Guest guest Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Today for you 34 new articles about earth's trees! (243rd edition) Subscribe / send blank email to: earthtreenews- Weblog: http://olyecology.livejournal.com . --British Columbia: 1) Biggest logging protest since 1990's, 2) Logger strike stats, 3) Community forest in E. Fraser, --Washington: 4) Moss poaching --Oregon: 5) Wildlands-urban interface --Idaho: 6) Old trees planted by US leaders turned into woodcrafts --Utah: 7) Lightning torches 300,000 acres of sagebrush and juniper --Montana: 8) Putting Mark Rey in jail, 9) Fireproofing Helena NF, 10) Rich buy land, --Minnesota: 11) Action teams plan future forest industry --Wisconsin: 12) Biocomposites saves trees, 13) Schools like to log, 14) more on schools, --Maryland: 15) 330 trees to be cut at airport --New Jersey: 16) Princeton University students embraced trees last week --Georgia: 17) Orginal forests of pine and wiregrass --Florida: 18) Restoration destroying forests --USA: 19) US private lands change hands --Canada: 20) 11 Greenpeacers arrested protesting boreal, 21) Nova Forest Alliance leader steps down to decry corruption, 22) Diverse forest more likely to thrive, --UK: 23) Sherwood Forest is dying, 24) Three Village Woodlands Group --Netherlands: 25) Dutch Glory destroys forest --Panama: 26) Canal expansion is a threat to ecosystems --Brazil: 27) Brazil's Landless Rural Workers Movement, 28) NGOs draft an ambitious plan, 29) Development brings only disease and death --Peru: 30) Precautionary measures to protect some of the last indigenous peoples --Madagascar: 31) Zurich zoo conservation project --Australia: 32) pulp mill is exposing tensions in both major parties, 33) Illegal logs, --World-wide: 34) Innovative Forest Carbon Partnership Facility British Columbia: 1) Numbers grew to close to 600 at the rally that followed, with most of the group taking part in what organizers called an " ancient forest falldown " — crouching to their knees in sequence to simulate the loss of old-growth forests over the years. The sound of a revving chainsaw was played over a public-address system before each group of people knelt. A few stayed standing to symbolize the old-growth trees that remain in the province. " This is the most important time in the history of B.C.'s coastal old-growth forests, " the Western Canada Wilderness Committee's Ken Wu told the crowd. He said the sheer magnitude of old-growth trees makes them unique. " There's so few places on Earth where you have trees literally as wide as your living room and as tall as a skyscraper. " The huge trees are a boon to tourism and provide a habitat for many species, Wu said. " Our goal at this point is to put an end to old-growth logging on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, have the industry log the second-growth forest sustainably and ban raw-log exports to protect the jobs of B.C. timber workers. " The march and rally were staged to coincide with the provincial government's consideration of a new coastal forest-industry plan and coastal old-growth strategy. The Forests Ministry has said that neither will be released until the ongoing coastal forestry strike is settled. Other jurisdictions, including New Zealand and southwestern Australia, have banned old-growth logging in recent years. " The logging industry is already making a transition into second-growth logging in southern BC. We're just advocating that they make the full transition sooner, before they finish off the last of the unprotected ancient forests, " stated Anya Reid UBC Ancient Forest Committee co director. See the Global TV news video and article at: http://www.canada.com/globaltv/bc/story.html?id=876eaa39-10b2-43e7-867e-2e336d17\ a30b & k=83959# - http://www.wildernesscommitteevictoria.org/gallery_ubc_rally.php 2) Almost half the usual volume of timber is still being harvested on the Coast despite a three-month-long strike by 7,000 woodworkers, according to government statistics. The scaled harvest volume for the Coast in September from Crown land was 45 per cent of last year's volume while August's volume was 43 per cent as high as last year, strong indicators that the United Steelworkers strike has failed to shut down the industry, said independent analyst Kevin Mason. " The wood is still moving, " Mason, of Equity Research Associates, said Friday. " Those of us who live on the Coast have seen it and we have heard anecdotally that there's a lot of logging going on. Now we have the numbers that prove it. " On July 21, 7,000 loggers and sawmill workers went on strike. The union is fighting over contracting out, changes in shifts and hours of work, and attempts by some companies to freeze workers out of severance pay through partial shutdowns. In a partial shutdown, most of the workforce is laid off until their seniority runs out. A portion of the operation stays open with only a few employees who would then be eligible for severance pay. The issues do not affect everyone equally and have led to a bitter strike, where so-called good operators are being lumped in with bad, and crews with no complaints are striking in support of comrades who have been affected.The Steelworkers are picketing 33 companies, 31 of them who are represented by their bargaining agent, Forest Industrial Relations. On other fronts in the coastal strike, the Labour Relations Board ruled against TimberWest Friday for offering signing bonuses of $100,000 each to 29 forestry crewmen and engineers, in exchange for a five-year agreement that the union claimed is designed to destroy the rest of the bargaining unit. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=e11f268f-e998-41a\ 9-b932-73aa791 e6f3c & k=40746 3) A community forest agreement in the eastern Fraser Valley is expected to stimulate local economies and build a sense of regional harmony in Yale, Hope and the Yale First Nation. With management decisions " in the hands of local people, " harvested timber can be sold to local companies or mills, instead of markets outside the region like a multinational owner would do, says Doug Hansen, forest manager at the Yale First Nation. " Under local control ... the logs can be sent to a log-home company or to a small cedar mill, " he says, creating value-added jobs and keeping harvest dollars in the region. Local managers will also have control over logging sites, crucial to maintaining recreation areas. The five-year agreement allows the Cascade Lower Canyon Community Forest Corporation the right to harvest up to 34,300 cubic metres of timber per year on public forest lands in the Chilliwack Forest District. The corporation owned by the Yale First Nation, Hope and the Fraser Valley Regional District (for the Yale electoral area) plans to re-invest the profits in silviculture projects and other community-oriented programs. An advisory committee will focus on recreation and educational issues. The agreement can be extended for 25 to 99 years after the initial five-year probationary term expires. B.C. forests minister Rich Coleman says such agreements " diversify and stimulate local economies " and allow communities to manage forest resources like timber and plant products, recreation, wildlife, water and scenic viewscapes, based on the needs of the community. http://www.hopestandard.