August 23, 2007 Published by CPAWS – Northern Alberta Chapter
Contents
1. Activists & Student Leaders Challenge Sears/Lands' End to Clean Up Catalog Production or Face Nationwide Protests
Sears/Lands’ End, with catalog offerings including Sears, Land’s End and the recently acquired K-Mart, ranks among the top catalog producers in North America. Their estimated 420 million catalogs produced annually currently contain almost no recycled content and are made from trees sourced from endangered regions in the Boreal Forests of Canada including West Fraser Hinton. The activists, who came together last weekend near Chicago for a summit coordinated by ForestEthics, have vowed to launch a nationwide campaign within 30 days if Sears/Lands End doesn’t adopt responsible paper standards.
2. Greenpeace report reveals high profile companies buying Boreal Forest destruction
A Greenpeace investigative report released today reveals the names of many high profile and recognizable international companies fueling the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest to create everyday consumer products. Among the 35 companies listed are Best Buy, Grand & Toy, Toys “R” Us, Time Inc., Sears, Coles/Indigo, Penguin Books US and Harlequin. Rona, the Canadian home improvement and hardware store, is also named in the report.
3. Canadian Forest Activist Tzeporah Berman Joins Forces With Hollywood Heavyweights In Urging Protection of Canada’s Forests
Hollywood stars and Canadian environmentalists joined forces last night to focus attention to the lack of protection for the world's last remaining intact forests, especially in Canada. Adrian Grenier, Vanessa A. Williams, Sharon Lawrence, and Paris Hilton were just some of the stars who took to the “Green Carpet” with prominent Canadian forest activist, Tzeporah Berman, co-founder of ForestEthics, and a host of high-profile politicians and environmentalists from across North America.
4. Government Pine Beetle Management Distorts the Science, Threatens Watersheds and Mountain-pine-beetle invasion retreats in Alberta, experts say
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) seems to be manipulating the science regarding mountain pine beetle (MPB) and logging effects on watersheds. Worse yet, SRD continues to ignore conservation and watershed groups who are attempting to provide the government with the correct information. If government proceeds with their misguided plans communities will face increased flooding risk and reduction in long term water flows to meet their annual needs. In addition, some experts are suggesting that the relentless tarnish of Alberta's green forests by the mountain pine beetle may be slowing.
Boreal Market News is a publication of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - Edmonton Chapter. Our intent is to provide information to decision makers on new developments in forest management, focusing on changing market forces. For more information or to be added or removed from the mailing list contact the Editor, Helene Walsh, at [email protected]
1. Activists & Student Leaders Challenge Sears/Lands' End to Clean Up Catalog Production or Face Nationwide Protests
Demonstrators ‘Wrap’ the Sears Tower in Catalogs Outside State Street Store Catalog Giant A Leader in Forest Destruction, Uses Paper Made from Canada’s Boreal Forest
Press release, ForestEthics, August 10th, 2007
Chicago, IL — Forty activists and student leaders from across the nation converged at Sears on State Street today, calling on the Sears Holding Corporation to clean up their catalog practices or face an onslaught of protests at retail locations across the country. The company, with catalog offerings including Sears, Land’s End and the recently acquired K-Mart, ranks among the top catalog producers in North America. Their estimated 420 million catalogs produced annually currently contain almost no recycled content and are made from trees sourced from endangered regions in the Boreal Forests of Canada. The activists, who came together last weekend near Chicago for a summit coordinated by ForestEthics, have vowed to launch a nationwide campaign within 30 days if Sears/Lands End doesn’t adopt responsible paper standards.
A series of successful campaigns by ForestEthics have already resulted in implementation of environmentally friendly catalog practices by companies like Williams-Sonoma, Dell and Victoria’s Secret. Demonstrators said Monday that Sears/Land’s End and other industry giants will have to meet or exceed those standards to stay competitive and avoid public protest.
“Sears is best known for being the original catalog producer – but what they’re currently producing is immense destruction in the Canadian Boreal Forest,” said PJ McKosky, volunteer with ‘Catalogs without Clearcuts’ in New York.
“Sears needs to increase use of recycled fiber in their catalogs, reduce paper use, stop sourcing paper from Endangered Forests, and preference the use of Forest Stewardship Council fiber,” McKosky added. Summit participants displayed a 10-foot tall replica of the Sears Tower wrapped in catalogs, which they created with the support of Austin Green Art, an installation art collective focusing on environmental topics. The colorful demonstration also featured a group of ‘Radical Cheerleaders’ and a visit from ‘Candace the Caribou’ a mascot representing one of the many endangered species at risk in the Boreal Forest.
Sears/Land’s End catalog practices are having a devastating effect on our last remaining Endangered Forests, including the North American Boreal. The Boreal is home to hundreds of First Nations indigenous communities, and it provides critical habitat for species, including songbirds and caribou.
