Guest guest Posted March 8, 2008 Report Share Posted March 8, 2008 Today for you 32 new articles about earth's trees! (307th edition) Subscribe / send blank email to: earthtreenews- Weblog: http://olyecology.livejournal.com To Donate: Click Paypal link in the upper left corner of: http://www.peacefromtrees.org --British Columbia: 1) Island Timberlands audit affirmed, 2) Non-Timber Resources, 3) Western forest Products stats. 4) 50,000 lumber related jobs lost, 5) Cathedral Grove tour, --Pacific Northwest: 6) critical habitat for marbled murrelet set aside for now, --Washington: 7) Save Chehalis River basin, 8) Dead trees turned into park sculptures, 9) Old growth proven to absorb more carbon than younger growth, --Oregon: 10) A view of the WOPR landscape --California: 11) Enviros file suit to stop impacts on federal forests --Montana: 12) Another lawsuit against Categorical Exclusions --Arizona: 13) 4,300 acres of debris up in smoke --Colorado: 14) Logging to masticate 250 acres --Virginia: 15) Farm Bureau Federation advisory about timber thefts --New Hampshire: 16) Don't log in Designated White Mountain Roadless Areas --USA: 17) Pulp values soar --Canada: 18) Too many mills not enough harvesting rights, 19) Oil sand project to destroy 125 square miles of boreal forest, --Mexico: 20) 60 sq. miles of forests of oyamel fir and pine, 21) Butterflies vanishing, 22) Permanent deforestation takes more than loss of forest cover, --Guyana: 23) Losing at least US$50 million a year, 24) Asian-owned colonialism, --Brazil: 25) Via Campesina women expelled --Philippines: 26) Prisoners defend forest --World-wide: 27) Saving it by buying it? 28) Soil microbes for Tree's oxygen, 29) Most comprehensive forest picture ever drawn, 30) FSC is a big lie, 31) FSC is a $20Billion dollar enterprise, 32) What's wrong with FSC, British Columbia: 1) Powell River Regional District directors have affirmed their request for an audit on Island Timberlands' logging on the Powell Forest Canoe Route. Stuart Macpherson, executive director of the Private Managed Forest Land Council, an independent agency responsible for the administration of private managed forest land legislation, attended the regional district's planning committee meeting on Monday, February 25 to discuss the issue. The regional board has asked the council to conduct an audit of Island Timberlands' logging operations at Horseshoe River and Horseshoe Lake. Winter storms in 2006 caused massive blow-downs after the logging and that section of the canoe route was devastated. Colin Palmer, Electoral Area C director and regional board chairman, told Macpherson that his constituents are concerned about the impact of logging on their watersheds as well. " Everybody is coming to us, but we have no jurisdiction, " he said. " The only thing we can do is rattle some chains. " Island Timberlands private lands in the Powell River area were taken out of the tree farm licence (TFL) in 2004. The minister of forests and range deleted all the privately held lands from TFLs 39 and 44, then held by Weyerhaeuser, MacMillan Bloedel's successor. In Powell River, approximately 2,800 hectares were removed from the TFL. The deletion of private TFL lands moved them from the environmental protections of the Forest Act, Forest and Range Practices Act and Forest Practices Act to significantly reduced protections under the Private Managed Forest Land Act. Dave Murphy, Texada Island director, said all the rural directors have heard complaints about the lack of public consultation over Island Timberlands' logging plans. " People who use the canoe route are embarrassed and ashamed of the logging practices that went on there, " he said. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19366387 & BRD=1998 & PAG=461 & dept_id=4995\ 99 & rfi=6 2) Lee Kwen's mycological quest is part of a thriving B.C. wild-foods movement, which is open to everyone. He noted that, unlike parts of the U.S., this province's forests are still unregulated, so anyone can harvest mushrooms, berries, maple and birch sap, ostrich fern fiddleheads, and other young shoots on Crown land. The Centre for Non-Timber Resources at Royal Roads University in Victoria will soon release a downloadable harvester's handbook at cntr.royalroads.ca/publications to assist locals in discovering forest foods. The program's goal is to help B.C. develop a forest economy independent of chopping down trees. " The time is ripe for it, " Tim Brigham, CNTR's coordinator of education and capacity building, told the Straight in a phone interview. " With all the talk about the 100-Mile Diet, there's a good hook.…Once you start doing it [looking for wild foods], you see the forest in an entirely new way. It's amazing, what the forest holds that most of us who live in urban areas have lost touch with. " Our forests, he warned, are " in big trouble " . An interest in pursuing a smaller environmental footprint in B.C.'s forests through the responsible harvesting of wild foods, plus a friendship with Royal Roads professor Darcy Mitchell, helped him start the department in the late 1990s. Now, it publishes the booklet " Buy BCwild " (available on-line at buybcwild.com and at farmers markets), and will soon come out with the harvester's handbook. Around the time Brigham started the department, author and carpenter Gary Backlund was pursuing his own wild-foods enterprise. He'd always wanted to live in a forest, he told the Straight in a phone interview, so he bought 70 acres on Vancouver Island. Then he needed to figure out how to make it pay for itself. At his Master Woodland Manager course, his instructor brought in a jug of West Coast–made maple syrup. " It looked dark, " he recalled, " like it probably tasted like turpentine. But I tried it, and I just flipped. It was just wonderful. " He immediately tapped three trees on his property. In a day and a half, he'd harvested 40 litres of sap. He boiled it down, and says he's " been hooked ever since " . Now, thanks in part to courses he runs, about 70 Vancouver Island–based small syrup producers have started up. http://www.straight.com/article-134737/stalking-the-edible-forest 3) Western is an integrated Canadian forest products company and the largest coastal British Columbia woodland operator and lumber producer with an annual available harvest of approximately 7.5 million cubic metres of timber of which 7.3 million cubic metres is from Crown lands and lumber capacity in excess of 1.5 billion board feet from eight sawmills and four remanufacturing plants. Principal activities conducted by the Company include timber harvesting, reforestation, sawmilling logs into lumber and wood chips and value-added remanufacturing. Substantially all of Western's operations, employees and corporate facilities are located in the coastal region of British Columbia while its products are sold in over 30 countries worldwide. The Company recorded a net loss from continuing operations of $41.9 million ($0.21 per share) in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared to net income from continuing operations of $109.3 million ($0.53 per share) in the fourth quarter of 2006. EBITDA was negative $28.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared to $120.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2006. In 2006, net income and EBITDA in the fourth quarter and year benefited from the settlement of the softwood lumber dispute pursuant to which Western received $124.4 million (US$109.6 million) in interest and refunds of anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties previously collected by the United States. Excluding the lumber duty refund, EBITDA was $10.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2006. The strike action taken on July 20, 2007 by the United Steelworkers Union against Forest Industrial Relations (FIR) member companies, which included Western, continued to impact Western's results into the fourth quarter. While the strike was resolved on October 21, 2007, depleted lumber inventories constrained sales in the fourth quarter of 2007. During the remainder of the quarter, logging and sawmilling operations focused on a safe and productive return to work. …Lumber sales fell from $141.6 million in the third quarter of 2007 to $93.