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=13 & cat=23 & id=1080954 & mor\ e=0 Washington: 4) A 1940s poem by Theodore Roethke, who gathered moss for his family's greenhouses, likened harvesting to " pulling off flesh from the living planet; As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration. " Deputy Sheriff Ted Drogmund was patrolling remote logging roads in the damp foothills of the Olympic National Forest in June when he came upon two men and a pit bull in a pickup truck. The men said they were camping on a timber company's land. Mr. Drogmund gave them a trespassing ticket. He found out later what they had really been doing: stripping the forest floor of moss. They left behind dozens of 50-pound bags of wet, stringy green moss. " It was just regular moss, " says Mr. Drogmund, who is the law-enforcement official charged with nabbing poachers across 1,000 square miles of mountainous county land. " To these guys, it's just money growing in the woods. " Moss poachers have been plying the Olympic range in recent years, combing the soggy ground and trees for the squishy stuff that lines flower baskets, provides greenery for nativity scenes at Christmas and cushions Holland's tulip bulbs for shipping. Long unpopular with gardeners and careful tenders of grassy lawns, moss has new cachet as a trendy ground and outdoor wall cover. It's also used in small, desktop rock gardens and as a base in Japanese bonsai-tree kits. Gardening Web sites and TV shows advocate its low-maintenance growing potential, the cushiony feel of walking barefoot on it, and even the plant's supposedly stress-reducing green color. Last year alone, Mr. Drogmund, who calls himself " the woods deputy, " estimates he arrested more than 100 greenery thieves on private property and national forest land. In the Pacific Northwest, dried moss stripped from tree trunks and branches goes for about 45 cents a pound locally. Wet or dirty moss, or moss from the forest floor littered with pine needles and leaves, fetches a bit less. Hiawatha Corp. in Shelton, Wash., touts its moss as " clean, light and feathery. " http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119223579420958031.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Oregon: 5) Everyone here in Oregon loves our forests. These lands -- most in public ownership -- are the cornerstone for both the economic and ecological health of the state, and are central to our identity. Indeed, more and more of us are making our homes in the woods every year, in the so-called " wildlands-urban interface. " And so, whether we are loggers, conservationists or vacation-home owners, we all share a common fear: fire. Uncontrolled, stand-replacing wildfire can destroy in a day all the forest values that took centuries to develop. Therefore, it's hard to believe that the Bureau of Land Management would propose to drastically increase the risk of wildfire on their forestlands in Oregon. Yet that is exactly what the agency is doing. This burning secret is hidden deep within the BLM's recently-released Draft Environmental Impact statement for its Western Oregon Plan Revisions, or WOPR, pronounced " whopper " by just about everyone. Arising from an out-of-court settlement between the Bush administration and a timber industry group, the plan discards the present management framework governing 2.5 million acres of low-elevation forests throughout western Oregon and the Klamath Basin. Current management includes an extensive network of reserves that were established to assure the survival of the threatened Northern Spotted Owl, and that are off-limits to commercial logging. The draft plan would eliminate those reserves, drastically reduce no-cut buffers along streams, and instead designate commercial logging as the " predominant " use. http://origin.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7138875 Idaho: 6) The Idaho Statehouse lawn may have lost its trees as part of the Capitol remodel/wings project. But the state isn't losing the wood, nor, hopefully, its history. Woodworkers from around the state are being asked to transform the salvaged lumber from the Northern red oak planted in 1971 by the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers, from the maple planted by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and all the other trees into objects for display in the remodeled Capitol. The wood, which took about six weeks to cut into pieces, is drying in storage in Eagle, Boise GOP Rep. Max Black said. He plans to use pieces from the three trees planted by presidents, an Ohio buckeye planted in 1911 by William Howard Taft, a water oak planted by Benjamin Harrison in 1891 and the Roosevelt rock sugar maple, to make a miniature steam engine. " All three of the presidents who planted trees on the grounds would have arrived in Idaho in such an engine, " he said. Black expects all the wood to be dry and in the hands of woodworkers by the end of the year. In certain cases, a long drying process wasn't necessary. The Roosevelt tree blew down years ago and had been curing on its own in a closet under the Statehouse steps ever since. The Taft tree was technically alive, but barely. Most of its limbs and trunk were hollow, Black said. The wood was dry even before the tree came down. Paulette Shelledy, a woodworker in Rigby, is waiting for her wood to make walking sticks, one for Idaho and one for her daughter, Vhiana, 5. " I'm using pieces from the Martin Luther King tree, " said Shelledy, about the tree planted in the 1980s on the Capitol grounds by the NAACP. http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2007/10/13/ap-state-id/d8s8fne81.txt Utah: 7) In early July, a bolt of lightning struck the high desert outside of Milford, Utah, lighting a fire that torched more than 300,000 acres of sagebrush and juniper. As residents fled the nearby town of Cove Fort, smoke blanketed Interstate 15, causing a pileup and one fatal crash. It took more than 300 firefighters, two air tankers, two helicopters, 30 fire engines, and nine bulldozers to control the flames of the Milford Flat blaze. A thick blanket of invasive cheatgrass burned like gasoline because, unlike native grasses, it had completely dried out weeks before, dropping its seeds to the soil below. Wildfires burned nearly 5 million acres in the West this year, much of that in the sagebrush ecosystem where cheatgrass thrives. Though the fight to subdue those fires is winding down, a new, high-stakes drama is just beginning. Government scientists are already in the field, writing restoration plans for the burned areas and taking advantage of a slim window of opportunity to tackle what is generally accepted as one of the great environmental catastrophes of the West: the vicious cycle of cheatgrass and fire. Before pioneer settlement, sagebrush may have burned once every few hundred years or more, taking more than a century to fully recover. Then huge herds of cattle were turned out onto the land, grazing it down to almost nothing and making way for cheatgrass to invade. Once cheatgrass gets a foothold, an area can burn every six or seven years, which is too much for the native ecosystem to handle. It's up to researchers and land managers to try to break that cycle. http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17279 & utm_source=newsletter1 Montana; 8) A federal judge on Friday warned the Bush administration's top forestry official he could go to jail for contempt of court in a case challenging the use of fire retardant by the U.S. Forest Service to fight wildfires. U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in Missoula, Mont., issued the warning in a written order canceling a contempt hearing for Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey that had been scheduled for Monday. The judge said he needed time to read 200 pages of material filed at the last minute by the Forest Service. " If on review I find there is noncompliance, I will reschedule the contempt hearing and Secretary Rey will be required to appear and show cause why he should not be held in contempt — and jailed — until the law and the court's orders have been complied with, " Molloy wrote. The judge gave the Forest Service 10 days to produce the environmental analysis the agency did on fire retardant six years ago, to evaluate the " legitimacy " of the analysis. Rey said the Frost Service was committed to complying with the judge's orders and he stood ready to appear at any future contempt hearing set by the judge. " If he wants us to be there we will be there, " Rey said. In 2005, Molloy ruled that the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it failed to go through a public process to analyze the potential environmental harm from using ammonium phosphate, a fertilizer that kills fish, as the primary ingredient for retardant dropped on wildfires. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics after fire retardant dropped in Fall Creek in Central Oregon in 2002 killed 20,000 fish. Ever since Molloy's ruling, the Forest Service has been dragging its feet on producing a new environmental review. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics pressed to have Rey found in contempt, arguing the environmental assessment filed on the deadline Wednesday lacked a formal declaration of no significant impact. A NOAA Fisheries review found that with the Forest Service's lax attention to fire retardant drops in streams, the program jeopardized the survival of 26 species of salmon and other anadramous species. However, if the Forest Service agrees to test the toxicity of various formulations of fire retardant and pay more attention to when it is dropped in streams, there should be no problem. http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-21/11922366071\ 86950.xml & story list=orlocal 9) The Helena National Forest wants to use chainsaws and other hand tools to cut down small trees on small parcels totaling 960 acres in the mountains around Helena. The work would take place in areas where forest lands come close to homes, often called the " urban/wildland interface. " " This doesn't involve any commercial logging or timber sales, " Dave Larsen, the Helena Ranger District's fire management officer. " We'll just walk up the hill, hack the stuff down, put it in piles and burn it when the weather is good (for burning) like when it's wet out or the ground is snow covered. " The intent of the project is to improve public safety by reducing burnable fuels in the forest, which should decrease the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires close to Helena. The public has 45 days to appeal the proposal to the regional forester. " The project will begin to return the area to a condition which results in fires which are less damaging and easier to control. As a result we will be more successful in managing a fire in this area, " according to Helena District Ranger Duane Harp. Harp said only trees 6 inches in diameter or smaller will be cut down and stacked in piles. Existing roads and trails will be used for access, and the work should be complete within five years. Larsen said he hopes they can start the project after the 45-day appeal period ends, and that it will wrap up in two years. " Some of this could take place during the winter, but we probably won't do much until the spring, " Larsen said. " I think there is a little sense of urgency, and we'd like to get this done within two years. " The Tri-County Fire Working Group identified the project area in the Community Wildfire Protection Plan of 2005 Pat McKelvey, a member of the group, notes that fuel reduction work on the National Forest will assist private landowners in creating defensible space against wildfires. http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007/10/13/helena/c01101307_02.txt 10) Mr. Foley, 62, standing by his private pond, his horses grazing in the distance, proudly calls himself a conservationist who wants Montana to stay as wild as possible. A timber company began logging in view of his front yard a few years back. He thought they were cutting too much, so he bought the land. That does not mean no development and no profit. Mr. Foley, the chairman of a major title insurance company, Fidelity National Financial, based in Florida, also owns a chain of Montana restaurants, a ski resort and a huge cattle ranch on which he is building homes. But arriving here already rich and in love with the landscape, he said, also means his profit motive is different. " A lot of it is more for fun than for making money, " said Mr. Foley, who estimates he has invested about $125 million in Montana in the past few years, mostly in real estate. Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek Timber, the country's largest private landowner, are cashing in, putting tens of thousands of wooded acres on the market from Montana to Oregon. Plum Creek, which owns about 1.2 million acres here in Montana alone, is getting up to $29,000 an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for timber cutting. " Everybody wants to buy a 640-acre section of forest that's next to the U.S. Forest Service or one of the wilderness areas, " said Plum Creek's president and chief executive, Rick Holley. As a result, population is surging in areas surrounding national forests and national parks, with open spaces being carved up into sprawling wooded plots, enough for a house and no nosy neighbors. Here in Flathead County, on the western edge of Glacier National Park, the number of real estate transactions, mostly for open land, rose by 30 percent from 2003 to 2006, according to state figures. The county's population is up 44 percent since 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/13timber.html?hp Minnesota: 11) For nearly a year, " action teams " comprised of a diverse mix of forest stakeholders of Minnesota's forests have been meeting to deliberate the challenges and opportunities inherent in increasing the productivity and availability of the state's public and private forest lands. The teams have focused on three key challenges to that productivity, namely: the silviculture of forests; private, or family forest land ownership; and crossing political boundaries to share and manage information about the state's forest inventories, harvest schedules, and management plans. The foundation of the conference lies in the economic challenges confronting the state's forest products industry, including increasing energy, transportation, and harvesting costs; and recent demands that Minnesota's forest products industries position themselves to become major contributors to the state's renewable energy standard. On October 16, the deliberations of those action teams will culminate in a " challenge " to state legislators, private funding organizations, and rural community business leaders to take actions to improving forest productivity. http://www.ifallsdailyjournal.com/node/5175 Wisconsin: 12) Actually, it wasn't intended to be a bench at all. Rather, it was an example of an engineered biocomposite board made of 50 percent bovine digested solids and 50 percent recycled paper fiber. It was made of material developed at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison and was on display at the booth of GHD, Inc. of Chilton, a company that specializes in designing and installing manure digesting systems on dairy farms across the country. Steve Dvorak, owner of GHD, Inc. said his company has been involved in research with the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison aimed at finding possible uses for digested manure solids in fiber board. And after a year of research, the FPL has come up with the manure/paper composite and is doing an economic analysis of the product. Some background: In the 1880s, the U.S, Forest Service was actively involved in " timber physics " and in 1909 sought a centralized location for a wood research laboratory. After some competition among several universities, the University of Wisconsin was selected in 1910 as the site for the new Forest Products Laboratory by secretary of agriculture James Wilson. In the 97 years since, the FPL has continued on its mission " to use science and technology to conserve and extend our nation's forest resources, " and has long been recognized as a source of unbiased information about wood science and use. One of the focus areas of the FPL is working with advanced composites, where Jerrold Winandy is the project leader for Engineered Composites Science. His 12-member group of researchers includes John Hunt, a mechanical engineer who is working directly with performance-engineered composites including the digested manure research program. http://www.madison.com/tct/business/250589 13) It won 't erase the Madison School District 's projected budget shortfall of about $4 million, but an upcoming sale of timber from the district 's forest is expected to generate $63,000 -- and some lessons in a " selective harvest " for students. At its meeting tonight, district administrators are asking the School Board to approve a bid from Meister Log and Lumber Co. of Reedsburg to cull crowded trees and large timber from portions of 