactly the same thing! The Chequamegon-Nicolet was recently identified as one of the “10 most endangered national forests” in the nation. It is one of the most heavily-logged national forests in the Eastern region (which stretches from Minnesota to Maine). At the cutting rate employed over the last 10 years, every single log-able acre would be cut in 45 years. The harmful impacts of such extensive logging on waterways, habitat and related natural resources and conservation goals are significant. Please send an email to the U.S. Forest Service to let them know how disappointed you are that they have ignored the federal court. Tell the Forest Service that you value the North Woods and want Wisconsin’s natural heritage protected for future generations. http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/WisconsinsNorthWoods1_06 to send a letter.

Indiana:

15) BRIDGETON – Tulip poplar trees from a state forest will provide some of the lumber to rebuild a covered bridge an arsonist destroyed last year. A logging crew from the C.C. Cook & Son Lumber Co. of Reelsville is cutting 126 of the 60-year old trees from Greene-Sullivan State Forest and hauling them to Bridgeton, Steve Siscoe, property manager for the forest, said Tuesday. Kyle Hupfer, director of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, agreed to donate trees for the Parke County bridge, Siscoe said. “We’ve had some wet weather, so it took a while to get them out,” said Siscoe, who marked the ones to be cut in February. “If the weather cooperates, we’ll have another load to haul up there today (Wednesday).” Cook is donating all manpower and equipment, he told the Tribune-Star of Terre Haute. The 245-foot-long bridge, erected in 1868, was considered one of the most scenic of the dozens of wooden spans across western Indiana. It was one of 31 wooden bridges Parke County officials have built an annual fall festival around. On April 28, a fire reduced the 137-year-old bridge to burned timbers that collapsed into Raccoon Creek about 15 miles northeast of Terre Haute. Prosecutors later charged a twice-convicted arsonist in the fire. Within weeks of the fire, a plan was in the works to rebuild the bridge with donated cash, services and materials. The project is expected to cost between $1.2 million and $1.5 million and begin in June. The tulip poplars, planted in areas previously used for strip mining, represent a fraction of the 9,000 trees in the forest, Siscoe said. He expects the job to be finished in three to five days depending upon the weather. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/local/14433880.htm

Vermont:

16) JEFFERSONVILLE — Sitting in his son’s sugarhouse, Rex Marsh, 71, can recall winters so cold that no one in northern Vermont ever thought of tapping a sugar maple before town meeting day on the first Tuesday of March. The winter snow routinely drifted 6 feet deep. Every sluggish step was in snowshoes. Even if the trees thawed, the sap would freeze in the bucket, bursting its metal seams. “I’ve been doing this since I was big enough to carry a bucket,” Marsh said. “Tapping in January? Never. Never. Never.” For the last two years, however, the Marshes have tapped their maples in January, the earliest they can recall in the family’s five generations of sugar making. By mid-April ? usually their busiest time ? Marsh and his son Rick, 46, had boiled the last of their maple sap into syrup and were shutting down their oil-fired evaporator for the season. Nestled in a grove of 9,000 maples among the sugarbush foothills of Mt. Mansfield, the Marshes’ clapboard-and-concrete sugarhouse is an unassuming outpost on the frontier of climate change. By analyzing decades of records kept by regional maple sugar producers, climate researchers are finding clear evidence here of what Rex Marsh can feel in his bones.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-sci-season23apr23,1,7071326.story?coll=la-news-environment

Massachusetts:

17) The trees, located on the northeast and southwest portions of the 852-acre park, will be cleared in two cuts within the next year, said David A. Richard, an Amherst-based management forester with the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.”The way we’re harvesting, the larger trees would serve as a seed source (for new trees),” Richard said. “It’s a fairly common method.” But the plans have prompted concern from a group of residents calling itself Friends of Robinson State Park. Made up primarily of neighbors abutting the park, the group met with Richard last week and will hold an information session tonight at 7 p.m. in the city library. Steven R. Rossi, a member of the group who lives on George St., said the group doesn’t want to see any trees in the park cut. “Our position on it is that Mother Nature should be able to take its due course,” he said, adding that he has concerns over the way Chicopee State Park was cleared last year. Richard and Vanessa A. Gulati, a state spokeswoman, said the forest at the park suffers in part because it has not been thinned in decades, leaving older trees planted in the 1930s susceptible to a variety of ailments. The red pine in the forest are being affected by shoestring fungus, a common organism in forest soils that affects older, weaker trees, causing something commonly known as “root rot,” they said. “Healthy vigorous trees are able to fend it off, but when trees become suppressed or stressed, they become more susceptible,” Richard said. The exact number of trees to be harvested has yet to be determined, but hundreds of trees in areas near Maynard Street and the park’s main entrance on North Street are already marked blue and yellow in anticipation of the cut. Blue signifies trees that will be cut, while yellow symbolizes trees that need to be cut to make way for access roads needed to bring in logging equipment, Richard said. The trees scheduled to be cut for the roads include a number of trees which are not red pine, he said. http://www.masslive.com/metrowest/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1146124129290910.xml&coll=1

