Fwd: [this-week-in-trees] 041OEC's This Week in Trees
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Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:33:42 -0800
Subject: [this-week-in-trees] 041OEC'sThis Week in Trees
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Hello again! ;-) This week we have 35 news items from: British
Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Utah, Indiana, New
Hampshire, North Carolina, USA, Canada, Finland, Brazil, Solomon
Islands, Philippines, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Australia
British Columbia:
1) The twin-blade helicopter, a Boeing Vertol 107, had been logging
an Interfor cutblock on South Bentinck Arm, 400 kilometres northwest
of Vancouver, and was returning to a nearby floating camp when it
crashed. Dead are pilots Duncan Ruth, 36, of Victoria, and Clayton
Shearcroft, 26, of Maple Ridge, both of whom died at the scene.The
two deaths add to the forest industry's grim record of fatalities and
serious injuries for the year. The 36 deaths in just over 10 months
compare to 16 in 2004, 26 in 2003, and 31 in 2002. That is a record
that a growing number of loggers say has to be recognized as
unacceptable by workers, industry and the government. "No log is
worth losing a life over," Jim Girvan, executive director of the
Truck Loggers Association, said when he heard of Thursday's
fatalities. "We have got to do something to fix this."
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=21fdab5e-76e3-4efd-b934-9600129c0995
2) Eleven logging contractors met on November 1 with the consultant
working on Valemount's community forest proposal. Local contractor,
Bob Goodell said reaction among the people gathered seemed to be
positive. Asked if he thought the community forest would leave
Valemount taxpayers on the hook, he said that the project would have
to be managed correctly. "If it doesn't make money there is a risk of
that happening. I am in support of this. It has to be managed
properly." He said a community forest would diversify the industry
and could secure more logging jobs in the valley. "It all depends on
the markets; that isn't going to change any time soon," he said. Rick
Publicover, the forestry consultant working for the village on the
community forest proposal, described the get together with logging
contractors as a brain storming session. He said that contractors
were interested in a high level of transparency in all aspects of the
community forest and wanted assurances that actions by the board
would be open to scrutiny. The contractors, by consensus, ranked
their priorities for the community forest's management. The first
priority is to make money, the second, to create local employment,
followed by addressing the beetle issue and fire risks for the
community, managing the community watershed and then assisting other
user groups with the development of recreation and trails.
http://www.robsonvalleytimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=247&Itemid=49
3) Taken as it was from an aerial view, the establishing shot of the
film left no doubt as to how the land was in trouble. It would be the
elders who would try to change the course of this environmental
carnage. Twenty years ago, the Haida First Nation in northwest
British Columbia on the Queen Charlotte Islands (known locally as the
Haida Gwaii) staged a blockade to prevent further logging by outside
companies on its traditional lands. What made this successful
demonstration different was how the community's elders were on the
front lines. The history of this event has been transformed into a
documentary that is making its way through Canadian film festivals
and television networks. ''Athlii Gwaii: The Line at Lyell'' uses raw
footage obtained in 1985, when the demonstrators established their
line that wouldn't be crossed, and mixes in interviews of Haida
participants who reflect on their actions almost two decades later.
After years of observing the dramatic alteration of large swaths of
lands, the Haida had had enough. As a younger man, Richardson and his
comrades were preparing to defend Lyell Island, which is accessible
only by boat or helicopter. While eventually the elders believed this
was their fight, too, the decision to allow young people to stand
guard was a difficult one for the community because the threat of
violence against the loggers loomed in addition to probable arrests
and jail time. While numerous protesters came to Lyell by fishing
boat, many left by air with the police. Underwood vividly recalls
running with her camera to get a shot of the helicopter taking off.
The juxtaposing image with the tree-stripped land was not planned.
''That scene evoked a very cold winter day when the elders were
arrested,'' said Underwood. ''It's only when you look at the footage
later that you saw the camera caught that [the clear-cut mountains]
and that was because I was focused on the helicopter.''
http://indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411879
4) A captive breeding program for the endangered northern spotted owl
is being considered by the provincial government, but
environmentalists say logging restrictions would be more effective.
Without action to protect habitat, the small bird will be extinct in
British Columbia by 2010, leaders of the Western Canada Wilderness
Committee said. Scientists believe about 25 spotted owls remain in
the province, down from about 100 in 1993, compared with 6,100 in the
United States, where the bird's fragile status has resulted in
widespread bans and restrictions on cutting in old-growth forests.
Plans to keep the bird from vanishing in British Columbia include
captive breeding, moving owls, supplemental feeding and management of
prey, predators, and competitors, Jardine said, noting that a spotted
owl had been fledged successfully in captivity in the United States.
