Guest guest Posted October 3, 2006 Report Share Posted October 3, 2006 Today for you 37 news items about Mama Earth's trees. Location, number and subject listed below. Condensed / abbreviated article is listed further below.--British Columbia: 1) Inland rainforest protection demands, 2) Post beatle forests,--Washington: 3) Eastside forests prepare for climate change--California: 4) New wilderness protection: 273,000 acres, 5) Sierra Pacific wants Cedar, --Montana: 6) Wild West wants big mills replaced with mom and pop mills, 7) Logging Grizzly habitat in the Flathead NF,--Colorado: 8) Logging around the town of Vail--Minnesota: 9) Numerous threats to Boundary Waters --Louisiana: 10) Logging of cypress in Louisiana wetlands--Pennsylvania: 11) Allegheny NF--Massachusetts: 12) State promises to better manage 400,000 acres of forest --Vermont: 13) Bennington County forester, --Georgia: 14) Clearcutting for critters who aren't endangered--Florida: 15) Live oak losing to suburban sprawl--USA: 16) Recreation Site Facility Master Planning--Canada: 17) Huge change in the composition of our forests, 18) MacTara will be allowed to cut 215 hectares in sanctuary, 19) Painful split within forest conservation,--UK: 20) House of Commons is being refurbished with illegal lumber, 20) Greenpeace advocacy of FSC is fraudulent, 22) Amazon protection,--Hungary: 23) 500 year old Lime tree--Russia: 24) Proprietary rights to public forest lands--Guatemala: 25) US debt-for-nature swap--Brazil: 26) Has not issued a statement in response to the UK proposal, 27) WWF-Brazil's protected areas program, 28) Government has two faces, 29) Forest weather,--Bolivia: 30) Received $25m for the sale of carbon credits--China: 31) Banned all logging along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, 32) Selling 100,000 hectares of plantation trees, --New Zealand: 33) Mystery fungus is killing kauri trees --Australia: 34) Covert campaign by Amcor to infiltrate Labor and environment groups, 35) Plantation woodchipers make their own deals now, --World-wide: 36) GM trees have no role to play in the conservation, 37) Planting biofuels is crowding out food production,British Columbia:1) INLAND TEMPERATE RAINFOREST REGION The undersigned agree that any credible program to stem species loss in the Inland Rainforest Region must include the following elements. We join together in urging the Canadian, British Columbian, and First Nations governments to implement these actions as quickly as possible, and we hereby issue a plea to the world to help us achieve these changes. 1) SUBSTANTIALLY MORE PROTECTED AREAS AND WILDLIFE TRAVEL CORRIDORS must be created and permanently legislated. 2). REDUCE THE ALLOWABLE ANNUAL CUT – a dramatic reduction in the annual volume of forest harvested is necessary to maintain other critical values and functions of the forest. 3) FULL PROTECTION FOR ALL OLD-GROWTH FOREST 140 YEARS OR OLDER, including low- and mid-elevation Interior Cedar-Hemlock. 4) REMAINING INTACT AREAS – roadless areas that contribute to ecological integrity by providing seclusion for wildlife or stability for watersheds and wild rivers must be identified for full protection or other conservation zoning. 5) PROTECTION FOR ALL SUBPOPULATIONS OF SPECIES AT RISK — in BC the most threatened subpopulations of species at risk are sometimes subjected to harmful human impacts, using the excuse that the population is too small to recover. All habitat capable of being used by species at risk is high-value habitat. Recovery will include increased, fully protected habitat for each subpopulation. 6) RESTRICT MOTORIZED RECREATION — recreational use of ATVs, snowcats, snowmobiles and helicopters should be eliminated from critical habitat of high-elevation species at -risk such as mountain caribou, grizzly bears and wolverines. 7) OPEN PUBLIC PROCESS — public process managed with the collaboration of the First Nations, provincial and federal governments and must identify the various conservation zones. 8) HABITAT RECOVERY ZONES FOR AREAS ALREADY LOGGED – critical for mountain caribou to survive, logged areas must have recovery techniques such as thinning of forest and brushing alongside roads. There should be no logging adjacent to critical caribou habitat until the forest recovers to natural early seral levels, to reduce alternate prey. http://www.inlandtemperaterainforest.org/ 2) Standing in a burnt-out clearing in the forests north of Kamloops, Dana Manhard surveys the damage caused by wildfires and mountain pine beetle. " I expect to lose almost all mature pines, " he tells a crowd of gathered media, about the impacts of the mountain pine beetle. Manhard is a forester with Forests for Tomorrow, a provincial initiative with the task of re-planting areas hit hardest by beetles and wildfires - areas that otherwise would be left to recover naturally. Provincial foresters say such a time will exist when the mountain pine beetles kill off all of the mature pines, leaving only smaller trees, which are uninhabitable for the insect. " Pine trees don't get hit until they are about 10 centimetres, " explains Manhard. Pointing to a smaller, recently planted tree, he adds: " These trees won't reach that size for 10 to 20 years. By then the pine beetle epidemic will have passed. " So far, eight million hectares of provincial forests have been ravaged by the beetle, while another 500,000 hectares have been burned by wildfires. Manhard says that in the next 10 years, the last of the mature lodgepole pines will be decimated, at which point the beetle population will crash. According to John McClarnon with the Forest Practices Branch, foresters are approaching re-forestation differently, having learned from past mistakes. One of the biggest changes is an increasing emphasis on re-planting a diverse set of tree species. " We are really trying to promote species diversity, " he says. " Just like investing - if you have all your eggs in one basket, it can cause problems. " Right now, logging companies are working double time to harvest as much of the infested forests as they can, before the trees rot in the ground. http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=15 & cat=23 & id=740407 & more= Washington:3) The Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests will be among the first in the nation to prepare for global warming. Forest administrators are working on a plan that includes measuring climate change, and strategies to adapt quickly if changes occur. The plan, when unveiled in 2007, will take a serious look at how to deal with what experts say may include larger and more frequent wildfires, and massive forest die-backs from pine beetle and other insects. " The Okanogan, Wenatchee and Colville forests are going to be at the leading edge, at least for this region. They're going to be the guinea pigs, if you will, " said Rex Holloway, Forest Service spokesman in Portland. Across the country, Forest Plans -- first developed in the 1980s -- are being revamped under new rules. In North Central Washington, a local Forest Service team has been working for more than two years to revise the plans for the Wenatchee, Okanogan and Colville National Forests. " We are one of the first forests to operate under this new planning rule, and one phase is to consider all of the disturbances to the ecosystem. Well, climate change is certainly a disturbance, " said Phil Jahns, vegetation team leader for the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests and a member of the Forest Plan revision team. http://www.wenworld.com/sub/story.php?id=1159640087-941-800California:4) The longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the continental United States and wooded canyons about 100 miles north of the East Bay will come under the nation's strictest environmental protection after a wilderness bill passed the U.S. Senate on Friday. The legislation, which President Bush is expected to sign, would designate 273,000 acres in Northern California as wilderness, including the spectacular 42,000-acre King Range, or " Lost Coast " in Humboldt County. The bill also puts 27,000 acres around Cache Creek, in Lake