Washington DC:

18) Antoinette Campbell was justifiably shocked when city workers mistakenly chainsawed a 60-foot oak tree last May that shaded the eastern facade of her Washington, D.C., home. “It was a personal something I had with that tree,” says Ms. Campbell. Besides the emotional distress, the error had an unexpected consequence: She noticed her air conditioner began running a couple hours earlier each morning. Conventional wisdom is that just one shady tree can save a homeowner $80 a year in energy costs, but Campbell claims her bills skyrocketed once the oak disappeared – up to $120 more some months. Yes, humble street trees cool the air, reduce pollution, and absorb storm-water runoff, say forestry experts. But the benefits aren’t only ecological, they say. Property values are 7 percent to 25 percent higher for houses surrounded by trees. Consumers spend up to 13 percent more at shops near green landscapes. One study even suggests patients who can see trees out their windows are hospitalized, on average, 8 percent fewer days. Events around the country for Friday’s National Arbor Day will highlight the fact that citizens and civic leaders are finally investing in the so-called “urban tree canopy.” http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0426/p20s01-sten.html

Maine:

19) High anticipation and concerns about security have led Plum Creek
Timber Co. executives to agree to stop talking about when they will
submit formal development plans for the Moosehead Lake region. A state official asked the company to keep its schedule private in light of an unrelated protest at the State House this month and a rash of vandalism aimed at Plum Creek employees last fall. The impending filing with Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission has fueled publicity and controversy, unlike a more typical application that is filed first and then presented and debated. Jim Lehner, Plum Creek’s general manager for the Northeast, said the plan will be submitted in the next month, without any more advance notice or news conferences. “We’re not going to make an announcement,” he said. The company has held two press conferences in recent weeks to tout parts of its plans. The formal application to the state has been delayed, however, while details are finalized and the documents are printed, Lehner said. “I asked Plum Creek to tone it down a little,” said Catherine Carroll, LURC’s director. “I’d rather they just bring it in like any other project . . . (The actual filing) deserves a press release, and it should come from LURC, not Plum Creek.” Carroll said that while the company has a right to hold press conferences and promote its plan, Capitol Security officials have discussed the risk of a disruptive protest. http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/060426plumcreek.shtml

Canada:

20) Talk about “people unclear on the concept!” Somebody in the offices of the regional municipality of Haut-Saint-Laurent took it upon himself, or herself, to approve the cutting down of 460 trees within the Lac St. Francois National Wildlife Area. Why? Reports from the region indicate that the trees had to go to make room for an access road to let workers get at some beaver dams, to dynamite them. Call us cranky, but none of this seems to us to be quite in keeping with the concept of a National Wildlife Area.Why, logical readers will be asking, blow up beaver dams within a wildlife refuge, anyway? Surely the whole idea of these places is to let nature be nature. The Canadian Wildlife Service is still investigating, but it seems fairly clear, published reports say, that dams built by the industrious beavers had flooded some farmland adjacent to the reserve. Beavers don’t have the vote, you see, and farmers with crops to plant do. If those initial reports have the situation right, then someone needs to pay for this. In theory somebody who commits this sort of outrage could get. $1 million in fines – even some jail time. That level of punishment would obviously be excessive, but all the same, this is a serious business. Cutting down 460 trees in a wildlife area – seven of them were butternuts, an endangered species – deserves much more than a slap on the wrist. http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=b82372f2-9e59-464c-8260-38327a40e8ef