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 largely as a direct result of low lumber inventories that were depleted during the aforementioned labour action. Although market prices for Western's lumber products remained relatively stable during the quarter compared to the previous quarter, the Company sold less high grade douglas fir, cedar and custom cut cypress products and a greater proportion of lower grade products, which reduced average net prices for lumber.http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=828729 4) 50,000 jobs have been affected by the collapse of the lumber industry in this province. Steve Hunt, (shown in photo at right) says 10,000 direct jobs have been lost , but if you factor the workers needed to look after the industry and the figures climb by five times. People who work at 7-11 says Hunt, " don't buy new pickups " . Touring the province along with the President of CUPE, Barry O'Neill, Hunt told about 40 people gathered at a meeting last night in Prince George he recently watched raw logs crossing the border near Creston heading to US mills. " Companies such as Canfor have bought up saw mills as a way to circumvent the duties. " In the old days Hunt says, " You had a social contract with the company; in return for the trees they manufactured lumber and jobs in that region " . We are still selling lumber in the US says Hunt, maybe not as much but there is still a market. " CANFOR and INTERFOR have spent $330 million in buying up mills in the US. They are producing lumber with the dollars we handed them in the duties that were returned. We are losing our sovereignty in this country over the woods industry " Hunt says. Now what has government done? The director told the meeting the province will lose $1 billion dollars from the forest industry this year and if that money doesn't come from forestry then where will it come from? http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/8624/1/union+brass+talking+forestry 5) When you take a rainforest tour on Vancouver Island BC in a place like Cathedral Grove, it's hard to take your eyes off the giant mossy trees glowing like stained glass in nature's cathedral. Some of the tallest trees stretch over 90 meters, while other big ones measure as much as 20 meters in circumference. At more than 1000 years old, the oldest are impressive to be sure. But don't get a kink in your neck by focussing only on the trees. You might miss the amazing diversity of plants and animals the old growth pacific temperate rainforest has to offer. Fortunately, Coastal Revelations Nature Tours has a permit to operate their new eco tours in the park and you can experience the rainforest through the senses of a biologist. There are also many other locations which offer a more wilderness experience off the beaten track and away from the crowds where there is more wildlife. Professional biologist tour guides will illuminate the shady depths of the rainforest with stories, games and activities. Even with your eyes closed there is a humid, fragrant coolness that enables the mosses and lichens clinging to the tree branches to grow so well. Multiple canopy layers, forest openings with berries and other pioneer species, dead standing trees with holes for owls, bats, squirrels, and nut hatches are just a few of the highlights. For wildflowers, April and May are great times to see what's flourishing in the ancient rainforest. Coral root and Calypso orchids, trilliums, wild cherry, elderberry and salmon berry are some of the flowers that you can find in the spring. Starting in June and lasting into September, you also can taste the wonderful parade of berries that result from this profusion of flowers. (Be sure to take along a field guide or an expert to avoid any poisonous plants, and avoid harvesting plants in a park.) There are some very tasty and nutritious plants like stinging nettle (cooked) and many medicinal ones as well. http://www.prlog.org/10055108-your-passage-to-the-wild-heart-of-vancouver-island\ -bc-rainforest s-tours-with-biologist.html Pacific Northwest: 6) In a significant and unexpected victory for environmentalists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reversed its plans to significantly cut critical habitat for the marbled murrelet. The tiny seabird is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and the FWS had threatened to cut over 90 percent of its critical habitat as part of the Bush administration's plans to increase logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. But with the reversal, 3.9 million acres of federal old-growth forests will remain protected. Along with the spotted owl, the fight over murrelet habitat has pitted forest and species advocates against timber interests eager to log federal forests. " This reversal, coupled with a recent court decision throwing out a timber industry attempt to delist the murrelet, should end the timber industry's profit-driven and illegal attack on the coastal forests that murrelets need to survive, " said Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles. http://www.grist.org/news/2008/03/06/marbled/ Washington: 7) Since the December floods the Chehalis River basin has been in the news. It is, after the Columbia, the second largest watershed in the state. The flood and its aftermath have fueled a movement to " do something " to control the river and prevent future losses to the citizenry. An ad hoc group, " One Voice, " is actively pursuing the creation of a basin-wide flood control district, and they have the vocal support of the Centralia Daily Chronicle. While establishment of a flood control district may be appropriate, clearly not all proposed efforts to control the river would be good for the environment. For example, there is talk of dredging and of dam building in the upper watershed. At the same time, it can safely be predicted that reasonable measures such as ceasing filling and development in the floodplain, appropriate management of timber harvests and strict stormwater regulations will get little support from well-entrenched local development interests who have great influence over the local governments. There are two small all-volunteer organizations in the Chehalis Basin that are devoted to protecting the natural resources of the watershed. These are the Chehalis River Council (CRC) and the Chehalis River Basin Land Trust (CRBLT). They share an office at 417 North Pearl Street (Carpenter's Hall) in Centralia (98531). Both organizations have websites. The CRC's is http://www.crcwater.org/ . CRBLT is http://www.chehalislandtrust.org/ . 8) Rather than take down a couple of diseased trees, park officials hired Jones, co-owner of Spirit Brothers Chainsaw Art, to convert them into visual representations of the southcentral Washington town's pioneer past. On Tuesday he was sculpting a maple tree that already had been stripped of limbs, leaves and most of its bark into a " history pole " evoking residents and events from 1805 to 1939 before construction of the nearby Hanford nuclear reservation in the 1940s. " The depth of the pioneer history is phenomenal, " Jones said. Joseph Schiessl, housing and redevelopment manager, said the tree was supposed to be uprooted last year after it succumbed to wind and wood-boring insects. Instead, after a tree removal service began work, a couple of maintenance workers suggested using it for public art and Spirit Brothers was hired for $7,500 to produce totem-style representations on the maple and a nearby black walnut tree. " We liked the idea that a totem tells the story about a community or a culture's history, " Schiessl said. " That's exactly what Mr. Jones is doing here, telling Richland pre-Hanford history on these trees in what is arguably our city's most important park. " Images carved by Jones to date include Capt. Robert Gray, a