County, into the federal wilderness system wherein logging, building roads and mining are not allowed. " The King Range -- that's the crown jewel, not just for this wilderness bill but for all the wilderness " areas in the United States, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, the author of the bill. In all, the new wilderness areas would cover parts of five counties -- Napa, Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake and Del Norte --in Thompson's congressional district. The bill also designates the 21-mile Black Butte River in the Mendocino National Forest as a wild and scenic river. In addition, the bill says 51,000 acres of Cow Mountain in Mendocino and Lake counties should be managed for off-road vehicles and mountain biking, part of a trade-off in Congress to gain support for the new wilderness designations. http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/living/science/15647284.htm5) FALLBROOK — The Palomares House was the setting for Save Our Forest's (SOF) recent annual picnic, where 80 volunteers and guests enjoyed folk music by Ken and Phee and carne asada grilled by Howard Sansom and Mac Werthmuller. During Fiscal Year 2006-2007, SOF volunteers logged over 2,000 hours planting, pruning, replacing and otherwise caring for trees throughout the Fallbrook area. Jean Dooley, who maintains the Pico Promenade and organized a major tree planting project with local students, was named SOF Volunteer of the Year. http://www.thevillagenews.com/story.asp?story_ID=176975) The conversion of Sierra Pacific Industries' Chinese Camp mill from one that processes small trees to one that makes cedar fencing could change how the Stanislaus National Forest prepares its timber sales. The three-month mill conversion process, to be completed in about a month, is expected to increase production at the western Tuolumne County mill. Instead of bringing pine and Douglas fir from the Stanislaus, cedar logs from throughout Northern California will be shipped to the mill. That means smaller trees cut from the Stanislaus will be taken to SPI's Camino mill in El Dorado County. The Camino mill is about 90 miles north of Chinese Camp. Forest officials say, because of that distance, some timber sales might not be bid on. Such was the case with the Cinderella Timber Sale on the Calaveras Ranger District. Bidding on that sale, which is more than 1 million board-feet, ended Monday with no takers. Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor Tom Quinn said his staff believes the Cinderella sale would have likely sold had the Chinese Camp mill continued handling small logs. " SPI didn't believe the sale penciled out for them, " he said. " SPI is a privately owned company and they need to do what they need to do to be an economically viable company. " Quinn said timber sale revenues go towards ridding the forest of " biomass, " such as brush and trees with no commercial value, that otherwise could fuel a wildfire. Having a small-log mill in Chinese Camp created enough profit to both get logs to the mill and remove the biomass, he said. But without the mill, he said, forest leaders must look at how they approach future timber sales, such as one slated for this fall on the Groveland Ranger District. Quinn did not elaborate on what those approaches could be. " We did not anticipate the retooling of the mill when we were developing the five-year vegetation management plan, " Quinn said. That plan allows the forest, starting this year, to gradually increase its timber harvest until 2011 — when it tops out at 38 million board-feet. This fiscal year, which ends tomorrow, the forest will likely exceed its goal of offering 21 million board-feet — a hefty jump from 14 million board-feet last year. http://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=21514Montana:6) Matthew Koehler, who spoke at length last week about his group's vision of a " truly sustainable economy, " said the WildWest Institute seeks to replace Montana's existing timber industry with smaller mom-and-pop mills. Matthew, the group's executive director, said small businesses would spring up throughout the state to service fuel reduction projects around communities (see the complete interview at http://www.clarkforkchronicle.com/article.php/20060920085536259).7) A federal judge says timber salvage projects on the Flathead National Forest can continue in "core" grizzly bear habitat, but the value of trees that burned three years ago has diminished substantially. In a ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula dissolved a restraining order that prevented helicopter logging on 1,026 acres in the West Side Reservoir and Robert-Wedge project areas that wildfires burned in 2003. The acres in question fell within grizzly bear "core" habitat — lands on which all motorized access should be prohibited, claimed the Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan in a lawsuit against the Flathead National Forest. Molloy initially sided with those claims in a temporary restraining order issued in June 2005, later amending it to allow helicopter logging to continue last winter, when grizzly bears were denned. This week's ruling focused on a single legal issue — whether the Forest Service had considered adequately the "cumulative impacts" of salvage logging, snowmobiling and other motorized access in and around the project areas. The judge found that the Forest Service did "take a hard look at cumulative impacts" in the environmental impact statements that were developed for the projects. The temporary restraining order was dissolved and a preliminary injunction was denied. But Molloy has yet to rule on other merits of the case. The logging halt in core areas affected several timber purchasers, but the greatest impact was Pyramid Lumber, a Seeley Lake mill that had purchased the Beta Timber sale just southwest of Hungry Horse Dam. While the mill was able to remove most of the 18 million board-feet associated with the sale contract, it had to leave several million board feet on the ground, said Pyramid Manager Gordy Sanders. http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2006/09/29/news/news03.txtColorado:8) Grabbing three to five logs at a time, the helicopter descended about 500 feet on the upper bench of Donovan Park to set the logs down in a meadow along Matterhorn Circle. There, trucks waited to cart them away to a lumber mill in Silt. Over the last month, crews have cut down more than 2,000 lodgepole trees dead or dying of pine beetle infestation on nearly 30 acres of town of Vail and Forest Service land in West Vail. Vail fire department's Tom Talbot, who is managing the project, and his trusty can of pink spray paint marked trees close to homes and other buildings for cutting so the structures should be safer if a wildfire were ever to come through the area. "We are serious about doing wildfire fuel mitigation," said Bill Carlson, Vail's environmental health officer and planner. "The town is at risk — we're an island in a sea of trees. The way we're doing it, it's real low impact with minimal damage to the vegetation and the hillside." http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20061002/NEWS/61002009Minnesota:9) Kiss the Boundary Waters, as we know it, goodbye. Do the same for the rest of the Quetico-Superior forest along the Minnesota-Ontario border. A devastating collection of forces will change how that region looks over the next 50 to 100 years, lessening the allure that brings hundreds of thousands of canoeists and campers every year to its picturesque maze of lakes, rivers, cliffs and pines. European earthworms, too many deer, global warming, invasive tree pests and diseases, and lack of fire will team up to accomplish that trick, under scenarios posed recently by Lee Frelich. 'Existing forests just aren't going to be there,'' warned Frelich, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Hardwood Ecology. 