Besides logging and other habitat loss, spotted owls have been
hard-hit by an invasion of barred owls that compete for food and
habitat and may be interbreeding with the closely related species, he
added. Joe Foy, director of the spotted owl campaign for the
wilderness committee, said the government was trying to look good
while preserving timber cutting rather than trying to save the owl.
"You can get great PR by showing the little cage with the endangered
critter in it," Foy said. "Meanwhile, your buddies in the timber
industry are chainsawing down the rest of the habitat."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_CAN_Owl_Breeding.html
Washington:
5) SEATTLE -- The northern spotted owl, an icon of the Northwest's
environmental movement, was listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act in 1990, but federal officials still have not bothered to
come up with a plan for protecting it, said a lawsuit filed in U.S.
District Court on Monday. "They've been telling us for years they
were going to do it," said Alex Morgan, conservation director at the
Seattle Audubon Society, which joined the Kittitas Audubon Society in
filing the suit. "This is 15 years late." Joan Jewett, a spokeswoman
for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acknowledged that federal
officials never completed a final recovery plan for the Northern
spotted owl. Part of the reason was that the compromise Northwest
Forest Plan reached in the early 1990s helped protect the spotted owl
on federal lands.But, she said, the agency recently agreed that it
would complete such a plan - hopefully within 18 months.Morgan said
the Audubon Society chapters would be satisfied if they could get
that in writing. The spotted owl was declared a threatened species
primarily because of logging in the old growth forests of the
Northwest. That designation led to an 80 percent cutback on logging
in national forests and restrictions on private timberlands. But the
number of spotted owls - estimated at 2,400 pairs in Washington,
Oregon, Northern California and British Columbia - continues to drop.
Logging, wildfires and the barred owl, a natural enemy that has moved
in from the Midwest, are all to blame, environmentalists say.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WST_Spotted_Owl.html
6) When a state board sits down today to decide how to best protect
spotted owls, the man in charge will be a Department of Natural
Resources official who privately huddled with timber industry
executives and promised to soften proposed regulations. An internal
timber industry memorandum obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
outlines how Pat McElroy, chairman of the Forest Practices Board,
agreed to eliminate a key DNR staff recommendation to be considered
today. The memo also suggests that McElroy had planned to alter his
agency's recommendations without telling others involved in the
talks, such as environmentalists and tribal leaders. That didn't
happen, according to the memo, because Public Lands Commissioner Doug
Sutherland feared that environmentalists would find out and sue.
Sutherland received heavy backing from timber interests in both his
campaigns for lands commissioner. "This just shows how stacked the
deck is against a credible public process," said Peter Goldman of the
Washington Forest Law Center, which represents environmentalists in
timber lawsuits. "We've been working for two years to convince them
what they need to do to protect owls. This is what the DNR staff came
up with, and it almost went into the trash." Goldman questioned
whether McElroy is sufficiently neutral to run today's meeting of the
Forest Practices Board, which regulates the industry.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/247630_spottedowl09.html
7) Seattle-- Environmentalists took to the streets of Seattle on
Thursday to call for increased protection of Canada's northern boreal
forest, a significant source of timber for Weyerhaeuser and a native
forest of global significance. The protest included unfurling a
banner that called for a boycott of Weyerhaeuser products, and was
part of a broader "international day of action" that included
demonstrations in other U.S. cities. Frank Mendizabal, a Weyerhaeuser
spokesman, said that the corporation supports an effort known as the
"Canadian Boreal Initiative," to work with scientists to develop an
overall conservation plan for the boreal. The environmental coalition
involved in the boreal campaign includes ForestEthics, Greenpeace and
Rainforest Action Network, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Andrea Cuccaro, a local organizer with the Seattle Rainforest Action
Group, said more protests are expected in the months ahead.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=dige04m&date=20051104&query=Seattle+Rainforest+Action+Group
8) Under a damp awning of yellowing bigleaf maples, Judith Starbuck
is laying waste to a patch of English ivy. A vine at a time, she rips
and tugs at the menace creeping through Madrona Woods. Starbuck and a
small band of mud-stained volunteers are reclaiming these woods,
saving native trees and shrubs from the stranglehold of fast-growing
foreign invaders. The sloping park, covering more than 9 acres above
Lake Washington, is a valuable piece of urban forest -- a refuge
where people can hike, learn a thing or two about nature and shed the
stress of living in a big city. Seattle's forests, though, are in
trouble. Thanks to decades of neglect, many of the city's parks and
greenbelts are plagued by smothering ivy, Himalayan blackberry,
holly, laurel, morning glory and other undesirables. Half of the
acreage is seriously invaded, surveys show. Restoring the city's
2,500 acres of wooded parks to healthy conditions would cost $48
million over the next two decades, estimates from the non-profit
group show. And that's only to help the park trees.There are also
120,000 trees lining Seattle's streets, and while the city claims
responsibility for up to 40,000 of them, there are only two city
arborists working to keep them healthy in a hostile environment.