steamship operator who ran supplies up the Columbia River, and Capt. Meriwether Lewis forging a friendship with a native chieftain on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Yet to be added are a pioneer farming couple and a miner bound for the Yukon gold rush. On the black walnut he plans to feature natural wildlife and images from prehistoric petroglyphs. http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-03-06-tree-carver_N.htm 9) New research is finding that old-growth coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest are still vigorously active, may have more ability to " store " carbon than had been appreciated in the past, and are not the idle, decaying ecosystems they have sometimes been portrayed to be. In pioneering studies done with the huge " canopy crane " that hovers over an old-growth stand northeast of Portland, Ore., researchers from Oregon State University are also discovering that light is the driving force in these processes and that the real action is way up high where the sun shines the brightest. " It appears these older forests are more active and may be stronger carbon sinks than we thought, " said Bill Winner, an OSU professor of botany and plant pathology. " There's a huge amount of carbon tied up in old-growth ecosystems and, even at a very old age, they are still capable of absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide. " In preliminary results, Winner and OSU colleagues Sean Thomas and Mark Harmon have found: 1) In all seasons, the physiological activity level of conifer needles is higher at the brightly-lit tops of trees than at the bottom or in younger saplings that receive more shade. 2) The photosynthetic rate of trees does not decline in summer due to drought and water stress, as had been presumed. 3) The biggest constraint on photosynthesis is the lower light levels during the region's eternally-overcast winter days, which can cause up to a 60 percent drop in photosynthesis in some tree species. 4) In a system like that studied, Harmon found that about 70 percent of the carbon storage is in live vegetation, 15 percent is in the litter and logs on the forest floor, and 15 percent in the mineral soil. " The use of this crane has allowed us to make meaningful samples high in the forest canopy for extended periods, " Winner said. " We've never really had that capability before, and that's helping to answer some long-standing questions about old-growth ecological processes. " - The key environmental impact, researchers say, comes from the balance of carbon released versus that retained. For this type of forest, it's now clear that the heaviest rates of photosynthesis and carbon storage happen when the daylight is longest and the light is brightest. Preliminary calculations suggest that during summer months this site " stored " from 2.7 to 14 grams of carbon dioxide per square meter, per day. According to Harmon, when an old-growth forest is clearcut, it changes from a carbon sink to a carbon source - meaning the same land now gives off more carbon dioxide than it takes in - for a period of at least 30-40 years. http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/1997/December97/old.htm Oregon: 10) Climb a hill above Linslaw, 35 miles (56km) west of the city of Eugene, and a pattern becomes clear. On land owned by the federal government, Douglas firs, some of them 300 years old, grow in profusion. Interspersed with them are private tree farms, some of which contain little more than earth and a few branches left by loggers. Two closely watched federal reviews will determine whether western Oregon comes to more closely resemble the former or the latter. Between the 1940s and the 1980s much of Oregon was treated as a giant timber factory. Then came the listing, under the Endangered Species Act, of the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, a seabird. Logging on public lands promptly collapsed, together with many of the businesses that relied on it. Between the late 1980s and the late 1990s the number of jobs in Lane county's lumber industry dropped from 11,500 to 6,800. Since then environmentalists have repeatedly stymied efforts to increase production. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which owns 2.6m acres (1m hectares) of Oregon, now proposes to increase the tree harvest to four-and-a-half times last year's level. It wants to clear-cut large swathes of its forests, including some ancient ones. As it admits, this would mean less space for fluffy fauna. A second review concerns the spotted owl, which some claim is threatened less by logging than by a competitor, the barred owl. The prospect of a return to mass logging delights Robbie Robinson of Starfire Lumber. " Here we are in the timber capital of the world, and I have to go to Canada to get enough wood to employ 75 people, " he complains. http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10809211 California: 11) Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against three federal agencies, alleging they have failed to protect dozens of endangered species that live in Southern California's four national forests from harmful impacts of off-roading, livestock grazing, roads and power lines. The legal action comes on the heels of a lawsuit California officials filed Feb. 28 against the U.S. Forest Service because the management plans for the San Bernardino, Cleveland, Angeles and Los Padres national forests permit road construction and oil drilling that have been long opposed by the state. The most recent lawsuit specifically targets so-called biological opinions issued in 2005 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service that assessed impacts on endangered species from those same forest management plans. The third target of Wednesday's lawsuit is the U.S. Forest Service. The environmental groups allege those opinions failed to consider ways to prevent harm to species by activities on forest lands, and failed to require any method for tracking how many plants and animals are killed because of those activities. Jane Hendron, a spokeswoman for the federal wildlife agency, said she hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment. A phone call to forest officials wasn't immediately returned Wednesday afternoon. The four national forests are among the last refuges for the 76 species considered endangered or threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, the environmental groups said. In the Inland forests they include the arroyo toad, mountain yellow-legged frog, Quino checkerspot butterfly, and two birds known as the southwestern willow flycatcher and the least Bell's vireo. " These forests are so important because they are some of the last natural areas in Southern California amid an ever-expanding sea of urban development. Many of these plants and animals have nowhere else to go, " said David Hogan, conservation manager at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, along with Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, California Native Plant Society and Los Padres Forest Watch. The number of roads in the forests, Hogan said, is one of the biggest concerns. Roads cause erosion that damages streams and streamside forest where the arroyo toad and the least Bell's vireo live and breed. " Erosion is not just a problem for wildlife, it's a problem for people when that erosion pollutes downstream water supplies, " he said. http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_forest06.4359f0f.html Montana: 12) The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit Feb. 26 in the Federal District Court of Helena, Mont., in an attempt to stop the service from proceeding with a plan to thin 160 acres of national forest in Big Timber Canyon. The lawsuit alleges that the action was illegally authorized and that it violates the Clean Water Act and endangers a sensitive local species. The Forest Service says the thinning needs to be done and done quickly in order to slow the bark beetle infestation as it spreads up the canyon, according