21) Right now 20 Greenpeace activists have set up a blockade of Kimberly-Clark’s factory in Canada. Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex and destroyer of ancient forests, wipes out 3 million tons of virgin forests every year to make disposable tissue. That’s why we’re stopping all shipments of ancient forest products in or out of the factory, and we’ve hung a large banner that reads, “Kimberly-Clark & Kleenex: Stop destroying the Boreal Forest.” We’re sending Kimberly Clark a strong message: now it’s YOUR turn. Act Now >> We’ve obtained the direct phone number to Kimberly-Clark CEO Thomas Falk’s office, and we want you to call him and deliver this message: “Stop destroying ancient forests and start using recycled content in your tissue products.” Call 972-281-1308 Meanwhile, Greenpeace campaigners are in Texas today for Kimberly-Clark’s annual shareholders meeting, and they’ll be personally delivering the same message to them. We’ve been campaigning against Kimberly Clark for more than a year now, and we’re making a real difference. More than 26,000 people have written to Kimberly-Clark already. We’ve taken the campaign to a new level today. Please, take a moment to make the call to CEO Thomas Falk, and demand that Kimberly-Clark stop destroying ancient forests now. http://kleercut.net/en/

Ireland:

22) Most farmers who plant land will only plant one or maybe two tree crops in their lifetime. That’s not much of a learning curve. However, there are many forestry professionals who will help with the work and there is also plenty of good quality advice and training for farmers. There are a number of options as to how to go about establishing a forest. The option that best suits you will have to take into account whether you have the time to get directly involved in the work or indeed whether you have the interest and knowledge to take on the management of the plantation yourself. All landowners considering planting should get advice on the implications of planting land. Teagasc advisers will discuss the implications of planting on other schemes such as REPS, the Early Retirement Scheme and the Single Farm Payment. Once the decision to plant has been taken, the next step is to organise the grant application and planting operations. http://www.carlow-nationalist.ie/news/story.asp?j=27871

Zimbabwe:

23) Stand on the top of Heroes’ Acre, a monument to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle on a hill outside Harare, and you notice two things. Halfway down the slope dozens of fresh tombs of polished black granite are being prepared for the octogenarians who led the country to independence in 1980 and remain in power. The plot beside Sally Mugabe, Robert Mugabe’s first wife, is vacant. Shift your gaze to the plain that stretches towards the city and you see a small forest which swiftly thins and gives way to row after row of tree stumps. The people of Harare have started hacking down wood for fuel. Shift your gaze to the plain that stretches towards the city and you see a small forest which swiftly thins and gives way to row after row of tree stumps. The people of Harare have started hacking down wood for fuel. It is a stark demonstration of the economic catastrophe closing in on the ageing autocratic rulers. There may be no more trees by the time Mr Mugabe, 82, is buried. On the surface, many things seem normal. There is food in the shops, traffic-lights work, children attend school. Compared with other African capitals, Harare is calm and orderly. Agriculture and industry are in ruins, unemployment is pushing 80% and the official inflation rate of 913% is widely deemed a gross underestimate. The economy has shrunk by 50% in the past six years – the fastest contraction anywhere outside a war zone. http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,1759843,00.html

Kenya:

24) More than 200 families living as squatters in the Gwasi hills of Suba District have been given three weeks to leave or be forced out. The notice follows the hills’ gazettement as a government forest reserve in August. District forest officer Sammy Nderitu said the squatters had been given until May 1, from April 11, after they defied past attempts to have them leave. Also affected by the notice are two primary schools. The gazettement follows a spirited campaign by a Kisumu NGO, Osienala (Friends of Lake Victoria), which petitioned the Environment ministry to gazette the forest. Conservationists and local leaders also complained that the failure to classify the forest had frustrated conservation efforts, resulting in massive human encroachment and destruction of indigenous trees. More than half of the 12,140-hectare forest has been destroyed by charcoal burners, peasant farmers and traditional healers harvesting herbs. The destruction has adversely affected the area’s rainfall pattern and caused massive soil erosion and siltation of rivers draining into Lake Victoria, says Osienala scientist Peter Mireri. “The depletion of resources on the Gwasi hills has had serious consequences,” he told the Nation in an interview. “Water flow from springs has been reduced, deep gullies have developed due to erosion, there has been a loss of biodiversity and crop yields have dwindled.” Osienala has, in collaboration with NGO African Endangered Wildlife, started a conservation project in the hills. “We have formed village committees to help us to stop the destruction of the forest cover,” Mr Mireri said. “Through these committees, squatters living in the hills are being encouraged to look for land elsewhere.” http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=71769