80 acres of the district 's 307-acre forest southwest of Verona. Half of the $63,000 would go to the district 's general fund, while the remainder would be given to an environmental education endowment fund at the Foundation for Madison 's Public Schools. " It 's cool, " School Board President Arlene Silveira said. " The students are learning and we can reap financial benefits as well. " The Madison School Forest 's first timber sale in about seven years would include the cutting of small numbers of white pines and red pines planted by students in the 1960s. " This is a thinning so that the desirable species that are there, predominantly oaks, will have more room to mature, " said Lisa Wachtel, the district 's science and environmental education coordinator, who noted the plan has been approved by an advisory board, a boosters group and experts at UW-Madison and the state Department of Natural Resources. On trips to the forest, students have seen how crowding causes trees to grow weak and spindly, Wachtel said, and after the culling is complete, they 'll see how the work improves the health of the forest. The logging would take place this winter if the weather cooperates. It won 't disrupt students ' learning, she said. For the timber project, the district contacted 56 companies, but Meister was the only one to submit a bid. About 75 percent of the trees removed, Witkowski said, will be black cherry and black oak, with an average diameter of 16 inches and ages of 80 years and up. The lumber will be sold on global markets and fashioned into furniture, cabinets and flooring, he said. In addition, workers will remove smaller trees and the tops of large trees for firewood and pulp for use in paper and cardboard. That will involve aspen, white pine, red pine, white oak, elm, hickory and basswood and will open up the forest to speed the growth of younger trees, Witkowski said. http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/index.php?ntid=251108 14) The West Salem Outdoor Education Center, which covers 130 wooded acres near Fort McCoy in Monroe County, is among the nearly 1,000 acres of forest that belong to school districts in the six-county area. In theory, districts could make a fair sum of money by selling off such prime woodlands. But educators contend the real value of these school forests is as a teaching tool. And even cash-strapped districts say they'll never sell. " I think people are starting to realize how important the school forest is to their school district, " said Barb Thompson, environmental education coordinator for the West Salem School District. " Without them, environmental education wouldn't be the same. " It's been suggested several times that the West Salem district sell its forest. Each time, the school board resisted, Thompson said. " The forest is such an asset, " she said. None of Wisconsin's 25,000 acres of registered school forest land has fallen under the budget axe in five years, said Jeremy Solin, school forest education specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Budget-crunched districts occasionally discuss letting go of school forest land, but actual sales are rare, Solin said. " A sale is a short-term income generator, " he said. " If a school board is interested in selling, we work hard to show them the educational benefits. " In fact, some programs are adding on. The average registered school forest parcel in the Coulee Region is 52.75 acres, but many districts have multiple sites. Single-parcel sizes in La Crosse, Monroe, Crawford, Jackson, Trempealeau and Vernon counties range from the 3-acre Blair-Taylor School Forest in Jackson County to the 138-acre Osseo School Forest in Trempealeau County. The West Salem district's forest east of Sparta is the largest owned by a La Crosse County district. It was acquired in the late 1950s through a land giveaway at Fort McCoy. The property's quit-claim deed required 20 years of continuous improvements, so the district added shelters, bathrooms, telephone service and electricity. Work continues on the land this year as the West Salem High School construction class remodels one of the existing shelters. http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2007/10/14/news/00ead.txt Maryland: 15) Carroll County officials will seek permission Tuesday to harvest about 330 trees along the sight of a planned runway expansion at the Westminster-area regional airport. The proposal, which will be made at a public hearing, is an effort to override a denial by the local forestry board. The trees are in a conservation zone and can be cut to clear airspace obstructions under state law, but Carroll's forest management plan has more stringent requirements, county attorney Kimberly L. Millender said. But the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that the trees should be harvested to install a precision lighting system and improve visibility as pilots take off and land, said Cindy Parr, county chief of administrative services. " The variance is needed for us to comply with an FAA directive, " Parr said of the tree-harvesting request. " It's required for the safe and efficient operation of the airport. " As the commissioners approved a controversial multimillion-dollar plan to expand the Carroll County Regional Airport in June, activists said the tree-cutting proposal showed the runway expansion would harm the local environment. Those residents persuaded county officials to postpone the timber harvest this summer. With 150,000 flights taking off and landing at the airport annually, removing the trees is necessary even if the airport's runway is never rebuilt, Parr said. She said the county had planned to complete the installation of a new lighting system along the runway since updating the 20-year airport master plan in 1986. A 2003 obstruction study re-emphasized the need for timber harvest to better guide pilots landing at night. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/carroll/bal-ca.airport14oct14,0,2704532.s\ tory New Jersey: 16) Princeton University students embraced trees last week in a display intended to persuade the university to convert to the use of recycled paper. Wearing green armbands to show their solidarity with the trees, dozens of students hugged, patted and leaned against the American elms lining McCosh Walk for 20 to 30 minutes each. ''We are asking them to maintain physical contact with the trees,'' said an organizer, Doug Hsu, a junior majoring in environmental policy from Richmond. ''Hugging is the recommended form. But any kind of physical contact is appreciated. The goal is for students to make a statement showing their appreciation for trees.'' Todd Goldman, another organizer and a junior from Stony Brook, L.I., majoring in physics, said three fully grown trees were killed every hour of the business day to meet the university's demand for paper. He said an objective of the event was to encourage professors and department heads to request the use of paper that is 50 percent recycled. The university purchasing department offers such paper. ''This is a symbolic and positive thing to do,'' said Miss Stephenson of Albany, a senior majoring in English. ''We are embracing these trees as we embrace the resources that we use.'' http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DB1E39F93BA35757C0A96695826\ 0 Georgia: 17) One of my most favorite wild places in Georgia — and the world, for that matter — is a 200-acre swath of old-growth longleaf pine and wiregrass near Thomasville in South Georgia, near the Florida line. It's called the Wade Tract, named for the family that preserved it and still owns it. Several of us Georgia Botanical Society members visited it last weekend and quickly found ourselves marveling over its lush, early autumn splendor. " This is a very special place, " noted our leader, naturalist Wilson Baker of Tallahassee. More than 400 species of wildflowers, grasses, ferns, trees, shrubs and other so-called vascular plants can be found on the Wade Tract, making it one of the world's most biologically diverse places. Though its best-known groundcover is wiregrass, some of its other grasses, like big bluestem, are