to Marna Daley, spokeswoman for the Forest Service (Land Letter, Jan. 17). Daley said the urgency of the project, as well as the project's " minimal impact and scale, " led the Forest Service to receive approval for the project by means of a categorical exclusion, which allows the Forest Service to forgo the regular environmental assessment and environmental-impact statement. " Categorical exclusions don't abdicate the manager from going through analysis, but it means it's happened enough that going through a full-blown process doesn't make sense, " Daley said. " The thinning falls into one of the approved categories for exclusions, a noncommercial sanitation harvest to control insect and disease that is not to exceed 250 acres. " But according to Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and former University of Utah professor of economics, the categorical exclusion was inappropriate because it would encroach on the habitat of the goshawk, a predatory bird that serves as an indicator species for the state of Montana to monitor the health of old-growth forest. According to Sara Johnson, a former wildlife biologist for the Gallatin National Forest and director of Native Ecosystems Council, the best available science says that a 600-acre buffer should be maintained around the habitat, whereas the Forest Service plan leaves a 40-acre buffer. Additionally, the project would dump sediment into the Big Timber Creek, which, according to Garrity, is on the list of impaired streams in Montana, making it illegal under the Clean Water Act to further pollute its waters. He accused the Forest Service of knowingly violating the statue. " After they figured out the stream was protected, they claimed it wasn't and hoped nobody would notice, " he said. http://www.eenews.net/ll/ Arizona: 13) As weather permits, the U.S. Forest Service will burn debris piles on some 4,300 acres around Payson, Pine and Strawberry between today and March 22, part of an ambitious effort to protect the three communities from wildfires. The thinning operation targeted areas with as many as 3,000 trees per acre, leaving behind a dramatic reduction in the number of trees and about 30 tons of slash piles on each acre. Residents should see large columns of smoke rising from the debris piles on burn days. Those piles should burn down by about 3 p.m. each day. The current wet, humid conditions present a good opportunity for the burn, since sparks from the slash piles would have a hard time setting off uncontrolled fires, forest officials said. The big uncertainty remains the wind, so Forest Service officials will make a case-by-case judgment on which days to burn, said Gary Roberts, fire prevention officer for the Payson Ranger District. In the past seven years, the forest service has thinned 9,000 acres and reduced dangerous fuel loads through prescribed burns on another 25,000 acres on the Payson Ranger District, said Roberts. The prescribed burns can remove as much as 30 tons of dead and downed debris per acre. The district currently has completed plans to treat another 150,000 acres whenever it can get the funding. http://www.paysonroundup.com Colorado: 14) The USFS has contracted with Open Range Land LLC to " masticate " 250 acres of the Pike National Forest near Woodland Park. Open Range crews are using hydro-ax tractors and good old fashioned chain saws to grind up 200 brood trees. " A brood tree is a condo for the bugs, " said Forest Service District Ranger Brent Botts. " They spend the winter in infected trees, and will come out as soon as the weather warms up and then they'll attack other trees. " Forestry Technician Chad Buser said, " We're trying to eliminate the mountain pine beetle in this project area by grinding up the infected trees before the beetle can take flight. " " They generally fly in July and August,' said Entomologist Jeffrey Witcosky. " They burrow into the trees and infect them with a fungus that reduces the ability of the tree to defend itself. " Witcosky used a hatchet to peel away some bark on one of the infected trees. " There's a beetle right there, " he said, pointing to it with his pen. " If you look down there, that's the egg galley that the female laid. Witcosky said the pine beetles are mainly attacking lodgepole pine and some ponderosa. The forest service is turning some of the infected trees near Woodland Park into mulch. The hydro axe operators can grind down a tree in less than three minutes. " We lift the blades up toward the top of the tree, " said Bill Schulze. " Then we grind the stump down and just follow the trunk until it's mulched up. " " If we can get to their (beetles) homes before they get to our trees, " Botts said, " we've accomplished what we set out to do. " http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/15521535/detail.html Virginia: 15) If you have a tract of forest on your property, it might be a good idea to go have a look at it. And make a habit of it, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation advises. Regular inspection of private forests is one of the ways the Virginia Department of Forestry said landowners can prevent timber theft. Thieves annually steal $2 million in trees in the 13-counties of Southwest Virginia that form VDF forester Ed Stoots' service region. " I easily get at least one call every three weeks from a landowner who has had timber stolen, " Stoots said in a VFBF release. Stoots' area includes Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe counties. " If you have a large tract of forestland, it's likely that you won't walk all of that property every day, " VFBF public information director John Campbell said. That makes it easier for thieves to come onto the property, cut down trees and take them without the landowner ever knowing, VFBF said. Prime targets for timber thieves are the trees of older landowners who do not see all of their property on a regular basis and absentee owners who may not live in the same state as their trees. " Thieves research that, " Stoots said Thursday, and have been known to remove most of the trees on a piece of property. Tree theft happens in several forms. Individuals can enter property to take one or a limited number of trees. They often target " high-value " trees like " large cherry or black walnut " trees. A good log can bring several thousand dollars. Another kind of theft is inadvertent and happens when loggers cross property lines without knowing it and cut the wrong trees. " When property lines are not marked well on the ground, loggers can inadvertently cross lines, " Stoots said. Unscrupulous loggers may change information on freight tickets, showing less weight for loads of logs bound for market than will actually be sold, and pocket the difference, according to Stoots. There is no single collection point of data about tree theft cases or prosecutions in the region, and much of what is known about the incidence of theft is found in Shawn Baker's May 2003 thesis for his master's degree in forestry at Virginia Tech. Baker's study relied on surveys of police officer and attorneys in some two dozen counties along the Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee state lines. http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/forest_owners_losing_to_timber_thefts/news/186\ 1/ New Hampshire: 16) It is true that the New Hampshire Sierra Club (NHSC), the Center for Biological Diversity, The Wilderness Society and ForestWatch have sued the U.S. Forest Service to stop logging in Designated Roadless Areas in the White Mountain National Forest. But the club's tireless New Hampshire volunteers have for more than 30 years proudly worked to preserve the last remaining roadless areas in the White Mountain National Forest. In 1981, NHSC volunteers Abigail Avery and Wilma Fry campaigned to expand the roadless acreage so the forest would qualify for permanent Wilderness designation. Sadly, the NHSC suit, which is a continuation of that struggle, has angered Sen. Gregg and other politicians, who appear to want to blame the