Liberia:

25) The forests of the West African nation of Liberia cover almost 12 million acres, and are home to nearly half of Africa’s mammal species — including the region’s largest forest-elephant population. But these forests, and the communities that call them home, have been ravaged by 14 years of brutal civil war. Liberian President Charles Taylor used timber to fund much of that violence, entering into illegal logging contracts with a favored company. Private militias hired by the logging industry exacerbated the country’s already enormous suffering, in some cases destroying entire villages. Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor, the director of the Sustainable Development Institute in Liberia, risked his life to collect evidence of falsified logging records, illegal logging practices, and arms smuggling associated with the timber industry. He gave this evidence to the United Nations Security Council, which imposed an international ban on the export of Liberian timber — part of a series of trade sanctions still in place. Though Siakor was forced to flee the country in 2003, he returned in 2004, after Taylor’s ouster, and is working with the country’s new leadership on national timber policy reform. Liberia’s current president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has cancelled all of the country’s timber concessions, and has said that new contracts will not be issued until reforms are in place. Siakor, 36, was awarded one of six 2006 Goldman Environmental Prizes at a ceremony in San Francisco on April 24. “When you experience the level of poverty, the level of humiliation, the widespread human-rights abuses that are being perpetrated against these people, it makes it really difficult to turn back, in spite of the risks associated with trying to bring the issue up. So we saw it as a calling, in a way. We felt we had to stand up and say, “This isn’t right, this has to stop. …Two of the logging barons that were very involved with Charles Taylor and the timber-for-arms trade are in jail now. One is standing trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity, and for violating international law and the United Nations arms embargo on Liberia. Charles Taylor himself is personally behind bars, and will be standing trial in the next couple of months. All the timber companies have lost their concessions — as we speak, no timber company has any claim whatsoever to an inch of Liberian territory. When I look back, I think that all of these things, in many different ways, carry their own significance for me.”” http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/04/24/nijhuis-siakor/

Peru:

26) The boat ride down southeastern Peru’s Urubamba River cuts through mountains and sweltering jungle, passing wooden shacks of colonos — mixed race and grindingly poor Peruvians lured to the jungle with promises of free land — and nativos, tribes recently brought into contact with the modern world. The area is a biological gold mine, home to endemic and rare species, and some of the world’s last uncontacted humans. It’s also home to an asset that may become the Amazonian rainforest’s biggest threat: the mamma jamma of South America’s natural-gas lodes. Big Oil has been pushing its pipelines into the Amazon rainforest frontier since the 1960s. Nowadays, prompted by high oil prices and militarization of the Middle East’s fossil fuels, the eastern slope of the Andes and the Amazonian jungle lowlands are being stripped, sawed, plowed, and piped into a global barrel of politically cheap fossil fuels. From Colombia to Ecuador, Brazil to Peru, themes are common: sloppy extractive industries tainting key ecosystems, polluting water, killing plants and animals, and causing strange human illnesses. The Camisea Natural Gas Project is the king of all extraction projects in this region, a billion-dollar operation that taps jungle gas here in the Lower Urubamba, then pipes it over the Andes and down to the Peruvian coast. The pipeline has ruptured five times in the first 18 months of its operation. The country’s prime minister, who reportedly has ties to Hunt Oil, has blamed at least one failure on local saboteurs. And now concerned residents, activists, and workers are trying to shed light on the project before things get even worse. http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/04/26/hearn/index.html?source=daily

China:

27) Forestry officials in East China’s Fujian Province have established a special task force to fight illegal logging in Zhangping. This follows the destruction of hundreds of hectares of virgin forest in the district, located in the west of Fujian. More than 170 hectares of virgin forest had been lost because of the unlawful logging in less than two years in Guxi Village, Yongfu Town in Zhangping. Forestry officials say many hills in the district have become “deserted”. A recent CCTV report exposing the situation instigated forestry officials to take action. Fujian Provincial Forestry Bureau officials have established a special team to investigate the illegal logging activities in the city. Officials say the team will investigate local forestry farms and wood processing factories. Zhangping has abundant forest resources with a forest coverage rate of 76.8 per cent. The city is regarded as one of the most important forestry producing regions in southern China. Forestry officials say illegal logging had been “rampant” since 2003. They said a total of 700 hectares of forest around Guxi Village had been illegally logged, including 170 hectares of 100-year-old virgin forest. “The water resources have directly been affected. All the water has gone without the trees,” said a local villager. “How could our next generations live relying on the deserted mountains?” “The trees planted in 1970s had been mature enough to be cut down for wood processing. Our farm has also planned to replant new trees in the area,” Xie Yongkai, vice-director with Zhangping Municipal Forestry Bureau, earlier told CCTV. However, logging of more than 20 hectares each time is prohibited according to the nation’s Regulations for Management of Forest Cut and Regeneration. Another reason for the widespread illegal logging is because the forest is located on the boundary area of Yongfu Town and neighbouring Nanjing County. Local villagers had thought a good way to prevent the trees from illegal logging was by hammering long iron nails around the tree bark so that illegal loggers could not cut into the trees. “But our voluntary efforts are too limited to protect all the trees,” said a villager. http://english.people.com.cn/200604/25/eng20060425_260979.html

Vietnam:
28) Located more than 1,000 meters above sea level, Mang Deng is home to such hill tribes as the Sedan, H’re, M’Nong and Cadong. In the language of the Sedan, Mang Deng means “plane”. Mang Deng is often referred to as “the Dalat of Kontum” because the forests there are as dense and nature is as abundant as around the Central Highlands resort town of Dalat. The average temperature also hovers around 20 degrees Celsius like in Dalat. Chu Thi Phen, who has lived in Mang Deng for more than 20 years, said the commune is typical of the highlands region because of its many rare animals, its lush vegetation and its impressive waterfalls. Mang Deng still has some areas into that hardly anyone has ever set foot. When we went there, we took a stroll through the commune’s ancient pine tree forest. It felt really good to walk on the shining, soft carpet of thousands of fallen pine leaves underneath the trees, whose tops towered high above us, and to breathe in the forest’s freshness. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/travel/2006/04/564843/

Malaysia:

29) “The lawyers that I have consulted say I have a case against Utusan Malaysia,” he said after chairing the State executive council meeting here yesterday. Adnan said he took strong exception to the newspaper’s statement which he claimed made it out that he was blackmailing the Prime Minister. “I did not say that we would cut all the trees if we did not get the money (from Federal Government). “People will think that I’m stupid and do not know the relationship between the State and Federal Governments.” On Saturday, Adnan was quoted in the daily as saying the State Government would continue felling trees if it did not receive an annual grant. The grant, between RM150 million and RM200 million, was to compensate the State Government for its efforts to preserve forest reserves. Adnan fired a salvo against the newspaper during the State Assembly meeting on Monday without mentioning its name. On Tuesday, he said the newspaper had misquoted him on the matter. But yesterday, he named the newspaper report as being the reason for his annoyance. Adnan said it was wrong of the newspaper to interpret his statement and put words into his mouth. “We must have credibility. Why were there several versions of the same statement? Why did only Utusan make the mistake while other newspapers did not?” he asked. http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Thursday/National/20060427083140/Article/index_html

Solomon Islands:

30) The Solomon Islands has seen a massive increase in unsustainable logging since the country came under the de-facto control of Australia with the deployment of the RAMSI Mission in July 2003. In 2003 AusAID commissioned and paid for an assessment of the National Forest Resource as part of its Solomon Islands Forest Management Project. The Assessment, published in October 2003, acknowledged the important role that forests played in the everyday lives of local people. Not only did the forests provide fuel wood for cooking and building materials they were an important wildlife habitat, provided a range of non-wood products such as food and medicine and were important in protecting the quality of both land and marine water. The disturbing scenes in the Solomon Islands of civil unrest and calamitous violence against property are an example of what can happen when logging industry corruption is allowed to continue unchallenged. When the Australian led RAMSI Mission was sent to the Solomon Islands in July 2003 it was specifically warned that the logging industry was out of control – logging at twice the sustainable rate and fuelling political corruption. But in the last three years the level of logging has tripled while Government revenues remained largely static – clear evidence of unbridled political corruption that has now spilled over into violence. In November 2003 Sharan Burrow, the President of the Amalgamated Timber and Construction Union in Australia, wrote to the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, warning him about the potentially catastrophic situation developing in the Solomon Islands forestry sector. Mr Downer was told that with the recent increase in logging activity, commercial forest resources could be wiped out by 2010 and that AusAID was promoting even greater levels of log export by allowing logging companies to ignore their domestic processing obligations. He was also informed of the endemic corruption and warned of the stresses that current policies would create ‘on a rapidly growing population’ and the danger of ‘permanent impoverishment, dependency and insecurity’. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00334.htm