common to Midwestern prairies. The grasses and most of the other plants grow on the ground beneath the soaring longleafs, several of which are hundreds of years old and stand more than 20 feet apart. At first glance, the preserve looks more like an open city park than an old-growth forest — like a grassland with trees scattered over it. " Take a look around you, " Baker said. " You can see about half a mile through these woods, a characteristic of a healthy, old-growth longleaf forest. " Another characteristic, he noted, is the several still-standing dead trees, or snags, which serve a valuable ecological role by providing homes and foraging areas for creatures in the forest. When the trees topple over and rot, they nourish the soil. Some biologists who bring visitors to the Wade Tract like to point out that it is similar to the scenery that Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto probably saw when he and his soldiers tromped across lower Georgia in 1539. At that time, a vast longleaf/wiregrass forest covered the southern half of the state, part of an even greater system stretching over the coastal plains from Virginia to Texas — some 60 million to 90 million acres of longleaf. http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/homeandgarden/stories/2007/10/12/wildga\ _1014.html Florida: 18) Naples native James Smith, 52, is seething behind the wheel, a low-tech Canon AE-1 perched on the arm rest at his right elbow. As he drives, the wooded roadside opens onto a virtual moonscape, a wide strip of cleared forest on either side of a scraped-down road disappearing into the horizon. Smith grabs his camera, points and shoots. The clearing is part of the first phase of a restoration project, decades in the making, to return back to nature a sprawling subdivision carved out of a swampy forest south of Interstate 75 in the 1960s and 1970s. Smith sees something else. " That's absolute devastation,'' Smith drawls. " I don't have all the answers, but I know what they're doing out here ain't right.'' The Picayune Strand restoration project, devised by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District, calls for tearing out 227 miles of roads and plugging 42 miles of canals so a broad shallow sheet of water can once again flow across the landscape and into the Ten Thousand Islands. But some surprises have greeted restoration crews, who have had to clear wider swaths of land than planners first thought.After seeing how many trees the restoration work was toppling, the Florida Division of Forestry signed contracts with logging companies to remove thousands of palms and pines ahead of the clearing crews and sell the trees for a tidy profit. The problem — how large depends on who's talking — is that the land-clearing operation and the logging operation aren't always in sync. He was 5 years old when his father, Jesse Smith, started taking him hunting there and teaching him the ways of the woods. In 1987, Smith's father died fishing on Naples beach. Smith returned to the woods to rekindle old memories. " It's very important to me for that very reason,'' Smith said. Since then, he estimates, he has spent a thousand hours driving around the state forest, following the progress of road-removal crews and logging contractors. Foresters say the patrols border on harrassment by Smith, who is not shy about jumping out of the pickup, camera in hand, to photograph workers under the hot sun or to yell angry questions above the din of heavy equipment. Not satisfied with the answers, Smith has collected more than 700 signatures on a petition to stop the work in the forest. Officials with the water management district and the Division of Forestry say Smith's complaints are misguided. http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/oct/13/special_report_its_not_clear_cut_whet\ her_everglade/? breaking_news USA: 19) Kirk Johnson, the Denver-based national correspondent for the New York Times, weighed in Saturday with a fine front-page story entitled " As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West. " " According to a Forest Service study, not yet published, more than 1.1 million new families became owners of an acre or more of private forest from 1993 to 2006 in the lower 48 states, a 12 percent increase. And almost all the net growth, about seven million acres, was in the Rocky Mountain region, " Johnson reports. He chats with Plum Creek CEO Rick Holley, who tells him the company is getting " up to $29,000 an acre " for one-time logging lands. And Johnson also discusses the efforts by loggers and environmentalists - both of which see massive development of forest lands as a threat - to work together in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and elsewhere. All and all the piece offers a solid discussion of issues which, if you'll forgive me the shameless plug, will be central to our upcoming New West Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/the_new_york_times_on_the_new_western_moguls\ /C8/L8/ Canada: 20) Netherlands -- Police arrested 11 Greenpeace activists yesterday after they prevented a cargo ship from unloading newsprint made from trees felled in Canadian forests, the environmental group said. The demonstrators held up the ship Finnwood from unloading its cargo at Terneuzen port, 215 km south of Amsterdam, and hung a banner across its loading doors calling for newspapers not to use paper made from old established forests. The group said 10 activists climbed aboard the 170-metre ship and hung in front of its unloading doors to prevent the paper being unloaded. http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2007/10/14/4575101-sun.html 21) The chairman of the Nova Forest Alliance said he stepped down from the volunteer post Tuesday so he could speak publicly about how government has done nothing to stop what he calls devastating forestry practices on land adjacent to his property in Pomquet, near Antigonish. " I just felt I had to tell the truth, " Mr. Bancroft said in an interview Wednesday. Mr. Bancroft has chaired the alliance for more than four years. The organization develops and promotes sustainable timber management practices in the province. It is comprised of about 60 groups, including government and forest industry representatives, environmentalists, First Nations, academics and woodlot owners. " As chairman, I have to be neutral and I just thought given the history of what happened on the property adjacent to us and what happened to our land and our waterway as a result of it, that I could not be neutral, " Mr. Bancroft said. " This hit too close to home. It has damaged our woods, now there is all this flushing action. There is ripping and tearing . . . on our property that has never happened before in all these years of managing the woodlot. " Mr. Bancroft has owned a 22-hectare woodlot for 32 years and spent thousands of dollars and many hours restoring a small brook on the property that drains into a salt marsh and into Pomquet Harbour. Last spring his neighbour decided to sell trees for lumber on about 12 hectares of her property adjacent to the Bancroft property. " There is nothing wrong with that . .. . but (the company) took three and a half months to cut it. It went on all summer on water-saturated soil. There are acres of clear-cut land now that are all rutted up and suitable for mud wrestling, " Mr. Bancroft said. He claims the cutting was done too close to the brook and his land, adding he even saw a large piece of machinery repeatedly stuck in the brook. After a heavy rain, silt now runs into the brook ¬ home to five fish species ¬ and into Pomquet Harbour, he said. " (The company) stuck up a couple of token little silt traps, bales of hay and some filter fabric, and I have pictures of water just streaming around these things. Nothing they put in lasted and nothing they put in was adequate. " A North East Timber Co. official who answered the phone Wednesday acknowledged the Antigonish firm cut the timber adjacent to Mr. Bancroft's property. " We did everything we were supposed to do, " said the unidentified official who declined to comment