'There is no way they can withstand all of these changes.'' Scientists have warned for years that global warming could push trees such as jack pine out of the 1.1 million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, that white-tailed deer consume too many woodland plants and seedlings, and that lack of fire makes the forest older and more vulnerable. Until recently, no one has tied those threads together. And no one has looked at how they'll reinforce each other. European earthworms, let loose from fishing spots across the north, are moving deeper into the forest, consuming decades' worth of old leaf litter called duff and turning the forest floor into a sterile environment largely free of plants. Three decades ago, Minnesota's deer population was so low the state canceled a fall hunting season. After years of mild winters and increasingly fragmented forests, it has swollen to a record 1.3 million. For much of the past century, northern forest fires were fought vigorously. Only in the past decade has the Superior National Forest changed strategies in the BWCA — allowing natural fires to burn if they don't threaten property outside the wilderness. http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/15644239.htmLouisiana:10) American Rivers and National Wildlife Federation issued a news release expressing concern that U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., would push an amendment allowing the logging of cypress in Louisiana wetlands. Vitter's office called the release "incorrect." Late Tuesday, the Louisiana Forestry Association released its own news statement, applauding Vitter for attempting to protect private forest landowners in his role on the House-Senate conference committee for the Water Resources Development Act. Vitter put the duel to rest Wednesday, saying he will not seek to have the logging amendment, which would address what is known as Section 10, adopted in the conference talks. "My priorities in conference are reforming the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers, closing the MRGO (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), passing the Morganza to the gulf project and other life-or-death issues," Vitter said in a written statement. Vitter said he thought he had worked out compromise language to address environmentalist issues on the logging matter, but concerns by House members made it unlikely the matter will be addressed in conference. Environmental groups welcomed the news. "Clearly, we're glad to hear he's not going to pursue this," said Melissa Samet of American Rivers in Fairfax, Calif. "It would have been disastrous for Louisiana's coastal wetlands and for rivers and wetlands across the country." Louisiana timber industry leaders indicated they plan to address the matter in the future. "It is an issue that is important to the senator because the corps is getting into an area where they shouldn't be," said C.A. "Buck" Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association. The corps halted logging at a 3,000-acre site west of Lake Maurepas, citing an 1899 law that prohibits such operations in navigable waters. http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/4253061.htmlPennsylvania:11) Allegheny National Forest, in Pennsylvania's northwest corner, has been working on its plan for two years. Located at the junction of Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren Counties, Allegheny is known for its furniture-quality hardwoods, oil and gas resources, and nature tourism. The Forest Service is deciding among four alternatives to accommodate all of those uses, but none incorporates enough wild space - land that's just left alone. Only " Alternative D " comes close. Currently, the Allegheny has just 9,000 acres of wilderness, or less than 2 percent of the forest's 513,000 acres. That's a far smaller proportion than the Forest Service's 18 percent national average or even the 11 percent Eastern region average. The Allegheny needs a bigger slice before the final plan is adopted in February. By law, wilderness doesn't have to be virgin land. Indeed, most of the Allegheny was farmed or logged by the 1920s. When the national forest was designated in 1923, residents jokingly called it the " brush patch. " Some worried that the forest would never recover. It did. Now, as the only national forest in Pennsylvania, the Allegheny needs stricter protections. Developers' bulldozers are threatening much of the Northeastern forest canopy. Nationally, the United States lost 10 million acres to development from 1982 to 1997, with 26 million more acres expected to be cut down by 2030. The country should safeguard public land where it can. The advocacy group Friends of Allegheny Wilderness seeks 54,000 more wild acres, which would bring percentages in line with national averages. There would still be plenty of acreage to harvest valuable black cherry and sites to drill for oil and natural gas. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15643920.htmMassachusetts: 12) Nearly two-thirds of Massachusetts is covered by forests. That may surprise some people who rarely venture beyond the city limits of Taunton or Brockton, but take a ride to the Myles Standish State Forest and you'll get a better understanding of the true nature of the Bay State. The forest is one of the treasures of Massachusetts, with its natural beauty, lakes and ponds, camping sites and nature trails. But it also has allowed logging and all-terrain vehicles, two things that were incompatible with the forest. That will end soon as the state places the forest's 11,000 acres into an off-limit zone to logging and ATV use, along with 90,000 other acres across the state. The state also promises to better manage another 400,000 acres of forest that it owns, and will produce a comprehensive plan for this land. Logging will still be allowed in some forested land — in fact, it will be encouraged — but it will be limited and controlled. "Prior to this, there's been logging on state forest lands without any management plans," said Jen Baker, an environmental advocate with consumer and environmental group MassPIRG. These plans should please just about everyone — except, of course, ATV riders and sellers who already have warned that shutting down Myles Standish's ATV trails will encourage illegal riding. A decade ago, the state closed more than 40 of the 48 miles of trails through the forest in Plymouth and Carver, citing environmental damage to the forest, noise, and safety and management issues. There were many complaints. Yet no one really suffered from closing most of the trails. There are other places to ride; it doesn't have to be in the public state forest, which belongs to everyone in Massachusetts. The comprehensive forest plan is a good sign that years of benign management is coming to an end and there is the recognition that Myles Standish is a true treasure that could be better cared for. http://enterprise.southofboston.com/articles/2006/09/30/news/opinion/opinion01.txtVermont: 13) This Saturday, Jim White ends a 40-year career as the Bennington County forester. " If you find something you really like to do, " White said, " you never have to go to work. " The county forester's job is different from that of a forest ranger. The county forester works with private landowners to make sure they're doing what they want to be doing with their wooded land. " What I do is help them to meet their goals, " White said. " At first, they'll say they don't have any. But they do have goals: some want to harvest the timber, some grow Christmas trees, but mostly it's about management. So we establish the goals and make a plan to accomplish the goals. My mission is to make it what they want. " Joining White on his trips into the woods is his golden retriever, Clancy. " I've always had a dog, " said White. " Clancy is my fifth one. You spend most of your time out there alone, and it's nice to have the company. " Vermont's forests haven't always been here. Most of the state's wooded land is second-growth forest. " In 1830, Vermont was 80 percent farmland, " said White. " Now it's 80 percent forested. That's a 180-degree turnaround. When you're talking about trees, it takes 125 years to grow a crop. " White has witnessed natural changes in the forest throughout his career. " One thing I've noticed is more invasive flora, " he