Private trees, in most cases, receive no protection at all.
Landowners with a developed piece of property can level every tree on
their lot with no permits, no restrictions. At least one neighborhood
bans trees taller than rooftops, resulting in the butchering of trees
through pruning, if they are planted at all.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/247350_urbanforest07.html
Oregon:
9) While this isn't 1970 anymore, the timber industry and wood
products still remains and will remain a contributor to the Southern
Oregon economy," the governor said. Kulongoski addressed a large
crowd. Comfortable in a bark-brown suit, he spoke under protection of
the wood-framed pavilion on the Coos Bay Boardwalk, after the threat
of rain pushed the ceremony off the North Spit. He talked about how
sometimes good things just happen, with Southport's investment as the
example. The company considered building a new mill out of the area,
Kulongoski said. Transportation was one impediment. Through federal,
state and local partnerships and Southport investment, the $4.4
million rail spur went in. Once Southport lays its final rails into
the mill yard, lumber will be chugging off the spit along tracks that
the port hopes in a few years could be linking future industrial
developers' products to the nation.
http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2005/11/05/news/news01.txt
10) A deal between the Bush administration and timber industry
probably will restart chain saws across millions of acres of Western
Oregon in the next few years, including reserves set aside for the
northern spotted owl and other wildlife. It will mark perhaps the
single largest and most striking shift in public land management in
the Northwest since the Clinton administration's 1994 Northwest
Forest Plan created those reserves in the first place.
Conservationists fear it will begin the permanent unraveling of those
reserves, a key piece of the strategy to sustain the spotted owl,
marbled murrelet and salmon. But it gives the Bush administration one
of its best chances to deliver on its goal of boosting Northwest
logging. It comes at an opportune time for Oregon counties, too,
because federal funding they received in place of declining timber
revenue is about to expire. The federal deficit and costs of the Iraq
war and hurricane recovery make renewal of the funding more iffy and
logging revenue more sought-after. The sea change will come through a
new federal blueprint for management of 2.5 million acres of Western
Oregon, much of it lush forest in a checkerboard pattern between
Interstate 5 and the ocean. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has
begun asking for public input as it drafts the new plan for release
in 2008. A clause in the deal hints at how sharply things may change.
It directs BLM to abide by a 1990 court ruling that said timber
production should be the "dominant use" of the lands -- and a higher
priority than wildlife habitat and old-growth forest. The BLM must
consider at least one option that does away with all wildlife
reserves. But the settlement also requires the BLM to follow the
court rulings that concluded reserves have no place on O&C lands.
That makes it likely that the BLM will get rid of the reserves,
freeing up the land for logging. "That's clearly the way it's going
to need to go," said Robertson, a Republican.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1131179743258870.xml&coll=7
11) The Sisters Area Fuels Reduction project will reduce fire risks
and improve forest health through thinning, mechanical mowing and
controlled burning operations. Managers also believe the project will
nurture aesthetically-pleasing stands of healthy, mature trees.
Forest Service officials will analyze the project under provisions of
the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which streamlines
administrative procedures and emphasizes community collaboration for
hazardous fuels and ecosystem-restoration projects. Much of the
project's collaboration process included development of the
interagency Greater Sisters Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which
was completed last June. The Sisters/Camp Sherman Fire Protection
District and other collaboration partners identified the project as a
high priority for reducing fire risks.
http://bend.com/news/ar_view.php?ar_id=23684
12) Nearly 25 percent of the Scattered Apples timber sale in Williams
will not be logged under a legal settlement between the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management, Williams residents and a conservation group.
Approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene, the
agreement canceled logging on 152 acres, leaving in place mature
trees home to old-growth species, such as the northern spotted owl.
"We believe we developed a much better project than what was in
place," said Lesley Adams, outreach coordinator for Ashland-based
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, one of the plaintiffs. The
settlement "is a great example of the BLM working with
conservationists and the community to come up with a plan everyone
can support. The agreement ended a seven-month legal mediation
between the BLM Medford District and the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs
sued the BLM in February 2004, claiming the agency had violated the
National Environmental Policy Act during the environmental assessment
of the timber sale. Williams resident Spencer Lennard said the new
project is better than the original but will still cause problems in
the watershed."It's still ecologically destructive, increases fire
risk, stresses out (wildlife) and costs taxpayers money but all to a
lesser degree," Lennard said. "It's not a restoration project." BLM
officials have repeatedly stated the bulk of the timber sale has
focused on commercial thinning to reduce the fire risk and improve
forest health.