Indonesia:

31) Borneo– GENEVA, April 27 (Reuters) – Plants thought to help treat or cure cancer, AIDS and malaria have been found in the rainforests of Borneo, a report from the Swiss-based global conservation group WWF said on Thursday. But the rapid destruction of trees, much of it by illegal logging to meet growing world demand for timber, could wreck any chance of using these discoveries in the fight against disease, the WWF declared. A promising anti-cancer substance has been found in a Borneo shrub by researchers for an Australian pharmaceutical firm, while a chemical found in latex produced by a tree appears to be effective against the replication of HIV, the report said. In the bark of another species of tree, the researchers discovered a previously unknown substance which in laboratory tests appeared to kill the human malaria parasite, it added.
In all, it said, 422 new plant species had been discovered in Borneo — shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei — in the last 25 years and many others were believed to be there which could have medicinal applications. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26652399.htm

32) Medan, N Sumatra – National Police Chief General Sutanto gave the assurance here Wednesday that those involved in illegal logging activity, including policemen, will not escape legal penalty. Illegal logging had caused the state to lose revenue and destroyed the country`s forests, Gen. Sutanto said at a press conference here on Wednesday. He said Finland which only had 23 million ha of forests was able to earn around Rp550 trillion in revenue from its forests whereas Indonesia which had more than one hundred million hectares of forests could not get much benefit from them. The police were now determined to do their best to root out illegal logging by 2008 by rounding up all illegal loggers in the country and pursue those who had escaped abroad, he said. Sutanto said the police would also tackle the trafficking of humans to Malaysia and Singaore in cooeration with other parties concerned. On Earth Day recently, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asked the nation to immediately save the country`s forests which were currently in severely degraded condition due to illegal logging activity and human encroachment. Of the total 120.35 million hectares, about 59.2 million hectares of the country`s overall forest area of 120.35 million hectares were currently in critical condition, Indonesian Forestry Minister MS Kaban said. Indonesia has the world`s third largest forest area after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal logging is rampant in Indonesia`s forests which are among the most diverse and biologically richest in the world. Indonesia`s biodiversity includes 11 percent of the world`s plant species, 10 percent of the world`s mammal species, and 16 percent of the world`s bird species. The country loses Rp30 trillion (about US$2,8 billion) annually in revenues and taxes due to illegal logging activity. Around 2.8 million hectares of Indonesia`s forest area disappear every year, mainly due to illegal logging activity and forest fires. http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=11749

33) The “Indonesia Menanam” campaign is an activitiy designed to increase people`s awareness and participation in preserving natural resources and in improving the quality of the environment by planting trees and increaseing open and green spaces in urban areas. The program will be launched coinciding with the International Earth Day where the President and the people will conduct mass plantation of 2,000 young trees. On the occasion, a concert will also be held to enliven the regreening program where noted musician and singer Iwan Fals will present a number of songs. The regreening campaign is inspired by the fact that Indonesia`s environmental condition is increasingly damaged. Indonesia`s tropical forests which cover an area of 120.3 million hectares have also caused for concern. In addition, Indonesia`s critical forest and land have also reached 59,5 million hectares. In order to make the program a success, governors, mayors and district heads will be asked to encourage their people to plant trees. http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=11515

New Zealand:

34) “We have been calling for some sort of national trading scheme for a carbon market. Eventually, there could be an environmental services market. “We think there is a way that could be done, and at some stage, some of these values will have to go on the market.” Setting up a way to bring in money from environmental benefits was one of several challenges set by the NZIF at its national conference in Wellington, which ended last weekend. Bradshaw said indigenous and exotic forests supplied many advantages, such as improving soil and water quality, providing corridors for poor-flying birds and preventing erosion on hill country. Forests created a habitat for flora and fauna, stored carbon and could provide a future source for biofuels, she said. “There are a lot of benefits to society that are not recognised.” New Zealand forests certified by the international body, Forestry Stewardship Council, for being sustainably managed are already being rewarded. Bradshaw said these environmental and social credentials made the trees more attractive to some buyers and gave access to international markets. United States investment companies had begun to single out New Zealand plantations because of their environmental attractiveness, she said. “I think what will happen in the future is that we will develop a market for these environmental benefits. You could see some ethical investors paying for some of these environmental benefits. Carbon storage could be one of them.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3651245a3600,00.html