said. " Plants like honeysuckle, buckthorn, poison parsnip and garlic mustard. They displace the native species of plants. The elms are gone, and we're starting to lose butternuts to fungus disease. Around the country there are parasites killing ash trees by the millions, and there's no reason it can't happen here. " Among animals, though, the signs are a little more encouraging. " I remember seeing my first coyote, my first possum and my first moose, " he said. " I've also seen turkeys, fisher cats and eagles come back. " Those animals " weren't here before, " he said. " It's a positive thing. It's good to have them here. " http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061002/NEWS/610020367/1024/NEWS04Georgia: 14) DIAL - On its way through the clouds, the muddy road up north Georgia's Brawley Mountain winds past thickets of century-old forests and, rangers say, the occasional golden-winged warbler. The species' population in Georgia has dropped in recent years, and forest managers have detailed a way to reverse the trend: Thin out 725 areas of the thick trees on the mountain and elsewhere to create clearings where the birds and other creatures that need open space can thrive. Conservationists, though, say the Forest Service has a hidden agenda. Forests have a way of developing their own openings, mainly through harsh weather or with the help of beavers. Stepping in now to aid a handful of species that aren't threatened or endangered is an excuse to allow more timber sales in national forests, they say. " It's clearcutting for critters, " says Wayne Jenkins, executive director of Georgia Forest Watch. The Southern Environmental Law Center and other conservation groups have challenged the forest management plans in court, claiming they could threaten wildlife habitat in 2.7 million acres of forestland in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. " It's not that we think they're not important. But the need to do all the logging to support them isn't justified, " said Sarah Francisco, an attorney with the center. " It's an excuse and a justification to cut down timber. " The U.S. Forest Service said the plans are not a pretext to log, but an opportunity to encourage species growth and lessen the risk of out-of-control fires. The forests can naturally create clearings, but rangers have decided there's a need for planned, pre-emptive action, said Chris Liggett, the Forest Service's director of planning for the southern region. " We've looked much harder at what the forests actually need, " he said. " And we're trying to create treatments that accomplish multiple objectives. " The plans, which took nearly seven years to craft, won't call for the razing of massive tracts of trees, but smaller plots that are " much more on the scale of what would happen if you had a natural wind event, " Liggett said. He also said any increase in logging would pale in comparison to the levels originally proposed more than two decades ago. http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/15644474.htm Florida:15) The majestic live oak is losing its battle for survival to suburban sprawl and the encroachment of taller trees, a new University of Florida study finds. An icon in American history and literature, broad-crowned live oaks thrive in open savannas but are dying off as they are crowded and overshadowed by the encroachment of taller trees, said Francis Putz, a UF botanist and the study's co-author. It is an irony of nature that the successes of reforestation and urban forestry threaten live oaks, which in the past maintained the elbow room they needed from logging, cattle grazing and frequent fires, said Putz, whose work is published in the June issue of Forest Ecology and Management. "We are confusing our natural savanna heritage with forested landscapes and the tragedy is that the forest is killing live oaks," he said. "If we allow other trees to grow up too close to the live oak, the live oak will die. Our research clearly establishes this fate in both rural and suburban landscapes." The live oak's broad crown, with long arching limbs that spread horizontally rather than vertically, as most trees do, give it a distinctive architectural makeup, said Tova Spector, who did the study with Putz as part of her master's degree in ecology. "Trees that grow straight and tall crowd the live oaks, causing their crowns to die back," she said. "Once their branches begin to grow horizontally, live oaks seem unable to reverse this trend by growing upwards," said Spector, who mapped and measured crown densities in both closed canopy and savanna-like tree stands in Alachua County, Florida. Sweet gum, black cherry and magnolia are among the culprits, but the worst offender ironically is laurel oak, which resembles the live oak but is not nearly as sturdy, killing more people in the South than any other tree, Putz said. "I wouldn't park my brand-new Saab underneath a laurel oak if I had one, whereas the live oak is a homeowner's best friend," he said. The live oak's deep roots, relatively short stature and strong wood help it to withstand the high winds and strong storm surges that topple other trees during hurricanes, Spector said. http://news.ufl.edu/2006/09/28/live-oaks/USA:16) Recreation Site Facility Master Planning, or RSFMP: I recently contacted the Washington D.C. office of the Forest Service to express my concerns about the RSFMP process. I asked them why the legally mandated NEPA process was not being followed when they obliterate a campground with a D-6 Cat. They immediately told me that NEPA is not needed to set new policy. I told them I knew that. I told them that 22 national forests have completed their five-year RSFMP site closure plans and implementation has begun. I then said: The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests in western Colorado, have already started bulldozing campgrounds, removing toilets, capping drinking water systems, closing picnic areas, and turning day-use areas over to concessionaires. Also, the White River National Forest in Colorado has removed toilets and other facilities at Green Mountain Reservoir despite local opposition. I reminded them that NEPA is required on a case-by-case basis, if the policy results in any ground-disturbing work, and the NEPA process have not been applied to any work being done to obliterate developed recreation sites. I also mentioned that nowhere in America has any national forest ever publicly released their RSFMP Plan. The Forest Service representative then franticly began telling me " you don't understand. " This went on for what seemed to be an endless number of times. In between the " you don't understand " statements, I gathered that the Forest Service feels that congress has not appropriated enough money to fully fund the recreation program I knew very well that there was ample funding for recreation appropriated to the Forest Service by congress. Thus, my contact with the Forest Service was a waste of my time. The Forest Service Washington D.C. Office withholds 85% of the Recreation Budget Appropriated by Congress, and does not tell the national forest Supervisors. http://www.wildwilderness.orgCanada:17) It's warm and quiet here on this isolated Rockingham hilltop. And it seems a perfect scene of a lovely fall day. But environmentalist Minga O'Brien, of Halifax's Ecology Action Centre, sees something else. The area also shows the telltale signs of clearcutting, something she describes as a " devastating " forestry practice that's increased across Nova Scotia in recent years. Where old, long-lived tree species once stood, there are now tiny, young poplars or white birch — so-called " trash " species that are of little use to the forestry industry and all that typically sprouts up after an area has been levelled. " It upsets me because when you're looking at 500 square kilometres of our forest being treated like this every year, what you're seeing is a huge change in the composition of our forests . . . and the structure of our forests and all the biodiversity associated with that forest. " O'Brien and the centre's own literature claim 98 per cent of the trees harvested