further. http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/951622.html 22) Forests planted with a diverse species of trees will be better able to withstand pest infestation than those that are sown plantation-style with just one species, a study released Monday said. A diversity of trees will support a greater range of insects than a single species, ensuring that there are more predators to keep down the numbers of a pest that, unchecked, could decimate a swath of woodland in an outbreak year. " Mixed forests have a greater flexibility than plantation-style forests, " explained Eldon Eveleigh, an entomologist with the Canadian Forest Service in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The findings have implications for the management of forestry lands, and also commercial plantations. Eveleigh and colleagues studied three patches of the Arcadian Forest in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick as part of an effort to examine how biodiversity could protect forests from pest damage. They looked at three sections of forest: one was almost entirely composed of balsam fir, which is a favourite target of a moth called the spruce budworm - one of the most destructive native insects in the northern spruce and fir forests of the eastern United States and Canada. A pest outbreak occurs once every 35 years, and once it has begun, it usually continues until the larvae consume much of the available foliage. The other two plots were varying mixtures of balsam fir and hardwood species such as birch, maple and deciduous varieties. The Canadian researchers found that the budworm thrived in the plot that was almost entirely balsam fir, laying twice as many larvae per square meter than in either of the two other plots during a peak reproductive year. The results were devastating, with tree mortality averaging 65 percent in this plot - almost three times higher than the mortality rates seen in either of the other two chunks of forest. Separately, the scientists also noticed that as the abundance of budworms increased, so too did the numbers of other plant-eating insects or parasites that feed on the moth. The so-called " birdfeeder " effect continued on up the food chain, with other higher-order insects flocking to the area in search of more plentiful food sources. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gZCKz2BVPd7Rofjamf3r3gCy223w UK: 23) For the people who care for Sherwood Forest it is like a death in the family when one of the ancient oaks falls, a tragedy that is now becoming depressingly frequent. They used to lose an average of one a year, now it is usually five, and the rate is accelerating. The appalling calculation, which almost breaks the foresters' hearts, is that in 50 years' time the greatest collection of ancient oaks in Europe, many 1,000 years old and more, may be no more. Yesterday, in still hazy autumn sunshine, the forest seemed magically unchanged since time immemorial, but that is an illusion. The great oaks came almost unscathed through the hurricane that 20 years ago today felled millions of trees in the south. But this year alone four fell in the January storms, two were destroyed by arson, and on August 13, with a splintering crash that sent passersby running, another toppled without warning. " It's devastating when it happens. To be honest, I cried over that one, " Izi Banton, the chief ranger, said. " We had our eye on it, and we were planning a bit of gentle intervention, but nature got there first. " A rescue plan, for which a £50m bid will be made this winter from the Big Lottery Fund, includes planting 250,000 oaks on 350 acres, linking the surviving fragments and creating new stretches of the equally important grazed open heath. " People might say, having waited three centuries what's the rush? " Austin Brady, a conservator with the Forestry Commission, and coordinator of the lottery bid, said. " But if we don't do it in the next decade or so we might well go past the point where we can claw the forest back. That won't show for another century - but then people will look back and see that we failed to save it. " " This is the beating heart of the forest, " he said, standing by a 600-year-old giant believed to hold the oldest colony of wild bees in the country. " We have been raided for centuries for buildings all over the country, including Lincoln cathedral and St Paul's. Now we want something back in return. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/15/conservation 24) VILLAGERS in three communities worried about the loss of woodland have launched a venture to create a new wood which can be enjoyed by the public. The Three Village Woodlands Group is looking for a suitable site around Kirton, Falkenham and Trimley St Martin. It aims to involve all age groups - and youngsters from Trimley St Martin Primary School have planted seeds which it is hoped will grow into trees which can one day form part of the new wood. At the official launch of the scheme, there was a tree planting ceremony at the school with two-and-a-half year old Edward Matthews and Irene Barton, 90, symbolically planting a tree to mark the start of the fundraising. Group chairman Stephen Harvey said: " The project has been born out of increasing concern about the steady losses of woodland to development. " Its object is to acquire a piece of land which will become community woodland accessible to the public. http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content/eveningstar/news/story.aspx?brand=ESTOnline\ & category=News & t Brand=ESTOnline & tCategory=News & itemid=IPED11%20Oct%202007%2011%3A13%3A45%3A473 Netherlands: 25) A Greenpeace report entitled " Dutch Glory - Paper " contends that a Canadian paper manufacturer called Abitibi Consolidated uses very dubious processes to manufacture the paper on which virtually all Dutch national dailies are printed. The report was published earlier this week and has stirred up debate because it reveals in depth information that's not generally out in the public domain. " Abitibi-Consolidated makes paper from wood from ancient forests which are chopped down to be replaced by very simple conifer trees, " Dutch campaign leader Suzanne Kroger is quoted as saying in De Dag newspaper. The replaced trees will only match the forest that is being removed in a time span of 250 to 300 years in terms of biodiversity, the campaigner says. Greenpeace also points out that one of the forest's most authentic species, the caribou, is under threat as a result. Greenpeace says the fact that Abitibi's manufacturing practices are dubious is is totally in conflict with some newspaper organisations' public statements indicating that they conduct environmental friendly policies. http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=432267 Panama: 26) Environmentalists will be protesting against the expansion of the Panama Canal, and this article is an excellent example of the types of half-reporting and misinformation you can expect to see for about ten years. Step ONE of the expansion of the canal is (was) to pass a national referendum as required by the constitution, which has been done. Now that the referendum has passed, step TWO is to conduct a comprehensive Environmental Impact Study (EIS) as required by current Panamanian law. I interview the Director of ANAM just prior to the referendum vote. The first money that is being spent on the expansion of the canal is a contract that was let to write the EIS for the Panama Canal Authority (ACP.) This will obviously be a category III EIS and the project can potentially have significant negative environmental impact. And ANAM will study the issue and will require steps to protect the environment as much as practically possible considering the size of the project. There are ways to (here's the key word for ANAM) mitigate potential environmental damage. But at the end of the day here's the real deal - the Panama Canal generates billions of dollars of income for the Panamanian people. If the construction of the expansion of the Panama Canal, which will ensure that it continues to generate billions of dollars of income for generations, means that Gatun Lake (which, by the way