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/1105/local/stories/07local.htm
California:
13) On Thursday, as part of a continued, far-reaching rollback of
protected landscapes for scores of imperiled species around the
country, federal officials proposed cutting 82% of the celebrated
frog's critical habitat. The House of Representatives has passed a
bill that would eliminate federally protected critical habitat on 150
million acres of largely undeveloped public and private land. The
Senate could act on the legislation by year's end. But even without
legislative action, the Bush administration is eliminating
critical-habitat designations around the country. Administration
officials say that habitat protections cost landowners billions and
that voluntary plans work better for landowners and wildlife. In
numerous cases, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and her top deputies,
citing their own cost estimates, have agreed with builders and
property owners that the financial burden of habit protections
outweighed any benefit to species. (Note: Red Leggeds depend, in
part, on Central Coast Conifer forest habitat)
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-frog4nov04,1,3088637.story?coll=la-news-environment&ctrack=1&cset=true
14) The long-awaited final land management plans for the four
national forests of southern California were released by the Forest
Service in September 2005. The management plan affects more than 3.5
million acres of public forests, guiding decisions on everything from
protecting plants and wildlife and providing recreational
opportunities to deciding where potentially damaging development and
off-road vehicle trails can be placed. The Center for Biologic
Diversity recommends more wilderness and wild rivers for permanent
protection. Without more wilderness, the Forest Service leaves the
plants and animals of the forests at risk from toll roads,
hydroelectric dams, mining, oil wells, power lines, and cell towers.
Also prohibit an expansion of off-road vehicle trails and don't
legalize illegal trails. Also Designate the more ecologically
sensitive areas as Critical Biological Zones. Increase protective
standards for riparian areas, old-growth forests, oak woodlands and
other rare habitats from damage due to roads, unsustainable
recreation, logging, domestic livestock grazing and additional
negative impacts. Help us write Letters at:
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/socalforests/
Montana:
15) HELENA - A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the Helena
National Forest's plans to log and burn about 1,500 acres in the
Jimtown Road area near Canyon Ferry Dam east of here to reduce the
risk of wildfires. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals rejected arguments by the Native Ecosystems Council that
the U.S. Forest Service broke two federal acts in drafting the
project. The environmental group claimed the project would further
limit prime habitat for the goshawk, a small raptor, in an area
already damaged by the Cave Gulch fire of 2000, the Jimtown fire of
2003 and the logging and prescribed burning done in nearby Bull Run
and Sweats Gulch in 1996.
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/11/08/build/state/60-log-plan.inc
16) A Jefferson County Commission meeting Oct. 25 to discuss the
future of Forest Service roadless areas in the county was long on
management philosophy, but short on specifics. None of the 25
citizens attending the meeting had particular roads to recommend in
the three Forest Service inventoried roadless areas within the
county. However, Commission Chairman Tom Lythgoe said Wednesday that
the commissioners may themselves propose new roads.
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/11/04/neighbors/c011103405_01.txt
Utah:
17) ONLY A DECADE AGO, towering spruce trees shaded the runs at Brian
Head resort, a picturesque ski area perched above red-rock cliffs in
southwestern Utah. Then came the beetles. After a series of
windstorms in the early 1990s toppled an unusually high number of
trees, bark beetles proliferated in the deadfall. In 1994, they began
to overwhelm and kill healthy trees on Cedar Mountain, where Brian
Head is located. Over the next 10 years, beetles killed up to 90
percent of the spruce trees across 30,000 acres of Cedar Mountain,
including most of the trees at Brian Head. The spruce needles turned
red and fell off, exposing "ghost forests" of standing deadwood. To
reduce the risk of fires and to protect skiers from falling limbs and
trunks, logging crews began removing dead and diseased trees. By the
time the infestation ended, areas of the resort looked as if they
were above treeline. "It used to be a big, beautiful, thick green
forest," says mountain manager Mac Hatch, who's worked at the resort
since the mid-1980s. "Now there are just patches of spruce." If you
ski in the West, what hit Brian Head could happen at one of your
favorite resorts. With astonishing ferocity, several bark beetle
species are devouring conifers across millions of acres of forest in
western North America. You can find epidemics in Colorado's Vail
Valley; in the lodgepole pine forests around Breckenridge; throughout
Grand County, home to Winter Park; and in the Stanley Basin north of
Sun Valley, Idaho. Besides being unsightly, a tree die-off can harm a
ski operation in a number of ways. With fewer trees to block the
wind, Brian Head has had more lift closures. The loss of trees also
makes steep runs more avalanche-prone. But the most frequent damage
is to the texture and depth of snow, and is caused by something
usually warmly welcomed by skiers: sunshine.
http://www.skimag.com/skimag/travel/article/0,12795,1123611,00.html
Indiana:
18) Advertising a day of "old-time rabble-rousing," friends and
neighbors of Yellowwood State Forest gathered in Nashville Saturday,
October 29, to protest a state plan that will increase by four times
the amount of logging in state forests. At the Village Green gazebo,
members of the activist group Friends of Yellowwood spoke with
curious tourists, collected petitions against the forestry plan and
discussed ways to drum up more support in the county. "Our economy is
so tourism-based," Yellowwood supporter Linda Baden said in
explaining how the health of the forest affects the health of Brown
County. "The beauty of hardwood forests is what brings people here.