in Nova Scotia are clear cut: basically levelling all trees in a certain area. The Forest Products Association of Nova Scotia, representing industry, disputes the 98 per cent figure, putting it closer to 85 per cent. O'Brien says the practice destroys old trees (and as a result, the long-term sustainability of the industry), eliminates key habitat for wildlife and jeopardizes the ecosystem itself. The forest products association claims clearcutting is necessary, and, in some cases, better than the method favoured by the centre, something called selection harvesting — picking which trees to cut down in a particular stand. And as the province prepares to schedule public hearings on a new forestry strategy, the parties aren't in full agreement about how the whole issue should be examined. " If you open up the canopy (of trees) too much, like you do in a clearcut, what happens is you get . . . short-lived, low-value species (such as poplar). . . . Those species, they love the sun, but in fact they've got very little merchantability from the forest industry's perspective. http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/531776.html18) The Natural Resources Department is allowing lumber company MacTara Ltd. to clear cut a small section of the Chignecto Game Sanctuary, 20 kilometres south of Amherst. Last year, hundreds of Nova Scotians told the department they want greater habitat protection in those areas. " Nothing has changed as a result of this exhaustive public consultation, " said Kermit deGooyer of the Ecology Action Centre. " I don't know how they can ignore the sentiment of that review. The public was absolutely clear. " Natural Resources released a report in early 2005, recommending it eliminate game sanctuaries. That caused a significant backlash. A total of 501 people responded and hundreds more signed petitions against delisting. Petitions to save Chignecto gathered 395 signatures. " Improved habitat protection for the current sanctuaries and wildlife management areas was important to many respondents, " said the report released in February. " The regulations for each area will be reviewed to ensure appropriate habitat protection measures. " Natural Resources Minister David Morse said yesterday Chignecto is a wildlife sanctuary, not a tree sanctuary. " There has been a (lumber) harvest in the game sanctuary since it was designated as one, " Morse said. " This is not a change in policy. " He said MacTara will be allowed to cut just 215 hectares over the next six years - less than one per cent of the total forest. The company's cutting plans show 54 hectares will be cut this year. Endangered mainland moose calve in the area where trees will be cut. Morse said forest regeneration is good for moose. Author Harry Thurston was among a group of local residents who opposed delisting Chignecto last year. They formed Cumberland Wilderness to promote greater protection. He was in the area yesterday and saw Natural Resources staff building culverts for logging roads. He said the province does not seem to understand the level of support for preserving habitat. " We're not talking about a few people who have radical ideas, " he said. " The majority of people want the landscape protected and habitat for wildlife protected. " http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=8468 & sc=219) There exists a terrible, painful split within the forest conservation movement between those working to preserve with full protection all the world's remaining ancient forests, and those that believe that certified industrial forest logging of the world's last forest wildlands adequately protects these resources and their ecological values. The latter have worked for two decades and have failed both to demonstrate ecologically sustainable forest management on any scale, and to acknowledge and adapt to new science that indicates selective logging irreversibly diminishes biodiversity and ecosystems, including ancient forests' ability to hold carbon.The same groups that greenwashed the sell-out of British Columbia's ancient temperate rainforests to logging interests (most major environmental groups and foundations) are at it again - this time working with a voracious largely clearcut logging industry in Canada's boreal forests. These formerly massive forests are being devastated by intensive logging that is both unnecessary - for throw away products like Kleenex tissues - and is ecologically devastating. The forest sell-outs are wheeling and dealing with big foundation money to legitimize industrial ancient forest logging. The forest conservation movement must not allow a deal in Canada's boreal forests, Africa or anywhere else that justifies continued diminishment of these critical global ecological systems. The answer is to end ancient forest logging, not try to reform it yet again.Be warned, any deal with industry that allows continued industrial forestry for token protected areas in Canada will be vociferously blocked by bright green activists. Ending all ancient forest logging anywhere and anytime it is occurring is a global imperative if the Earth System (Gaia if you will) is to continue to function. Too many large, contiguous old-growth forest blocks have been lost already to maintain an operable biosphere. All that remain must be protected, and secondary forests restored and allowed to again become old-growth. http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2006/09/no_more_ancient_forest_logging.asp#commentsUK: 20) Government claims to be putting its house in environmental order were questioned yesterday when it emerged that the House of Commons is being refurbished with endangered tropical rainforest timber, despite cabinet and parliamentary commitments to use only sustainably grown wood. According to Greenpeace, many tons of plywood faced with distinctive bitangor wood are being used to construct temporary storerooms and to protect floors, walls and stairwells of the Commons, while the media centre and other areas are being restored in a £5m project. A trail of documents and visits to saw mills in China suggests that the bitangor wood being used was exported in raw log form from Papua New Guinea to China, where it was processed into veneer for plywood at the Jang Hai mill between Shanghai and Beijing. It was then legally exported by another Chinese company to Europe, where it is widely used in construction projects. This is the fourth time in three years that unsustainably grown rainforest timber has been found being used in the refurbishment of government buildings. The same bitangor-faced plywood was found at Admiralty Arch in July, and both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office have been shown to have used endangered tropical timber. Bitangor wood used to be exported widely to Britain from Indonesia and Malaysia, but little remains and it is now almost exclusively sourced from Papua New Guinea. Illegal logging is rampant there, and no companies are believed to be extracting wood grown in well managed forests. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/commons/story/0,,1883728,00.html21) Only yesterday I circulated to all of the above, including Pat, another piece of information showing how an FSC certified logging operation in Laos is, in fact, producing illegal timber. A couple of days before that, I circulated information about an FSC certified operation in Panama which actually transpires to be a massive financial scam with Mafia connections. Other recent bits of information which have been sent to Greenpeace about failures of the FSC system are shown in the 'Annex' below. I would be happy to copy to you all the full correspondence between myself and your Greenpeace colleagues on these FSC failures, as well as all the supporting information and documentation. I would add that NONE of the information I have provided on these dismal FSC certificates has been challenged by any of your Greenpeace colleagues. In fact, Greenpeace has been fully aware of the major problems within FSC for at least 4 years - and even acknowledged in 2002 that many if not all of the allegations against the FSC made in the Rainforest Foundation's report 'Trading in Credibility' were, in fact, valid. I therefore put it to you that for Greenpeace to claim that " the FSC is the only system that guarantees that timber comes from legal and sustainable sources " is knowingly to mislead the public. I therefore suggest that you issue a public retraction, clarification or correction to your statement on the radio this morning, and change the Greenpeace UK website appropriately. Unless such a correction is forthcoming by 15.00 today, I will feel compelled to take steps myself to try and remedy any mis-perception that you have created in the media, the government and the general public. Your sincerely, Simon Counsell, Director http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org22) Ministers are proposing an extraordinary scheme to tackle climate change in which the Amazon rainforest would be turned into an international trust and its trees sold to individuals and groups. Plans for the wholesale " privatisation " of the rainforest will be raised by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, at a summit in Mexico this week. The scheme, endorsed by Tony Blair, aims to protect the plants and wildlife from logging. About 13 million hectares of the world's forests are lost annually to deforestation, according to the Government. At last year's meeting of the G8 group of leading industrialised nations, Britain pledged to take a lead on climate-change programmes. But both emphasise the idea is at an early stage and admit that there would be " sovereignty issues " involving the government of Brazil, which is home to almost all the Amazon rainforest. Mr Miliband said: " Obviously there are sovereignty issues but deforestation is a massive issue… and any plan, however radical, is worth looking at. " It would involve the creation of an international body to buy the rainforest before setting up a trust to sell trees. The buyers would be " stake-holders " in the rainforest. A key figure behind the scenes has been Johan Eliasch, the Swedish-born multi-millionaire businessman who is deputy treasurer of the Conservative Party. Earlier this year he bought 400,000 acres in the Amazon rainforest for an estimated £8 million. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/01/namazon01.xmlHungary:23) In the outskirts of a small Hungarian town called Szabolcsbaka there stands a lime tree. It is 500 years old --the second oldest tree in Europe, as the sign says. Making a fire near the tree is prohibited, the sign warns, because the tree is protected. Of course, the tree is without real protection. Where there is human life, there is battlefield. Local youngsters cut the main branch of the tree to create a maypole. Somebody made a fire at the trunk, burning one side of the tree. The other side still lives, by the wrecked, truncate old tree looks like a ghost that mysteriously survived history. As for the tree-burners, they are the junk of creation. I curse them to die in horrible ways. I curse them, although I know it is nothing but a ritual cry. There is no curse that can help here; there is nothing that can help here. The witness of history stands, and from time to time, thrill-seeking men kill a tiny bit of it. Time is what they kill. These inferior beings are the last people, signs and causes of the failure, the breakdown. It seems that we still live, but we are all the buried ghosts of a civilization that collapsed under its own burden. The golden age is over, as if it had never existed. Behind the times lit with sunlight there is only a glowing shadow. At the end of the unbelievable harmony that never existed, at the end of the human path linking the internal and the external, linking lower and higher worlds, there stands a mutilated, blazing lime tree. Its shadow is burning us. -- Attila Vegh Russia:24) The Committee of Natural Resources of the State Duma will consider a bill covering modifications in the Forestry Code. A new variant of the Code is being worked out at the moment at the second reading. According to the civil servants, among the countries possessing vast woodlands Russia will remain the only one, which forest areas will stay in the ownership of the state. The proprietary rights to forestry lands will belong to the federal government as before, whereas full power to manage these woods will be devolved upon the regional and municipal administration. But along with the full power the regions will get a range of problems, says the analyst of a consulting company Lesprom Pavel Artemiev. Currently the federal government operates all management functions. It is taken to be that regions should exercise only control, observation and monitoring. So finding new financial sources to support the forest management will be up to them, and it is not so easy, as it seems, especially amid sparsely wooded regions. It would be justly, if along with the forest administration rights regions could get compensation for wood resources usage, says the expert. Russia declined the idea of private property on woods. The variant of the Forestry Code that was accepted at the first reading suggested renting of timberland for a term of 99 years. The concept is similar to that of private property, says Pavel Artemiev. But the variant of the Forest Code projected for the second reading mentions the maximum rent period: 49 years. Now lease terms of wood lots do not exceed 3-5 years in the majority of cases. Nevertheless, the growing stock maturity period in Russia is about 70-80, and sometimes up to 90 years. That is the exact time the whole cycle takes - from planting the seedling to cutting down industrial wood. And this is the reason why big woodworking companies are interested in passing the variant with the lease term of 99 years. http://www.russia-ic.com/business_law/in_depth/257/Guatemala:25) The United States government has joined with two environmental groups in a debt-for-nature swap, which will forgive about 20 percent of Guatemala's $108 million in foreign debt to Washington in an effort to help threatened tropical forests there, American and conservation officials said late last week. In a deal to be announced Monday in Guatemala City, the government of Guatemala has agreed, in exchange for the debt forgiveness, to invest $24.4 million over the next 15 years in conservation work in four nature regions. This is the largest amount of debt that has been forgiven by the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, which was enacted in 1998. So far, 10 countries, from the Philippines to Peru, have had part of their debt forgiven in exchange for forest protection efforts. "You can't just come in as the U.S. and say it's important to protect those forests," Claudia A. McMurray, assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment and science, said in an interview. "You have to give these countries alternatives." In the latest deal, the United States government contributed about $15 million toward the cancellation of Guatemala's debt, said Clay Lowery, assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs. The groups Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy each contributed an additional $1 million. Those funds, and the interest they will generate, will be enough to erase more than $20 million in debt and interest, officials said. "This is a huge deal for Guatemala," John Beavers, who helped to negotiate the deal for the Nature Conservancy, said in a telephone interview from Guatemala City. "We hope it helps to drive the conservation area in Guatemala." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/world/americas/02conserve.html?