Email Storm: Lands For Life, Ontario
Bob Olsen
http://www.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/news/981202NEW02d_CI-EMAIL2.html
Toronto Star December 2, 1998
Forest plan sparks E-mail protest
[Image] By Brian McAndrew
[Webfinder] Toronto Star Environment Reporter
[Image] More than 1,200 scientists from around the
world have joined an electronic protest
[Image] against the province's controversial Lands
[Navigation] for Life program.
[Image]
``It's a fairly strong position for a
large group of academics to take,'' said
Kevin Kavanaugh of the World Wildlife
Fund/Canada, who was compiling the E-mail
responses.
Lands for Life is a natural resources
ministry planning effort to divvy up 46
million hectares of publicly owned land
across eastern and Northern Ontario for
logging, mining, tourism and wilderness
protection. Nearly all the area will be
available for industrial development, in
the ministry's initial recommendations
that are under government review.
Just 700,000 hectares of land were added
to the existing parks and the protected
wilderness system - an increase of less
than 2 per cent.
About 10 days ago, 15 biologists opposed
to the program sent E-mail messages to
scientists asking them to speak out
against the proposals.
The campaign grew rapidly as scientists
spread the message worldwide by E-mail.
``The thing just mushroomed within the
scientific community,'' Kavanaugh said.
He estimates about half the responses came
from scientists in Ontario.
Kavanaugh said there was a consensus among
the scientists that the province was not
placing enough land in parks or protected
wilderness regions.
Contents copyright © 1996-1998, The Toronto Star.
.......................
Bob Olsen, Toronto, bobo...@tao.ca, http://www.tao.ca/~tdrc/
"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the
grasp of executive power." Daniel Webster
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