The Nashville tourism industry lives off that." She said the Friends
of Yellowwood are especially upset about two things: that Department
of Natural Resources began its new forest management plan without
public input, and that the increased logging will speed the erosion
that is gradually filling in Yellowwood Lake. "To increase logging by
400 percent will have a dramatic impact on the lake," Ms. Baden said
of the man-made reservoir that has shrunk 22 acres since 1990. "The
new plan is arrogant and a slap in the face to voters," he said.
"It's symptomatic of the hijacking of our institutions for private
interests."
http://www.browncountyindiana.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=6419&TM=22081.4
New Hampshire:
19) I found my way back to New Hampshire and a job as policy director
of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, a
statewide conservation group. While I was there, it became clear that
the conservation community needed a broader regional approach. With
other leaders across the region, I organized the Northern Forest
Alliance -- a coalition of conservation groups advocating for
protected wildlands, sustainable forestry, and sustainable
communities and economies across the Northern Forest. We work to
revitalize the rural economy and communities and conserve the forests
of the 30-million-acre Northern Forest region of northernmost New
York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine -- the largest intact wild
area in the Eastern U.S. Unlike the large forest regions of the West,
the great majority of this land is privately owned. Nearly 2 million
people live in and near the wildlands, and their communities are
having a hard time. The region is losing a lot of its best-paying
jobs -- many in the paper industry -- as manufacturers cut costs in
order to remain competitive in what has become a global industry.
Lack of economic opportunity had led, in many instances, to strong
local opposition to conservation, which some people view as "locking
up" land that represents the only tangible economic opportunity. I
founded the Northern Forest Center eight years ago to help the region
focus as much time and attention on addressing social and economic
needs as protecting land. Achieving landscape-scale conservation
depends as much on building sustainable communities as it does on
saving land. And making a better life for people depends in large
part on living in and around healthy ecosystems, including wild
places.
http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2005/11/07/blackmer/index.html?source=daily
20) With the Executive Council demanding more answers about purchase
terms for a proposed ATV park, city officials hoped public hearings
would show councilors there's strong support for the project. The
proposed 7,200 acre park near Jericho Lake would abut the White
Mountain National Forest. It would be owned by the state and would
include an estimated 350 miles of trails for off-road vehicles. The
purchase price is $2.16 million dollars, but executive councilors
questioned terms that would give current owners Thomas and Scott
Dillon, of Anson, Maine, logging rights for another 5 years and
long-term gravel-mining rights. They tabled a vote on the purchase
last week and rescheduled it for Nov. 16, saying they wanted more
information and more public input before reaching a decision.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/11/07/berlin_officials_hope_public_hearing_shows_support_for_atv_park/
North Carolina:
21) Durham, N.C. -- Duke University environmental scientists have
received a five-year, $1.88 million grant from the National Science
Foundation (NSF) to develop an advanced wireless sensor network that
can measure, model and predict biophysical changes in the forest
environment. James S. Clark, who is H.L. Blomquist Professor of
Biology at the NicholasSchool of the Environment and Earth Sciences,
is principal investigator on the grant. "This network will allow us
to go into remote locations, install the sensors, and, for years to
come, collect a depth and breadth of data that would be virtually
impossible to obtain through any other means," he said. "It has the
potential to let us study environmental change on a whole new scale."
The new network builds on successful past efforts by Clark and his
colleagues to construct and deploy wireless environmental sensing
networks in two forests in Piedmont and western North Carolina. The
palm-sized, weather-resistant sensors they developed can be placed
virtually anywhere in a forest -- high in the tree canopy, in the
understory or near the forest floor. Hundreds of them can be deployed
to "network" an entire forest.
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/11/wirelessnetwork.html
USA:
22) Stop 2 salvage bills that would authorize logging projects on
public lands. One bill was introduced by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), the
other by Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM). "Environmentalists" supporting the
Udall bill are supporting a "consensus compromise" that agrees with
the general principles of Bush's bogus "Healthy Forests Restoration
Act." By supporting the Udall bill, these so-called conservationists
lose us valuable credibility, because they are supporting something
they originally opposed (at least I hope). The Healthy Forests law
allows the timber industry to take larger trees in order to pay for
"fuel reduction" projects, which are generally money losers even with
tax-subsidies, because smaller trees and brush fail to net the timber
revenues that larger trees do. Thus, aims in the Udall bill to
prevent the logging of old-growth and LSR (see below) forests will be
entirely ineffective, especially with no means for enforcement.