NHSC for the problems of the North Country, where the high costs of fuel and health insurance are making it hard for the private timber companies to compete in the market for low-cost pulp wood. National forests are designated roadless because of the age and natural condition of the forest, the absence of roads and remoteness from human disturbance, and the presence of diverse plant and animal life. These roadless areas are outstanding examples of the natural beauty of New Hampshire and the public has repeatedly and overwhelmingly demonstrated support for their protection. What's at stake: Clear-cutting more than 300 acres of forests in the Than Brook area of the White Mountain National Forest in Jackson, including the Wild River Inventoried Roadless Area. The loggers will have to build 1,700 feet of haul roads, and these roads will be built, in part, in the Ellis River corridor, which is on the waiting list for the Wild and Scenic federal designation. Plus, the proposed logging around Than Brook is part of the watershed for the Wildcat River, already named Wild and Scenic in 1988. In the Batchelder Forest area near Warren, the U.S. Forest Service plans to clear-cut the South Carr Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area. The clear-cutting will leave scars in Than Brook visible from Mount Washington State Park, Wildcat Peak and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Together, these logging proposals, endorsed by Sen. Gregg and others, are the most substantial incursions into roadless areas east of the Rockies. And there are more expected. What is particularly unsettling, and what Gregg seems to have missed, is that there are 158,000 acres of forest in the Whites that are not designated roadless and already available for logging. Why does the Forest Service want to conduct the first six annual timber harvests in roadless areas that deserve the most protection when there is substantial acreage that does not have the roadless designation? http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Catherine+M.+Corkery%3A+No+need\ +to+log+the+Wh ite+Mountains'+last+remaining+roadless+area & articleId=7d2cdbbc-013a-41b5-898b-cf\ 46be88da96 USA: 17) The good news in pulpwood was fueled by 2007's 21 percent increase in U.S. pulp exports, Baldwin said. Pulpwood and wood chip exports also grew. Plus, paper mills had to buy more pulpwood because declining lumber output meant sawmills had less sawdust and wood chips to sell for paper production. Higher pulpwood prices probably didn't make up for lower prices on bigger logs. Pulpwood might account for half the weight harvested, but only one-quarter of the money paid to a landowner, Baldwin said. Timber prices have typically trailed lumber price trends by six to 18 months, Baldwin said, meaning they could keep dropping. Forest owners always can let trees grow instead of selling them. But the University of South Alabama Foundation, a large timber owner, said prices have not dipped enough to delay sales. " We had a timber sale recently, and it was higher, considerably, than we expected it to be, " said Maxey Roberts, the foundation's managing director. The foundation owns 77,000 acres, with holdings around Meridian, Miss., and in northern Mobile County. http://www.al.com/business/press-register/index.ssf?/base/business/1204798513277\ 240.xml & coll=3 Canada: 18) Béchard's proposals, contained in a green paper made public last month, is riddled with problems including the maintenance of " pertinency " measures that tie harvesting rights to specific mills, the lead economist for the Conseil de l'industrie forestière du Québec said yesterday. " Should we implement the green paper as it is now, it would be a real disaster for the industry, " Michel Vincent said in an interview. If Béchard has a plan for industry consolidation " he hasn't shown it to us " and his blueprint for change does not allow for the central processing of wood at the most efficient mills, Vincent said. " We have to reduce the number of mills not operating at or near full capacity, " he said. The average Quebec mill is now operating at between 65 per cent and 75 per cent capacity, " not enough to make these mills efficient or profitable because the fixed costs are way too high, " Vincent said. The pertinency measures have long been criticized by Quebec industry - and industry analysts - but generally championed by politicians and residents of the rural towns that depend on the mills for jobs. Béchard's green paper, which will be the subject of consultations, is to prepare for legislation that will put a new forest management scheme in place in 2013. One major plank of Béchard's overhaul would be the introduction of a " competitive market " for a significant portion of wood from public forests. The current system of CAAFs (contrats d'approvisionnement et d'aménagement forestier) that gives forestry companies harvesting rights would be replaced by five-year contracts pegged to the market price of wood. Companies now holding CAAFs would have first right to 75 per cent of the wood they now have access to. They would be allowed to bid on a portion of the remaining wood but would face competition from newcomers who would ideally, according to the government, want the wood for secondary and tertiary processing, creating value-added products. Forest management would be decentralized and given to local authorities and dedicated entities such as forestry co-operatives, under the plan. Forestry companies, which now have employees or contractors handle forest management and harvesting, would be paying for wood to be managed by others, Vincent said. " The concept of risk sharing has totally disappeared, " Vincent said. " We would be buying the wood at roadside ... and making sure that everyone who has worked on the wood has their share of profits while we are the only entity all along the value chain that has to support its own risk. " http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=68de3657-efff-\ 4bbc-b420-de713 a355942 19) An oil-sand development that would strip mine 125 square miles of boreal forest and wetlands in Canada's Alberta province can't go forward without accounting for its greenhouse gas emissions, a federal court ruled in a rare victory for environmentalists. The set-back for Imperial Oil's $7 billion Kearl oil-sands project should also set precedent for future projects of its kind, according to a Toronto Star report. It also put a chink in the armor of so-called " carbon intensity " calculations, favored by President Bush as a measure of progress. The oil-sands developer had argued that it should be green-lighted because it had reduced the amount of carbon released per barrel of oil, similar to Bush's argument that the U.S. economy releases less carbon per dollar, despite vast increases in overall emissions. " Given the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted to the atmosphere and given the evidence presented that the intensity-based targets will not address the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, it was incumbent upon the panel to provide a justification for its recommendation, " the court ruled, according to the Star. That's good news, considering existing oil sands projects are so highly polluting that they can produce more carbon dioxide than entire nations. Environmentalists have labeled them " the most destructive project on earth. " And we're likely to see more of them, if the world continues to rely on oil. As existing reserves are used up, increasingly hard-to-get-at supplies will be tapped. Those include tar- and oil-sands, oil-shale and deep-water deposits, all of which will come to market at greater expense to consumers, and a much greater cost to the environment. http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/tar-sands-47030606 Mexico: 20) The Transvolcanic Mountains of central Mexico contain about 60 square miles of forests of oyamel fir and pine which for thousands of years, biologists believe, have provided a winter haven for monarch butterflies that