_r=1 & ref=world & oref=slogin Brazil:26) As of Sunday evening, Brazil -- the country that houses the bulk of the Amazon rainforest -- had not issued a statement in response to the proposal. In the past Brazil has objected to plans to turn the Amazon into an " international trust " calling such ideas a threat to its national sovereignty. In the late 1950s, following the internationalization of Antarctica, Brazil became concerned over its tenuous claim to the Amazon, an began taking steps to assert control over the region. To establish a " presence " in the Amazon, and therefore the right to keep it as part of the national territory, the Brazilian government established the Manaus Free Trade Zone -- a sort of tariff-free manufacturing zone -- and aggressively promoted settlement and development in the Amazon, resulting in widespread forest loss, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Deforestation in the region continues today: between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece—largely as a result from clearing for cattle pasture and agricultural activities. Slowing this rate of forest loss could have a significant impact on Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, of which about 75 percent result from deforestation. Globally, deforestation accounts for about 20-25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1002-amazon.html27) WWF believes that, carried out in the right way, sustainable forestry activities can generate income while ensuring a plentiful supply of timber in the long term, and helping to conserve existing wildlife and plant species. In some areas, the trend has even been reversed with government enforcing laws which require landowners to keep at least 80% of their land forested. Previous laws had set this figure at 50% and, in the Acre region at least, government is forcing those who do not meet these targets to plant native sapling such as mahogany grown in state nurseries. Meanwhile, the Amazon Regional Protected Areas (ARPA) initiative, administered by an alliance of NGOs, development banks and the Brazilian Government, has secured some 20 million hectares of forest land which will now be protected. " Through ARPA we are creating parks and reserves in areas that risk being rapidly deforested, " explained Cláudio Maretti, head of WWF-Brazil's protected areas programme, which supports the ARPA initiative. " We are not only ensuring biodiversity conservation in perpetuity in these areas, but we are also bringing order to the land tenure chaos that leads to uncontrolled deforestation. " http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=12061 & channel=028) The global green movement claimed the Amazon as its own two decades ago as rock star Sting started writing songs about it and native rubber-tapper Chico Mendes was killed for leading protests against deforestation. But Brazil's economy is fueled by commodity exports, so many people see trees, land and minerals in the Amazon as the country's best hope for lifting some 50 million citizens out of poverty. " This government has two faces. One is led by business interests and the other by social interests, and the two are in constant tension, " said Adalberto Marcondes, editor of the newsletter Envolverde. Dispute over how to develop the Amazon marked Lula's first term. Brazilians are clamoring for economic growth, which for many people means more logging and more energy for industry. In Lula's first term, land-clearing in the Amazon surged as a global boom in demand for soy and beef tempted farmers and ranchers deeper into the rainforest. The export income lifted Brazil's economy but a chunk of rainforest the size of Massachusetts was cleared in one year. After peaking in 2004, deforestation slowed by a third in 2005 and is expected to slow another 10 percent this year. But environmentalists worry the real reason for the decline is waning demand for soy, beef and timber. Greenpeace gave a " Golden Chainsaw " award -- for the person who contributed most to Amazon destruction -- to Mato Grosso governor Bruno Maggi, a big-time farmer known as the Soy King. Environmentalists give Lula some credit for his decision to nearly double the acreage of state-protected conservation areas to about 10 percent of Brazil's Amazon territory. Environment minister Marina Silva gets most of the credit for environmental policies in the last four years, they say. Silva, the daughter of Amazon rubber-tappers, orchestrated more than a dozen police raids to break up illegal logging rings, some involving the state environmental agency. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092800830.html29) On a regional basis, the Amazonian forest influences precipitation volume, temperature stabilization, the maintenance of humidity on the ground, water erosion and atmospheric carbon capture. Carbon, when joined with oxygen, forms a poisonous product called carbonic gas or CO2, one of main gases responsible for the Greenhouse Effect, or global heating. This phenomenon can increase air temperature, provoking thawing at the polar regions, increased seas level, and flooding in littoral cities. On the other hand, vegetation removes CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. But this gas can return to the atmosphere, either by natural processes (breathing and decomposition of dead organic matter) or artificial ones (deforestation and forest fires). In the case of Brazil <http://www.amazonia.org.br/english/>, these phenomena account for about 3 percent of the change of global climate and 75 percent of the country's contribution to global warming. According to Carlos Nobre, cited in the Brazilian version of the previous site and scientific coordinator of the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) and current coordinator of the Weather Forecast Center and Climatic Studies of INPE, the Amazonian forest removes from the atmosphere about 6 kg of carbon per hectare per day, representing 850 million tons of carbon per year. http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=319536 & rel_no=1 Bolivia:30) Bolivia received $25m for the sale of carbon credits it had earned by saving Amazon rainforest from logging in the first ever such deal for the impoverished South American country. The project in the Noel Kempff Mercado national rainforest park, one of Amazonia's biggest and most intact protected areas, began a decade ago but its results have only just been revealed by the Bolivian government's special investigator in this matter, Louis Aliaga. The money has gone to communities living in the protected area as compensation for lost revenue from agricultural land and logging which resulted from the protection of the forest. Bolivia's government ministries had worked with local communities, but also with logging companies to realise the project, which is helping preserve the rich biodiversity of the area as well as preventing the carbon dioxide stored in the forest from escaping into the atmosphere and contributing to the greenhouse effect. The 1,523,000 ha Noel Kempff Mercado national park, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2000, is the site of the largest forest-based carbon projects in the world, ran by several NGOs including the Friends of Nature Foundation and the Nature Conservancy. http://www.ecoearth.info//China:31) In 2002, China banned all logging along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in an effort to control the problem. " We can see from the present situation that after many years of crackdowns, crimes relating to destroying forest resources ought to have been bought under control, " said Zhang Ping, deputy head of the State Forestry Administration's police division. " Cases do still happen, and some are very serious, " she told a news conference. " When they do, our attitude is certainly to strike hard, and investigate every case. " Tropical areas including the southwestern province of Yunnan, which borders Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as China's frigid northeast where forest cover is extensive, still have problems with illegal logging, Zhang added. China embarked upon a national tree planting campaign in 1982 to reverse years of indiscriminate logging during the environmentally-blind early era of Communism. A fifth of China's land mass is expected to be forested by 2010, up from around 18 percent today and less than 10 percent 50 years ago, forestry officials have asserted. But environmental groups have accused China of plundering forests in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, and that the country is at the heart of a global trade in illegal timber it sells to markets in the United States and Europe. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK331713.htm 32) Sino-Forest is the leading, foreign-owned, commercial forestry plantation operator in China in terms of plantation area. Under the Agreement, Sino-Panel will purchase approximately 100,000 hectares of plantation trees in Hongjiang City, Hunan Province for RMB2,600,000,000 to RMB3,120,000,000 or approximately US$328.3 million to US$393.9 million over a 14-year period. The average purchase price per cubic meter is RMB260 or approximately US$32.83. The number of hectares of plantations to be acquired each year will be determined by Sino-Panel's PRC subsidiaries by entering into specific plantation purchase agreements with Hongjiang City Forestry. The Agreement also provides Sino-Forest the right of first refusal to lease the land for 50 years after harvesting. The final terms of the lease are to be negotiated with Hongjiang City Forestry upon the authorisation of the original plantation rights holders. The Hunan plantations contain mature species of pine and Chinese fir with an estimated fibre yield of 100 m(3) to 120 m(3) (cubic meters) per hectare, or 10 million m(3) to 12 million m(3) of wood fibre in total, which will generate immediate cash flow to fund a portion of the acquisition. The balance of the funding for this acquisition will be provided by the company's operating cash flow, and cash in hand.The Agreement is a first step in securing a further 300,000 hectares of plantation trees in Hunan. With the signing of the additional 300,000 hectares, Sino-Forest is expected to have secure over 40 million m(3) of long-term wood fibre, over a 14-year period. Agreement for the purchase of the additional 300,000 hectares of plantations is expected to be signed before the end of 2006. http://biz./prnews/060928/to236.html?.v=37New Zealand:33) A mystery fungus linked to Ireland's potato famine is killing kauri trees. Scientists say the exotic fungus is the same one discovered on Great Barrier Island in the 1970s but don't know how it reached two of the country's showcase kauri stands, the Waitakere Ranges and Northland's Trounson Kauri Park.Although mainly younger trees are affected, some sick trees are up to 100 years old. At Maungaroa Ridge, above Piha Beach, one patch of dead or dying kauri spreads over at least 2ha. " The fungus causes dead patches or lesions which then ooze a lot of gum and these essentially creep round the base of the trunk and ring-bark the tree, " said Landcare researcher Dr Ross Beever. " I think there's reason to be concerned, certainly there are some [big trees] around the Cascades where we find these large lesions. " The fungus belongs to the Phytophthora genus, a different species of which devastated Ireland's potato crop in the mid-1800s, leaving thousands of people to starve. " Phytophthora really are fantastically difficult pathogens but this fungus is not known anywhere else in the world, " said Dr Beever. " I suspect it's come in from somewhere because it's too damaging to kauri to have been here long. " Dr Beever faces at least another year's research investigating how lethal the fungus has been on Great Barrier since its tentative identification in 1974. " I have visited the site and it seems to have increased significantly since then. We are trying to get aerial photos to see what it's doing now. " http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1 & objectid=10403713 Australia:34) The Victorian Premier Steve Bracks says he has no knowledge of a covert campaign by the packaging giant Amcor to infiltrate both the Labor Party and environment groups in the 1990s. The ABC's Four Corners program will tonight air evidence that implicates Amcor in an elaborate strategy, involving paying bribes and using stooges to attend meetings of Victoria's key environmental groups. Four Corners will allege that Amcor established a group known as the A-team, and that it stacked the ALP's environment policy committee, hindering discussion of forest policy. Documents obtained by Four Corners show that the A-team was funded in part by the Pulp and Paper Workers Union, which later joined the forestry division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the CFMEU. Steve Bracks concedes the Victorian ALP was divided on forestry policy in the early 1990s, but he says that by the time he won Government in 1999, the party had a strong policy in favour of native forests. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1753803.htm35) Australia's emerging plantation based woodchip export industry has negotiated higher prices for its product this year while the native forest based industry is suffering flat prices and falling volumes. Woodchip export prices to the major market, Japan, have traditionally been negotiated by Gunns, the Tasmanian giant with around 80 per cent of the export market. The nascent plantation sector has ridden on its coat-tails and used that price as a benchmark. However, this year for the first time, the hardwood plantation sector did its own negotiating and won higher prices while Gunns copped a price freeze and 20 per cent volume reduction for its native forest output. "This year the plantation guys went out and negotiated their own prices and got a small increase," said Andrew Crowther, an analyst with Linwar Securities. Robert Eastment, director of economic research group IndustryEdge, said the Gunns benchmark price this year was $162 per tonne from the Japanese buyers, the same as the year before. http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=33 & ContentID=8454World Wide: 36) The letter concludes that " GM trees have no role to play in the conservation of global forest biological diversity and, on the contrary, are likely to reduce forest biodiversity, with attendant social consequences. The high risks indicated by the available though incomplete science show that the technology could result in the extinction of forest plant and animal species with severe negative impacts on biodiversity " and urges the CBD " to move forward from the current recommendation to Parties to take a precautionary approach, to a mandatory decision declaring an immediate ban on the release of GM trees. " The full letter is available* IMMEDIATELY BELOW* or can be found: http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/GMTrees/LetterCBD.html_ If you wish to sign on to this letter, please send a message to STOP GE Trees info before November 15th!37) It is in the developing countries that encouraging biofuel plantings is more problematic. As we point out in an earlier post "Deforestation Diesel," planting biofuels is crowding out food production in countries where prices of food are already too high. Planting biofuels is also encouraging deforestation, since now there are two reasons, food and fuel, for taking down trees and planting crops. Moreover, planting biofuels will lead to desertification, since much of the topsoil in the tropics is very thin and deteriorates quickly when the tree canopy is removed. To replace all energy used on earth with biofuel would require 10 million square miles of land, on a planet with only 5 million square miles of arable farmland. See proof for these figures in "Biofuel vs. Photovoltaics." For this reason, as long as growing biofuel is profitable, and in many parts of the world it is very profitable, the pressures to deforest will be more compelling than ever. Those who believe we need to manage atmospheric CO2 to manage global warming should be especially concerned. So what if biofuel is "carbon neutral" if producing it requires stripping the earth of even more forest canopy and contributing to the spread of deserts? More forests (cool and CO2 sponges) cool the planet, and more deserts (hot and no CO2 absorption) warm the planet. Their impact very likely dwarfs any advantage we may get from burning biofuel instead of petroleum. At the least, these trade-offs need to be evaluated. http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2006/09/26/ted-turner-biofuels/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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