Please contact your Senators and your Representative in Congress,
encourage them to vote no on BOTH the Forest Emergency Recovery and
Research Act (H.R. 4200) and National Forests Rehabilitation and
Recovery Act (H.R. 3973).
http://www.forestcouncil.org
Canada:
23) A report by international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers
has determined that specialty products and niche marketing are the
way to make the forestry industry work in the southern Yukon. A
report by PricewaterhouseCoopers says even with the highest prices
available, a commodity sawmill in the Watson Lake area would not be
able to cover operating costs. Over the past few decades three
multi-million dollar mills have gone broke milling lumber in that
community. The $75,000 report goes on to suggest Southeast Yukon
forest managers, who are now developing a forestry plan for the
region, should concentrate on niche markets and specialty products.
The Yukon Conservation Society's Karen Baltgailis is praising the
report's findings. "The whole point is it's so expensive to process
here and so expensive to ship things that you've got to have a
product that's worth more," she says. "So products like furniture,
and also the potential to supply the Yukon's own lumber market, those
are the kinds of things that actually could work.
http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/forestry-report-04112005.html
24) Three Rivers: The Yukon's Great Boreal Wilderness is a gorgeous
coffee-table book about a wilderness area so vast and so crucial to
planetary survival it defies comprehension. Previously unknown to the
outside world, the Yukon's Three Rivers watershed is emerging as an
environmental issue of global importance-a key piece of the boreal
region. The boreal forest is like a green banner draped around the
northern hemisphere. It is the world's largest expanse of intact
forest, covering nearly 11 percent of our planet's surface. Every
breath we take is in part a gift from this immense, earth-circling
ecosystem. Now the renewed Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal, the
Alaska Pipeline and escalating energy and mineral exploration in the
north all threaten this last world-scale refuge of natural values-and
conservationists around the world are mobilizing to defend it. Three
Rivers focuses on one of the most strategic undisturbed regions left
in the world, an oceanic wilderness that is under threat from gas and
mining development.
http://www.harbourpublishing.com/author/JuriPeepre
25) Alberta - A number of JIST members expressed concerns over public
perception and the adverse reactions by some who may view the
thinning as 'logging' in the park. Jasper Interface Steering Team
(JIST) was presented with the results of the review by ecologist,
forester and educator Herb Hammond. With two winters of work on the
project already completed, Hammond spent last week touring the
restored and fuel reduced areas near the town site and at Lake Edith
to provide feedback. "This project gets an 'A' from my stand point.
Both Hammond and park officials were also careful to point out that
any money made from the extracted trees has gone straight back into
funding the project.
<http://www.jasperbooster.com/story.php?id=195191>http://www.jasperbooster.com/story.php?id=195191
Finland:
26) A dispute over tree felling in the forests of the north of
Finnish Lapland flared up again on Monday, when activists of the
environmental organisation Greenpeace held a protest near the
Veitsiluoto factories of the paper company Stora Enso in the northern
city of Kemi. The protesters used five rubber boats in an attempt to
blockade the Finnlines Antares cargo vessel, which had arrived to
pick up a load of paper manufactured from trees felled in the far
north. Some of the demonstrators used ropes to board the ship.
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/Greenpeace+protesters+blockade+ship+in+Kemi+harbour%0D%0A/1101981555490
Brazil:
27) Not far from the mouth of the Amazon, dead animals, including
manatees -- mammals up to 3m long with flat, paddle-shaped fins --
and distinctive pink dolphins, line the banks of some tributaries.
Normally, you would have to take a boat to cross these rivers but
today, because of the Amazon basin's worst drought in memory, they
are little more than mudflats with a trickle of water in the middle.