“It is estimated that Sears/Lands End sends out enough catalogs each year to wrap the actual Sears Tower 2100 times,” said Ginger Cassady, Paper Campaigner at ForestEthics in reference to the art display. “Destroying forests for junk mail is an egregious waste of our natural resources,” she added. “In an era of increasing competition and growing public concern about corporate responsibility, companies must demonstrate their values and protect their brand by implementing better environmental policies.”
ForestEthics, a nonprofit with staff in Canada, the United States and Chile, recognizes that individual people can be mobilized to create positive environmental change—and so can corporations. Armed with this unique philosophy, ForestEthics has protected more than seven million acres of Endangered Forests.
Contact:
Tzeporah Berman, ForestEthics, (604) 313-4713 Nicole Landers, (323) 377-4356
2. Greenpeace report reveals high profile companies buying Boreal Forest destruction
International companies, consumers urged to take action to save forest
Press release Greenpeace, Aug. 20, 2007
A Greenpeace investigative report released today reveals the names of many high profile and recognizable international companies fueling the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest to create everyday consumer products.
Among the 35 companies listed are Best Buy, Grand & Toy, Toys “R” Us, Time Inc., Sears, Coles/Indigo, Penguin Books US and Harlequin. Rona, the Canadian home improvement and hardware store, is also named in the report.
Each company is profiled as a customer of logging and pulp companies Abitibi-Consolidated, Bowater, Kruger and SFK Pulp, whose destructive logging practices are responsible for decimating nearly 200,000 km2 of Boreal Forest, or 3.5 times the size of Nova Scotia.
“Today, we’re naming names,” said Kim Fry, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace. “The logging companies and customers featured in this report are driving the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest.”
The report, Consuming Canada’s Boreal Forest: The chain of destruction from logging companies to consumers, calls for action from the international marketplace to protect one of the largest ancient forests left on Earth. It also condemns the governments of Ontario and Quebec, where less than nine and five per cent of the forest, respectively, is protected from industrial development.
“We expect customers of these logging companies to temporarily suspend their multi-million dollar contracts until action is taken on the ground to protect the forest and end destructive logging,” added Fry. “We are looking to the marketplace to transform this situation.”
In addition to environmental destruction—including forest fragmentation, climate impacts and loss of wildlife habitat and ecosystem biodiversity—the report also highlights Abitibi-Consolidated’s refusal to end operations in the traditional territory of Grassy Narrows First Nation, despite a longstanding blockade against logging.
Canada’s Boreal Forest stretches across the north of the country, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It represents a quarter of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests and stores 47.5 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils and trees. Less than 15 per cent of the Boreal Forest in Quebec and 18 per cent in Ontario remains intact. More than 68 per cent of the area managed by the three logging companies has already been degraded or destroyed.
The report can be downloaded at www.greenpeace.ca/canada/en.
Note to editors: Broadcast-quality video and high resolution photos are available upon request.
For more information, please contact:
Kim Fry, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, 416-406-0664
Jane Story, Greenpeace Communications, 416-930-9055
2b. Greenpeace slams companies for destruction of Boreal forest
Article National Post, August 20, 2007
An investigative report by an environmental group has singled out 35 companies, many of which are popular household brand names, for fueling the destruction of Canada's Boreal forest.
The report by Greenpeace Canada criticizes four main logging companies, Abitibi-Consolidated, Bowater, Kruger and SFK Pulp, accusing them of being responsible for eliminating nearly 200,000 square kilometres of the forest, which is considered to be one of the largest ancient forests on earth. But it also singles out many well-known customers such as Best Buy, Grand & Toy, Time Inc., Sears, Coles/Indigo and Toys "R" Us, for being customers that encourage the practices of the logging companies because of the magazines, flyers or products they sell and distribute.
"The Boreal Forest is the largest storehouse of terrestrial carbon on the planet, storing 47.5 billion tons -- seven times the entire world's annual fossil fuel emissions," reads the report that was released on Monday in Montreal. It urged the provincial governments of Ontario and Quebec to get tough with the forestry industry, noting that in some cases less than a third of the forests they were managing had remained intact. But the environmental group also called on the companies that buy the wood products from the logging companies to immediately suspend their contracts.
"Greenpeace believes that customers of logging companies have a responsibility to protect ancient forests and can play a significant role in breaking the chain of destruction in the Boreal Forest," the report said. "There is increasing recognition that the marketplace can have a significant impact in shifting the way forestry is carried out on the ground and ending logging in intact forests."
The Boreal forest is home to about a million aboriginal people along with many endangered species, such as woodland caribou, lynx, grizzly bear. Environmentalists say it is a critical area to preserve in the fight against rising greenhouse gas emissions that are linked to global warming.