did not exist before the canal was built) will become saltier and the mix of flora and fauna will change as a result, then that's what will happen. Or, if you want to be a militant environmentalist then be intellectually honest and support the complete and total removal of the Panama Canal, the destruction of the locks and Gatun Lake, and the return of the Chagres River to it's original pre-1914 condition. Arguing any other position is logical hypocrisy. Sorry, but from an economic standpoint 37% population living below the poverty line trumps good fishing in a man-made lake every time. And nobody (and I mean nobody) likes pulling Sargentos out of the lake more than I do. http://vippanama.com/silt-happens-the-environmental-impact-of-the-expansion-of-t\ he-panama-canal Brazil: 27) The largest social movement in South America and one of the most important in the world, held its 5th Congress in mid-June 2007 in Brasilia. Despite successful mobilization of masses of people and significant media impact, under Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government the movement faces strong challenges to activate its base against new enemies, such as agribusiness. Agrarian reform will no longer be the principal demand from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Brazil's Landless Rural Workers Movement. " The agrarian reform proposal that drove MST's struggle for 20 years has run its course. We need a new model of agrarian reform, " according to João Pedro Stédile, an MST leader. He explains: " Classical agrarian reform was developed in European countries, the United States, and Japan after World War II. It involved combining agrarian reform with the development of national industry to create an internal market. Brazil missed four historical opportunities to establish this sort of agrarian reform. " The MST believes that agrarian land redistribution could have occurred: at the end of the 19th century with the abolition of slavery; or during the " Revolution of 1930 " , which led to industrialization; in 1964, with the rise in social struggles that were interrupted by the military coup; or at the demise of the military regime in the mid-1980s. The problem, Stédile adds, is that during the 1990s, " Brazilian elites abandoned the national development project " and accepted the neoliberal model that subordinates the country to finance capital. " Over the past years, landless farm workers have observed, and suffered, important changes in agriculture and in rural areas. There was the extensive expansion of monoculture, first with transgenic soy beans and then with sugarcane. The best lands are dedicated to these crops, which prevents the development of family agriculture. But these same crops are destroying entire areas of the country. It is estimated that in a few years, Los Cerrados, a high plain ecosystem between Brazil's Atlantic coast and the Amazon jungle, will be completely overtaken by monoculture, and its biodiversity destroyed. The next step is the conquest of the Amazon, the planet's lungs, which is being devoured by forestry businesses. http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=154734 28) Halting deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is the objective of nine Brazilian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have drafted an ambitious plan to stop clearcutting in the region within seven years. The groups, which include national affiliates of Greenpeace, WWF, and The Nature Conservancy, presented the proposal at an event in Brasilia on Friday attended by environment minister Marina Silva, state governors, and other authorities. The plan aims to unite sectors of Brazil's government and civil society in efforts to conserve the biologically rich Amazon region. " This is just the start, but it is a good start, and it is something interesting, " said Silva, who herself grew up in the Amazon and achieved global recognition as a leading rainforest activist before joining the ministry. " We are building a national plan with common, but differentiated responsibilities. " The proposal, known as the " Agreement on Acknowledging the Value of the Forest and Ending Amazon Deforestation, " calls for combining strong public policies with market strategies to achieve annual deforestation reduction targets. It suggests that roughly $1 billion Real per year (US $550 million) from national and international sources be invested in maintaining existing forests and the environmental services they provide. Other recommendations include strengthening forest monitoring, control, and tax measures and providing economic incentives for indigenous people and rural producers to conserve land. " It is necessary to go beyond 'command and control' measures by promoting the revision and re-orientation of financial incentives, which historically have been channelled into destructive practices, " the Agreement notes. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007413.html 29) Davi Kopenawa, a shaman of the Yanomami tribe, will help launch a report that, says Survival International, the charity behind it, claims separation from the land is directly linked to the 'physical and mental breakdown' of indigenous communities, whose lifestyle and culture is already under threat from mining, logging and resettlement away from traditional lands. In a statement issued through the group, Kopenawa said: 'You napepe (whites) talk about what you call development and tell us to become the same as you. But we know that this brings only disease and death. Now you want to buy pieces of rainforest, or to plant biofuels. These are useless. The forest cannot be bought; it is our life and we have always protected it. Without the forest, there is only sickness.' Survival International, which announced Kopenawa's visit, said that destruction of the rainforest had been blamed for the release of 18-25 per cent of human carbon dioxide emissions, the biggest greenhouse gas blamed for climate change. Charities such as Cool Earth, the organisation set up by Eliasch and former Labour minister Frank Field, could buy a tiny fraction of the rainforest, but their popularity 'diverts attention' from the more urgent need to return rainforest to indigenous people, claims Stephen Corry, Survival International's director. 'It's like a bucket of water in the North Sea: the amount of land that's being bought by outsiders is infinitesimally small, and if you look at [the land bought by Cool Earth] there's 15,000 times more land protected because it's under indigenous control in the Amazon,' said Corry. 'We're not saying it's imperialistic, we're not even saying there's anything wrong with it: what's wrong is the claims being put forward in its name, that this is a permanent solution.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/14/climatechange.brazil Peru: 30) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will this Friday hear three urgent requests for precautionary measures to protect some of the last indigenous peoples still living isolated, traditional lifestyles in the Amazon from the devastating impacts of oil and gas drilling, illegal logging, and other unwanted intrusions. Two requests for immediate action by the Commission were filed in June and August by AIDESEP, Peru's national federation for indigenous Amazonian peoples. Those requests ask the Commission to urge the Peruvian government to stop planned oil and gas drilling in the Kugapakori-Nahua State Reserve and the proposed Napo Tigre State Reserve respectively in order to protect isolated indigenous peoples including the Nahua, Nanti, Tagaeri and Taromenane. The third request was filed in July 2005 by FENAMAD, a regional indigenous federation, to protect the lands and lives of the isolated peoples of Peru's Madre de Dios region from illegal logging and oil concessions. That request was granted last March. The Commission ordered the Peruvian government to take measures to protect the rights of the Mashco Piro, Yora and Arahuaca peoples. At Friday's public hearing the Commission will be seeking more information from AIDESEP, FENAMAD and the Peruvian state regarding the current situation on the