So far, the drought has had its most serious impact in the upper
reaches of the river and its hundreds of tributaries in Brazil,
Colombia and Peru. There, along many stretches, the water has fallen
to the lowest levels ever recorded and has become impassable even for
canoes. Some 600 Brazilian schools in Amazonas state have had to be
closed and many hamlets, whose only contact with the outside world is
by river, are running short of food and medicines. Several districts
have been declared disaster areas and the army is having to bring
emergency supplies to 900 towns and villages. The problems are
expected to get worse before the drought eventually breaks, perhaps
in the next month when the Amazon's rainy season usually comes.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/11/05/2003278875
Solomon Islands:
28) On Sunday last week Bishop Koete paid a visit to a newly
constructed logging campsite near Bola village, on South Gela and
raised a 'wooden rugged cross' with a public notice halting further
work on the site. The Environmental Concern Action Network of Solomon
Islands (ECANSI) has applauded the decision by Bishop of Central
Islands, Reverend Charles Koete, to end logging operations in Central
Province. Spokesperson for ECANSI Moses Rouhana said such action
should not be left unnoticed because Solomon Islands is running
against time to save our forest."It is one of the great acts of
boldness and concern, more appropriate and timely for leaders of this
nation to learn from. Action speaks louder than word for Rev Koete,
he did all of it. "Without barking in the media about his grievances,
he has done the right thing by going straight to the logging site,
immediately declaring an end to this scrupulous kind of forest
activity," Mr Rouhana said. The Diocesan Bishop took the action in
accordance with the resolution passed by the recent Diocesan Synod
held at Nagotano Village, Gela in July 2005, which declared that
"logging is not development but destruction". Bishop Koete said his
diocese further declared that logging be stopped because it causes
destruction to God's creation. While politicians are seeing the
writings on the wall with regards to the current unsustainable
harvesting rate of our forest resources, little has been done to
control this trend. What is happening is exactly the opposite with
loggers fighting each other as they scramble to get the last tree.
Log ponds dot our shores. And you know what; there are enough
bulldozers, chain saws and log trucks available now in the country to
put the final nail to the coffin. We don't need to look further or
carry out research on this.
http://www.solomonstarnews.com/drupal-4.4.1/?q=node/view/5844
Philippines:
29) IT IS neither kingly, like the Philippine eagle, nor cute and
cuddly, like the tarsier. It has none of the mystique of the tamaraw,
nor the serenity of the whale shark. It is noisy, smelly and pesky.
It is also rather frightening. But the latest poster creature of
biodiversity and forest conservation has its charms, too. Meet
Pteropus vampyrus lanensis, otherwise known as the Philippine giant
fruit bat, the biggest "flying fox" in the world and king of the
lowland forests of Central Luzon. Hoping to educate more Filipinos
about environmental concepts, such as biodiversity and balance of
nature, the Haribon Foundation has launched the GuBAT Learning
Center, a joint project with the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority
(SBMA) and the US Peace Corps. More than 100,000 fruit bats used to
roost in Subic's lush forests a few decades ago, but today, only a
few thousand remain, Leones said during a media tour of bat-roosting
areas in Subic on Saturday. "There are two types of bats -- the fruit
bats and the insect-eating ones. The first are seed-dispersing agents
of the forests. Pollen and grain fall from their bodies as they
forage for food at night. The second help control the insect
population," Leones says. The giant fruit bat can attain a wingspan
of 1.5 to 2 meters, and is distinguished by black or reddish-brown
fur covering its forehead, neck, shoulders and back. But the single
biggest threat to the survival of bats is still the loss of habitat
because of illegal logging and the denudation of forests, she says.
Less than 20 percent of the country's forest cover remains, she says.
A study has found that a country needs at least 54 percent of forest
cover to ensure a stable life support system.
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=55744
30) Standing firm on his decision to allow Senator Juan Ponce
Enrile's company to resume logging operations inside the Samar Island
Nature Park, Environment Secretary Michael T. Defensor yesterday
challenged his critics to take their grievances to court.Defensor,
who signed the order allowing San Jose Timber Corp. to cut trees
inside the protected forest, maintained that Enrile's firm had a
right to log in the 95,770-hectare area covered by its timber
licensing agreement. "If they feel that what we did was wrong, they
should test it legally," Defensor told the Inquirer by phone
yesterday."They should not connect this to my confirmation," said
Defensor, who had faced rough sailing at the Commission on
Appointments, of which Enrile is a member. Defensor said Enrile had
raised the issue of his company during the Senate's inquiry into
existing logging concessions last December following the flash floods
that killed and displaced hundreds in the provinces of Aurora and
Quezon.
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=55840
31) For his first solo exhibit, Aner Sebastian, part-time faculty
member at the Feati University's College of Fine Arts and twice
included in the annual Kulay Sa Tubig tilt's top five watercolorists,
has chosen to depict nature. The choice is propelled by his disdain
for the lackluster public attention to the degradation of the
environment. Concern over the environment heightens only during
crises or the aftermath of disasters, he complained. But when the
disasters disappear from the headlines, public concern wanes and
nature continues to be degraded. Sebastian carries out his ecological
campaign via lush visual narrative. His is protest art in the most
beautiful form. The medium flows surely but does not assault as water
cannons would. His message comes across effectively without burned
effigies and violent confrontations. The narrative begins with pieces
like "Vertical Limit," with its rectangles that magnify portions of
the gnarled tree trunks, the rough bark indicating age, exactly the
reason why forests should be left untouched. "Intact" depicts a
robust woodland while "Rain Forest" shows the subject awash with
seeming drops of precipitation, the drips turning out to be plant
branches. "Prime Cut Loggers Delight" is much darker than the rest of
his pieces, and Sebastian's signature pixelate divisions are no
longer enlarged parts of the whole picture. Within some of them are
boxed the remnants of once-huge trunks, stumps that sit beside faces
of lumberjacks, their illegal trade signified by faces covered with
cloth. The pixilation is highly interesting for it suggests the
televisions screen as well as censorship and the practice of
providing anonymity to people who offer classified information. The
straight lines and angles of pixilation lend a surreal quality to the
works. Despite the grimness of the works, Sebastian also tries to be
positive, as can be gleaned from such works as "Recovery Period,"
"Growth," and "Full Grown" which interestingly has a man who looks
like a farmer, the face no longer concealed, the shamefulness of
environmental degradation absent.