35) Wanganui District Council and the Conservation Department (DoC) were initially united against the logging, which was done by Chris Bergman of Wildlife Properties Ltd in November, 2004. During the preceding 12 months, Mr Bergman bought the logging rights to 200ha Taunoka Conservation Area, in remote country west of Pipiriki. Because it was conservation land, he did not have to apply for a permit to fell 100 gigantic rimu trees there. The timber was worth $2000 a cubic metre and the first cut took at least $1 million worth, with an estimated $10 million still standing and able to be cut until 2010. DoC had previously attempted to buy the logging rights or swap land for them, but none of the offers had been acceptable to Mr Bergman. Wanganui District Council said the cut breached a district plan rule that restricted indigenous forest clearance to 0.5ha a year. He was incredulous that DoC had asked for help and then “backed down” and made a deal with Mr Bergman. The logger has been able to uplift his profits from the frozen account. He would not say how big they were. Half the legal costs of the whole dispute were paid by the Conservation Department, as promised. Mr Laws said council’s lawyer was to have claimed for the remaining $20,000 to $30,000 court costs, which could have been deducted from Mr Bergman’s profits. But something had gone wrong and the costs were not applied for in time. The Environment Court was no longer willing to entertain any application, and a March 6 statement from Judge C J Thompson criticised the council for not being able to make up its corporate mind. The failure to apply for costs had left Mr Laws “incandescent with rage”. Council chief executive David Warburton would be conducting an immediate inquiry into why it happened, he said. http://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3681288&thesection=localnews&thesubse
ction=&thesecondsubsection

Australia:

36) The north coast sawmilling industry has reacted angrily to claims from conservationists that privately-owned, high-conservation forests are not protected from logging. The Nature Conservation Council’s director, Cate Faehrmann, is calling for stringent controls on logging of rainforest and old growth forest on private property. But the managing director of J Notaris and Sons sawmill at South Grafton, Spiro Notaris, says private logging is already tightly regulated. “And we have the Native Vegetation Act which has been passed, and they’ve got to log to certain prescriptions, and in those prescriptions and not allowed to log rainforest and certain old growth forest at any rate,” he said. “So … they’ve already preserved a huge amount and now she’s complaining. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200604/s1624668.htm

37) About 15,000 new insects have been identified in the last four years since the crane was set up in Daintree Rainforest National Park in Queensland. It is the world’s oldest tropical rainforest. The crane has a 55m-long (180ft) jib and allows researchers to survey the canopy suspended in a gondola. It gives them direct access to about 800 trees at any one time. “Tropical forest canopies have been called the last biological frontier – we know very little about what’s going on,” said Nigel Stork, an entomologist at Queensland’s James Cook University. “Yet early studies indicate that there is immense biodiversity, particularly insects and fungi,” he told the BBC World Service’s Discovery programme. “At the same time, it’s also the place where the biosphere meets the atmosphere. These forests are actually playing a very significant role in climate and climate control.” Tropical treetops are thought to be the richest ecosystems on land. They may be home to 40% of all plant and animal species. The numbers of insect species alone may number in the tens of millions. Crucially, the Daintree Rainforest has the same levels of diversity as in Borneo or Peru. This means the results can be extrapolated around the world. Trapping studies have also revealed that, for example, the prehensile-tailed rat, previously thought to be exceptionally rare, is a common canopy inhabitant. Andrew Mitchell, the director of the Global Canopy Programme, told Discovery he wanted to double the number of cranes worldwide from the current nine so that science could better understand how biodiversity interacted with the atmosphere. He said that interest surrounded a group of airborne chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, which were released from plants into the atmosphere. In canopies, this occurs in vast amounts. “New research is suggesting that these chemicals oxidise with sunlight to create condensation nuclei – around which water droplets form,” Dr Mitchell explained. “They call them ‘green ocean clouds’ in the Amazon. The crucial thing is these are low, warm clouds, and they release very gentle rain. “It may be that if we can look at these kinds of functions, we may well be able to ascribe a better value to these forests, because of the enormous power they may have in helping to maintain rainfall patterns.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4947350.stm