migrate there from eastern North America. There has been growing logging pressure on the butterfly reserves set aside in the region by Mexico in recent years and enshrined as a Biosphere Reserve in 2006 through the United Nations. Ikonos satellite images taken last month for the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation show that incursions by loggers are eating into some of the core butterfly roosting regions that Mexico pledged particularly to protect, according to a research team that posted images on NASA's Earth Observatory Web page tonight. I have a short article on the monarch butterfly's latest troubles coming in the print paper Thursday. The Web page includes a short report written by the scientists involved in the surveys — led by Lincoln Brower of Sweet Briar College and the butterfly sanctuary foundation — which concludes http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/the-chainsaw-and-the-butterfly/inde\ x.html?ref=envir onment 21) Homero Aridjis, a poet and naturalist, can remember years when monarch butterflies filled the streets here in his hometown like a living torrent of orange and black and stayed all winter on the fir-covered mountain rising above the village. Not this year. The colony of butterflies that arrived here in November was tiny and retreated up the mountain, as far away as possible from the lower slopes where loggers have thinned or destroyed the forest the butterflies depend on. " There used to be rivers of butterflies, but now there are years when there are no butterflies at all, " Mr. Aridjis said as he climbed the mountain of his youth recently. " This is a village full of ghosts, not of people, but of nature, a paradise lost. " The tourists still come, but there is not as much for them to see. This is a small town of 10,000, like many in Mexico, dominated by a church and a school in rolling fields at the foot of Cerro Altamirano. The drop in butterfly counts is staggering. In 2004, at a monitoring site in Cape May, N.J., for instance, scientists registered the lowest number of butterflies heading to Mexico since the program began in 1991, according to scientists in the field. Similar results were found in Virginia. Scientists from the University of Minnesota who have been counting larvae in the Midwest since 1997 recorded their lowest numbers. Some environmentalists say that preventing permanent devastation of the monarch population might require concerted action by Mexico, the United States and Canada, though these countries have not put the issue on their foreign affairs agendas. The country people here still work on their small farms, but in recent decades the town's adobe houses have been replaced by uglier cinderblock buildings, and rusting automobiles outnumber burros and horses. Not only are there comparatively few monarchs in Contepec, but the numbers that came to weather the winter at five other forest sanctuaries in central Mexico also dropped sharply this year. Two storms killed most of the butterflies spending winter here in 2003 and 2004. But these reproductively hardy insects have bounced back before. In 2002, a storm killed about 80 percent of wintering butterflies, but the next summer, they found perfect breeding conditions in the central United States and southern Canada. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/international/americas/14mexico.html?_r=1 & oref\ =slogin 22) Deliberate destruction of existing forest cover is clearly a necessary component of anthropogenic deforestation. However, it is not a sufficient condition. For permanent deforestation to result there must be an impediment to forest regeneration. If vigorous regeneration occurs after timber harvest, or other forest use, then the activity meets at least one of the most basic criteria for sustainability. Unfortunately disturbance of the dry forests of La Sepultura biosphere is not being followed by regeneration. In the last decade the number of cattle grazing extensively within the buffer region of the biosphere reserve has increased rapidly. This has led not only to direct, deliberate removal of forest in order to provide pasture but also an increase in fire severity as the vegetation becomes more open and fuel dries out. Loss of vegetation leads to both chronic and acute soil erosion. Trampling and browsing by cattle prevents tree seedlings establishing. The result is generally agreed by both residents and researchers in the region to be causing degradation in the long term productivity. This afternoon a colleague sent me a students' analysis of deforestation in a very different region for comments. The student had produced tables of correlation coefficients and then then fitted a multiple linear regression in order to " explain " the factors responsible for deforestation. This is common way of looking at deforestation, but not a very informative one. I was completely confused and couldn't see the point of the analysis. Here I will show what I would consider a more informative way to proceed. In most cases we start an analysis of deforestation with a reasonable amount of prior knowledge concerning causal processes and linkages. The aim of the analysis should be to try to gain some new insights or reinforce an important, interesting and informative linkage. If for example poorer farmers are considered more likely to deforest their land than wealthier farmers then an analysis based on a correlation between income and forest use may be useful. However all correlation analyses must be approached with extreme care. For example, if poorer farmers live in areas with poorer soils where regeneration doesn't occur then the linkages are clearly more complex. http://duncanjg.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/deforestation-in-la-sepultura-2/ Guyana: 23) Ms Griffith did not dispute the estimate that Guyana is losing at least US$50 million a year from improper Customs declarations of FOB values of prime hardwood logs to India and China (which together take 95 percent of all logs exported). Declared log export volumes declined in 2007 compared with 2006 but so did sawn timber exports. Ms Griffith referred to " the logs that Bulkan wants banned " . Log exports are nowhere endorsed in national policies. On the contrary, national policies from the National Development Strategy onwards encourage on-shore processing and value addition. Indeed, the PPP election manifesto of 2006 mentioned value addition in the timber industry four times on one page. My letter noted that " 350 stakeholders at the public consultation on a log export policy convened by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) endorsed overwhelmingly the replacement of log exports by local timber processing " . And I have never suggested a ban, only an appropriate tax or levy which shifts the financial incentive from log exports to local processing, as advised to the GFC and Forest Products Association by reviewers since at least 1994. 