http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=1&story_id=55697
32) Ignoring appeals to bequeath" the forests of Western Samar as his
legacy, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile isn't about to waive his logging
firm's rights to log anew in the province after getting a favorable
ruling from the government after 16 years of waiting. "If the
environmentalists want to expropriate my property, let them do it.
But they can't tell me how to handle our rights," Enrile said in a
phone interview. Finally breaking his silence, Enrile, however, made
the assurance that his firm, San Jose Timber Corp. (SJTC), would
harvest trees selectively in a 95,770-ha area in the province, as it
had been doing for 22 years until it was stopped in 1989. "We're not
going to destroy the forest. We will preserve it," he said. "We will
do selective logging operations there... We're not unscrupulous
people who will just cut down trees right and left." By selective
logging, the senator said his firm would harvest trees that are at
least 70-cm in diameter. "They should see how we do logging
operations without destroying the forest," he said, stressing that
his firm employs forest management experts and uses forest management
methods adopted from Burma (Myanmar). Environmentalists have appealed
to Enrile to give up his concession and "bequeath" it as a heritage
area after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
allowed his firm to resume logging operations in the province.
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=55601
New Zealand:
33) The importing of up to $350 million of wood every year is killing
the local specialty wood industry, new lobby group the Specialty
Timber Council says. New Zealand furniture makers and joiners are
using Canadian western red cedar, American white oak, Indonesian
kwila and Fijian kauri when they could be using native, or specialty,
timbers from sustainably managed forests, the council says. Not only
are forestry exporters struggling against the high New Zealand dollar
and high shipping rates, but producers selling to the local market
are competing against cheap imports, it says. Imports are cheaper
when the exchange rate is higher. Council spokesman Roger May said he
met the late Green Party co-leader Rod Donald last Friday to discuss
the issue. Of the 1.3 million hectares of native timberland in
private ownership in New Zealand, about 600,000ha could be
sustainably managed to supply the local furniture and joinery
industry, he said. Only about 100,000ha was being managed in this way
now.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3471022a13,00.html
Indonesia:
34) People in the remote hamlet of Sungai Utik, Embaloh district,
Kapuas Hulu regency, had laid out the red carpet to welcome Minister
of Forestry Malam Sambat Kaban, who had planned to visit the part of
West Kalimantan bordering Malaysia in mid-October. The plan was
called off, however, to the disappointment of locals who after
hearing about the high-profile visit had immediately asked for talks
with the minister to tell him the problems they were encountering.
For Thomas Langit, a youth leader from Badau regency, Kapuas Hulu
regency, the minister's visit would have enabled him to find out what
steps the government would take to overcome the economic effects on
people in border areas resulting from the crackdown on illegal
logging. "It is only natural that locals continue to fell trees in
the forest. About 90 percent of the people depend on the forest to
support themselves. If what they have been doing is considered
illegal, then what must be done to make it legal? Unless the
government provides an alternative, how can they give up their
long-standing activities?" Thomas asked.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailnational.asp?fileid=20051107.C03&irec=2
Australia:
35) Logging contractors in Tasmania have been urged to learn lessons
from New Zealand in order to reduce the number of log truck crashes.
Warwick Wilshier from the New Zealand Log Truck Safety Council says
logging contractors in Tasmania need to acknowledge the problem in
order to reduce the number of accidents. "The operators need to look
at the design of the vehicles, go though the calculation, work hard
with the drivers, because a lot of it is about attitude, about the
professional way they operate and they can achieve," he said. Guest
speaker, forestry analyst Robert Eastment says contractors need to
become more efficient to enable them to remain competitive in a world
market. "The future for the market, for the forest industry, while in
the past it's been dominated by the native forest sector, the market
will be increasingly relevant to what's happening with the hardwood
and the softwood plantations," he said. "There's still a future for
the native forests, but we have to look for the future, we certainly
have to look at hardwood and softwood plantations."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1498551.htm
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