ground of these threatened isolated indigenous peoples. The three requests for Commission assistance also call for an immediate end to the granting of oil concessions in indigenous territories, no further intrusions into the existing and proposed reserves, and legislative and administrative measures to guarantee the health, wellbeing and physical integrity of the indigenous groups, as well as their rights to be free from forced contact with outsiders and to remain in isolation, living freely according to their culture. Currently, the Peruvian government has granted an oil concession in block 113 located within the State Territorial Reserve for the isolated peoples of Madre de Dios. Block 133, within the same reserve, awaits a state grant. Block 88, operated by a concession led by Texas' Hunt Oil, overlaps the Kugapakori-Nahua reserve. http://www.amazonwatch.org/view_news.php?id=1478 Madagascar: 31) A Zurich zoo conservation project that helps to both preserve rainforests in Madagascar and provide locals with better living conditions has been hailed a success. Ten years after starting its work at the African island state, the zoo has helped convert many farmers to conservation ideas. And four years ago it created its own replica rainforest in Zurich. The zoo invests $100,000 (SFr118,000) a year on a number of projects in Madagascar to provide park wardens and infrastructure in the national park and improve rice farming methods, irrigation and drinking water supplies for surrounding villagers. Four years ago the zoo created its own Madagascan rainforest biosphere in Zurich – called Masoala – to aid research of the ecosystem and to keep a stock of flora and fauna that may need reintroducing to their natural habitat in future. It was then that the zoo joined forces with the Wildlife Conservation Society to safeguard the newly formed Masoala national park in Madagascar. Rochel Rakotonarivo, deputy Malagasy consul to Switzerland, told swissinfo that the zoo's efforts have been vital in the battle to conserve Madagascar's largest national park – situated on a peninsula in the northeast of the country - from destruction by farmers. Madagascar has some of the world's most pristine rainforests that are home to some species only indigenous to the country, such as the unique lemur primates. It also boasts numerous orchid species and is abundant with amphibians, reptiles, insects and birdlife. http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/Madagascan_forests_profit_from_Zurich_\ zoo.html?siteS ect=105 & sid=8302643 & cKey=1192087783000 & ty=st Australia: 32) GUNNS' pulp mill is exposing tensions in both major parties. A decade of opportunistic me-too-ism has left big political problems for Australia's forest industry. The big parties, thinking voters have nowhere else to go, have shoved forest policy under the carpet, leaving a cabal of industry lobbyists to shape decisions. Gunns is not alone in benefiting from this situation, but the pulp mill is at last bringing the contradictions in its business to the surface. Gunns' pulp mill is moving against the Australian wood products industry's surge into plantation processing. While 80 per cent of Australia's wood products industry — the makers of sawn timber, wood panels and the wood used to make paper — is now plantation-based and therefore enjoys the commercial advantages of processing an agricultural crop, Gunns prefers to use native forests as its major feedstock. Its 20-year wood supply contract with the Tasmanian Government is too good to refuse. Forestry Tasmania sells native forest chip logs for a low $12 to $13 a tonne, and its contractual arrangement for the pulp mill allows chip-log prices to move in line with the price Gunns receives for its globally traded pulp. For more than 20 years, real (inflation-adjusted) prices for globally traded pulp have trended down by an average 2.4 per cent a year. At best, China might flatten this historical downward trend in real pulp prices for part of Gunns' wood supply contract. China retains a staggering capacity to import huge volumes of wood and processed wood products without triggering real price increases. Federal Government published projections indicate that Gunns could feed its mill, from start-up date, with Tasmanian hardwood plantations. Most are private-sector investments, including through Gunns' managed investment schemes. While Gunns shareholders rub their hands together, many more people are angrily witnessing the breakdown in governance in Tasmania and the long-term disengagement of both federal Liberal and Labor. Gunns' pulp mill saga has a potential upside. The overwhelming intensity of the politics may shake one or both major parties out of their forest policy complacency. This would not be before time for the many rural voters fuming about the plantation prospectus-driven rural land buy-up, which is driven by tax benefits now totalling more than $2 billion, not wood market realities. The furore surrounding Gunns' pulp mill is just the wake-up call both parties need. http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/gunns-doublebarrelled-dilemma/2007/10/10/\ 1191695991840.ht ml 33) In response to questions from Paul Llewellyn MP (Greens Party) in the Western Australian Legislative Council on 5 September 2007 about the Forest Products Commission's sale of logs from state forests, FPC share farms and state-owned plantations, Kimberley Chance MP (Minister for Forestry, Labor Party) said it was not possible at this time to give an assurance that illegally harvested logs were not finding their way to mill landings. Better processes being put in place: Chance stated that all forest products of various types, including log timber, sold by the Forest Products Commission were accounted for under what was known as the delivery note system, as required by and detailed in the Forest Management Regulations 1993. He had encouraged the FPC to put in place processes that could provide greater guarantees of integrity than were currently possible. They included granting FPC and Department of Environment and Conservation officers cross-authorisation powers to police logs from both state forests and private property on mill landings; and the employment of an FPC standards officer to monitor log grading and regulation enforcement. Those two components had been carried out. The FPC was also investigating the potential for the reintroduction of hammer branding of state-sourced sawlogs to enable better identification. http://waterweek.wordpress.com/2007/10/12/minister-says-processes-being-put-in-p\ lace-to-verify -source-of-logs-sold-from-state-forests-fpc-share-farms-and-state-owned-plantati\ ons/ World-wide: 34) The World Bank is working to increase significantly the world's ability to tackle global climate change and deforestation with two new carbon finance facilities to benefit developing countries. An innovative Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) would prevent deforestation by compensating developing countries for carbon dioxide reductions realized by maintaining their forests. Details are being finalized on that facility, as well as a new Carbon Partnership Facility (CPF). Both aim to support developing countries in their moves towards lower carbon development paths, by helping remove heat trapping gases from the atmosphere which are changing the climate. " Developing countries will earn money and obtain clean technology in exchange for the greenhouse gas emission reductions they will sell to developed countries, " said World Bank Group President, Robert B. Zoellick. " Both facilities will pilot ways to ratchet up the fight against climate change by adopting a larger-scale, longer-term approach to greenhouse gas emission reductions. They will also build on the World Bank Group's traditional relationship with developing countries, and the new relationships it has forged over the past decade as a pioneer in carbon finance. " http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21506175~pagePK:3437\ 0~piPK:34424 ~theSitePK:4607,00.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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