24) So who opposes national timber processing and the export of value-added wood products? Those who are involved in the export of raw logs to Asia. And who are those exporters? Mostly the Asian-owned companies which receive FDI tax incentives from our Govern-ment for on-shore processing, increased local employment and skills enhancement. And what is the response of such companies? - " Barama plywood mill to shut temporarily over supply " , SN December 5 2007. Barama closes or threatens to close the plywood mill which it runs at 25 per cent capacity if it is not allowed to continue logging in illegally rented concessions for our fine timbers which it and its associated companies export as logs for manufacture in flooring and furniture factories in Asia. At his press conference on December 8 2006, Minister Robert Persaud referred to non-compliance by Barama and Jailing with their FDI agreements and provided some details of the 12-month plans proposed by those Asian loggers to achieve compliance. Through your columns, Mr Editor, perhaps Ms Griffith or the Commissioner of Forests or Minister Persaud will provide status reports on the performance of these and other FDI-benefiting companies? Concerning technical standards for saw-mills and lumber yards, the GFC was quite right to show pictures during presentations in 2007 contrasting poor standards of timber handling in Guyana with those of a mill or mills in Belém, Brazil. What does not make sense is to impose requirements which are unrelated to specific market demands and which lack implementable legislative backing; as has been mentioned previously in SN. Writers with direct involvement in product processing have commented on the inappropriate GFC approach ( " The punitive requirements impos-ed by the Forestry commission on timber producers have severely affected them " , SN February 9 2008; " The Guyana Forestry Com-mission is crippling the forestry sector " KN January 26 2008). The repetitive responses from the GFC do not deal with the substance of the complaints: that the GFC lacks the business experience to tell the industry how to improve, and I would add that it lacks the legal mandate to do so. http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_letters?id=56540417 Brazil: 25) The Military police from Rio Grande do Sul realized a violent action on tuesday night, expelling the women from the Via Campesina who had occupied on tuesday morning the Tarumã Farm, bought illegaly and planted with eucalyptus monoculture by the Swedish and Finnish company Stora Enso. According to the news, 800 women were arrested and 60 wounded. 250 children present in the camp were separated from their mothers. The tents were destructed and working tools from the women were taken from them. The desoccupation happened so quickly because Stora Enso already had a permit of the Court in the Rio Grande do Sul state that it would not need any court decision to take supposed 'invaders' from their land. This court decision that gives this permit is called 'interdito proibitorio' in portuguese. At the same time, the government of Rio Grande do Sul (strongly financed by the main plantation companies in the state during the election campaign) and its military police are well-know for their violent attitude against pacific actions of the social movements. Our friends from the Via Campesina ask you to write protest letters to the Governor Yeda Crusius (who gave permit to the Military Police to act against the women) Her email is: gabinete-governadora Philippines: 26) In the past, some people were reluctant to enter the forest because they were afraid of running into prisoners. Now trained prisoners serve as forest guides in Siburan, able to find and identify birds for visitors, and guests sleep in a specially-built bungalow set on a broad lawn against the forest backdrop on the prison grounds. Covering about 1,500 hectares, Siburan is the largest tract of intact lowland rainforest on Mindoro Island. Mindoro Island has been designated by BirdLife International as one of the world's 12 most critical Endemic Bird Areas. Of the six bird species endemic to Mindoro Island, five are globally threatened, including the Mindoro Bleeding Heart Pigeon. Enter Super Yoyong, Superintendent of SPPF and super-hero of the Mindoro Bleeding Heart. Mario (Yoyong) Trasmonte is tough enough to manage over 1,300 low, medium and high security risk inmates and staff, and a penal farm with four subprisons in the Siburan Important Biodiversity Area, but a soft spot for endemic birds. The Mindoro Bleeding Heart Pigeon would have to fly far across the waters to find a custodian more committed than him. This has not always been the case. The prison farm now works with the DENR to conduct joint forest patrols with teams of prisoners, prison guards and forest guards on a regular basis. In case of any irregularities, such as smoke in the forest or freshly-cut tree stumps, they are prepared to respond immediately. Since the patrols and referrals, illegal activities have dramatically decreased. http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/mar/08/yehey/opinion/20080308opi4.html World-wide: 27) Fancy your own swath of rainforest or snow-capped peak? From Britain to Botswana, the Philippines to Patagonia, there is an explosion of individuals, charities, even billionaire financiers buying up vast areas of land in the name of protecting environments. But is private ownership the way to save them. John Eliasch, the Swedish-born businessman chosen by Gordon Brown to be his forest advisor, bought himself 400,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest for £8m in 2006 and now asks supporters to help him buy up tracts of Brazil and Ecuador. His charity, Cool Earth, is asking £70 an acre, and in one year it claims to have bought 32,000 acres - to howls of disapproval from the Brazilian government, which says Eliasch is an " eco-colonialist " and that Brazilians can look after their own forests. President Lula da Silva declared that " Brazil was not for sale " , and a group of ministers wrote that the charity was attacking the country's sovereignty. In Britain, where the government is drastically cutting public conservation funding, groups such as the Woodland Trust are now buying up land at an unprecedented rate and becoming major players in the rural property market. Last year the trust, with 200,000 supporters, raised £22m and it now owns and manages more than 1,100 woods on 50,000 acres. It claims to be planting more new native woodland than the government's own Forestry commission. Equally, in the US, where the government is selling off public land, conservation is increasingly geared towards private ownership. " It is a genuine new model of conservation, " says Kim Vacariu, who works with the Wildland project in the US, which wants to secure millions of acres of land running from Atlantic to Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. " It is too much to rely on governments to protect the land. The only way to make [conservation] happen in time is to buy it from willing sellers. Conservationists with deep pockets are mostly welcomed in rich countries, such as Britain and the US, because they maintain or increase the market price of land. But in poor countries they are often met with fear and hostility. Tens of thousands of people have been evicted in order to establish wildlife parks and other protected areas throughout the developing world. Many people have been forbidden to hunt, cut trees, quarry stone, introduce new plants or in any way threaten the animals or the ecosystem. http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/?p=958 28) Trees' ability to generate large amounts of biomass or store carbon is underpinned by their interactions with soil microbes known as mycorrhizal fungi, which excel at procuring necessary, but scarce, nutrients such as phosphate and nitrogen. Most of these nutrients are transferred to the growing tree. When Laccaria bicolor establishes a partnership with plant roots, a mycorrhizal root is created. The fungus within the root is protected from competition with other soil microbes and gains preferential access to carbohydrates within the plant. Thus, the mutualistic relationship is established. " Forests around the world rely on the partnership between plant roots and soil fungi and the environment they create, the rhizosphere, " said Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director. " The Laccaria genome represents a valuable resource, the first of a series of tree community genomics projects to have passed through our production sequencing line. These community resources promise to advance a systems approach to forest genomics. " Rubin indicates that by using DNA sequence to survey the forest ecosystem, from the plants to symbiotic and pathogenic fungi, researchers can ultimately optimize the conditions under which a biomass plantation would thrive. " We now have the opportunity to gain fundamental insights into plant development and growth as related to their intimate interaction which symbiotic fungi. These insights will lead to bolstered biomass productivity and improved forests. " Laccaria bicolor occurs frequently in the birch, fir, and pine forests of North America and is a common symbiont of Populus, the poplar tree whose genome was determined by the JGI in 2006 The analysis of the 65-million-base Laccaria genome, the largest fungal genome sequenced to date, yielded 20,000 predicted protein-encoding genes, almost as many as in the human genome. In sifting through these data, researchers have discovered many unexpected features, including an arsenal of small secreted proteins (SSPs), several of which are only expressed in tissues associated with symbiosis. The most prominent SSP accumulates in the extending hyphae, the tips of the fungus that colonize the roots ofthe host plant. " We believe that the proteins specific to this host/fungus interface play a decisive role in the establishment of symbiosis, " said Francis Martin, the Nature study's lead author. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080305144228.htm 29) In preparation for the most comprehensive picture ever drawn of the state of the Earth's forests, which cover 30 per cent of its land and are a crucial factor in mitigating climate change, the United Nations agricultural agency today put out a call for accurate data. " Stronger support from countries and advances in communication technology will make the next Global Forest Resources Assessment the most comprehensive and reliable yet, " Jan Heino of the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said of the assessment that will be published in 2010. The last survey was produced with the help of over 800 people in teams working in 172 countries and many more are likely to be involved this time around, with some 220 experts are attending this week's meeting at FAO to kick-start the process. Started over 60 years ago, the Global Forest Resources Assessment process provides information on how much forest exists, how it is being managed and how it is being lost, according to an FAO press release. Global forest cover currently amounts to just under four billion hectares. Although the rate of net loss of forest has decreased in recent years, the world is still losing about 200 square kilometres of forest a day, FAO data indicates. Besides generating unprecedented information on deforestation, new forestation and natural forest expansion, the new survey will provide insight into the land uses that are replacing forests and the forests' role in climate change, the agency said. In addition, the 2010 assessment will expand knowledge of the biological diversity of forests and will include a special study on trees outside forests, a survey of the area of forest under sustainable forest management, and data on forest policy. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25878 & Cr=forests & Cr1= 30) Many of the world's largest environmental groups continue to support Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) " certified " industrial logging of the world's last primary and old-growth forests. They have fallen for, and now espouse, the big lie that first time logging of ancient forests containing centuries old trees can be done in an ecologically well-managed and sustainable manner. This is not a minor policy difference: whether and when old-growth logging ends will critically determine the likelihood of the Earth's climate, species, ecosystems and human livelihoods being maintained. Claims that FSC certified old-growth logging protects biodiversity and ecosystems have increasingly been called into question on the basis of ecological science, lax certifying organizations' conflicts of interest and a litany of questionable certifications. Outrageously now the " forests liars " — FSC with the endorsement of the World Bank and member NGOs — claim certified logging of primary forests has carbon benefits and deserves to be compensated in the carbon market. Despite no mention of carbon balances in FSC rules, logging companies and carbon offset projects are claiming FSC certification makes them " carbon positive " . Selective first time old-growth logging permanently changes forest composition, structure and dynamics. Individual trees being exploited in primary stands are often hundreds of years old. Is killing centuries old trees compatible with " sustainable " exploitation of forests? Nearly all rainforest canopy species are dispersed by large birds and mammals which disappear after logged forests are made accessible to hunters. After the adults of such tree species are harvested, there are few juveniles to take their places. These high value hardwoods grow very slowing, taking many decades or even centuries to mature, yet economics require 20-30 year harvest cycles. Given this lack of regeneration, most rainforest tree species cannot be sustainably managed. Ancient forest logging always entails a net carbon loss. Timber harvest lowers forest biomass as the largest trees with the most carbon are harvested. Thirty percent or more of the carbon quickly returns to the atmosphere as limbs, branches, roots, leaves and bark decompose at the felling site. More is lost as sawdust during milling. Finally the finished product, often containing less than 50% of the original carbon, is incorporated into construction, furniture, etc. for undetermined periods, but eventually even this carbon returns to the atmosphere. http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/?p=954 31) Updated figures indicate that the global market for FSC products has now topped 20 Billion USD and shows continued signs of growth. The FSC supply chain is strengthening with a record growth of 40% in 2007. The FSC market share for roundwood is growing despite a decline in global production levels. This is a strong indicator of the strength of FSC in forests around the world. It shows that the market demand for FSC is affecting forests in a positive way by driving demand for improved forestry practices and recognition for independent review. More than 95 million ha are now certified to FSC's high social and environmental standards. This represents the equivalent of 7% of forests identified primarily for production. Distributed over 85 countries, FSC is a truly robust system.The latest UN FAO report confirms FSC to be the fastest growing forest certification scheme in the world (http://unp.un.org). In 2006 FSC certified acreage grew 20 million ha, roughly 33%. The information pack reveals strong indications from the FSC certificate holder community - now over 9 000 globally - that FSC offers market value and has positive impacts on the environment. http://www.fsc.org/en/whats_new/news/news/120 32) We have to address the issue of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) commercial forestry, both private and public lands where we cannot succeed, in spite of our best efforts, in stopping commercial forestry entirely. There are two kinds of FSC commercial forestry where studies have actually been done on maintenance of biological diversity of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants: those in which biological diversity is reasonably well retained and those which it is not. For example, on United States military installations land condition trend analysis plots are monitored on the ground and the diversity of plants, birds and insects is generally maintained with the restricted forestry allowed. My request to the forum is for examples of FSC forestry prescriptions which have been shown to work as intended and those which have not. My preliminary review indicates that most FSC operations are unsatisfactory but that a few are adequate in maintaining biological diversity. We need practical information on harvest techniques for a specific forest types in specific States and countries such as rate of harvest and age classes. I have found over the years that many land managers are quite agreeable to greatly reducing their operations but not stopping them. Cheers. Marc Imlay, PhD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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