The report also said that many individual consumers are turning away from harmful practices, fueling a new demand for certified wood products that are produced following guidelines of the Forest Stewardship council to ensure sustainability.
3a. Canadian Forest Activist Tzeporah Berman Joins Forces With Hollywood Heavyweights In Urging Protection of Canada’s Forests
Press release ForestEthics August 10, 2007
Los Angeles – Hollywood stars and Canadian environmentalists joined forces last night to focus attention about the lack of protection for the world's last remaining intact forests, especially in Canada. Adrian Grenier, Vanessa A. Williams, Sharon Lawrence, and Paris Hilton were just some of the stars who took to the “Green Carpet” with prominent Canadian forest activist, Tzeporah Berman, co-founder of ForestEthics, and a host of high-profile politicians and environmentalists from across North America.
“The spotlight is burning bright on Canada's remaining forests,” said Tzeporah Berman of ForestEthics. “Whether it's the Boreal forest in Ontario, or the rainforests of British Columbia, we've reached a tipping point for environmental consciousness, and the world expects protection for these forests now.”
One of the experts interviewed in DiCaprio's film, Berman explains that the last of the world’s forests are severely threatened, with logging in Canada alone contributing as many greenhouse gas emissions as all of the cars on the road in California. "These forests are our lifeboat, but in regions like British Columbia’s temperate rainforest and Ontario’s Boreal forest they are being handed over to industry with no eye to the much greater concern of global warming,” said Berman. “Politicians, especially in Canada, where there is still an opportunity to do what’s right for the forests, can’t duck from responsibility any longer.”
Berman explains how Canada’s forests play an essential role in the fight against global warming given they are major carbon storehouses and when logged, massive amounts of carbon are released.
ForestEthics has saved five million acres of forest in the last five years, including Canada’s iconic Great Bear Rainforest, and has transformed the buying patterns of major paper and wood consumers such as Staples and Office Depot.
3b. 11th Hour for the environment, but there's hope
CanWest News Service Aug. 9, 2007
Arriving in a Canadian-made electric car for her first walk down the red carpet at a Hollywood movie premiere Wednesday night, environmental activist Tzeporah Berman was appropriately dressed in an outfit made of wood pulp. Berman, who made a name for herself during the logging protests of 1993 at Clayoquot Sound, B.C., is one of two Canadians, along with environmentalist David Suzuki, featured in Titanic actor Leonardo DiCaprio's new documentary film, The 11th Hour.
"As a Canadian, I find it devastating that our natural heritage is literally being exported into the United States to make junk mail and catalogues," said Berman, co-founder and program director of ForestEthics, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving endangered forests. "We have some of the most beautiful and important old-growth forests left in the world and 80 per cent of our exports are going to the United States."
DiCaprio's film, which he produced and narrated, "talks about the need to support new ideas and solutions, and I think it will encourage individuals to call on decision-makers to do that," says Berman, 38, a native of London, Ont. The 11th Hour, which made its North American debut Wednesday, features luminaries like former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, scientist Stephen Hawking, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, and dozens of experts on environmental and sustainable development issues.
Berman said the DiCaprio film is similar to Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, because of its grave warnings about where humanity is heading. But she said the new movie, with its focus on new ideas and solutions to promote action, will still inspire.
She noted there are many new ideas that are both environmentally sustainable and present good business opportunities, such as the zero-emission, no-noise vehicle with the apt acronym ZENN, produced by Toronto-based Feel Good Cars. She rode to the screening in one Wednesday. "The fact is that many responsible businesses, like Home Depot and Staples and Victoria's Secret, who I work with quite closely, are looking for paper and wood products that have been harvested responsibly," she said. "They are looking for provinces and countries that are ecologically responsible and can assure them that their products are responsible and controversy-free."
4a. Government Pine Beetle Management Distorts the Science and Threatens Watersheds
Press release Canadian Parks and Wilderness Northern Alberta and the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition, August 7, 2007
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) seems to be manipulating the science regarding mountain pine beetle (MPB) and logging effects on watersheds. Worse yet, SRD continues to ignore conservation and watershed groups who are attempting to provide the government with the correct information. If government proceeds with their misguided plans communities will face increased flooding risk and reduction in long term water flows to meet their annual needs.
“Dr. Morton, Minister of SRD, continues to mislead his fellow Albertan’s by promoting the wrong interpretation of a scientific report,” says Helene Walsh, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society- Northern Alberta Chapter. “Based on his interpretation of the report Dr. Morton suggests that block clear-cut logging in a pine beetle infestation is better for watersheds than a pine beetle infestation with no logging, and therefore it is important that logging take place in pine beetle prone areas.
The report being referred to was based on modeling done in British Columbia and concluded that a MPB outbreak would increase stream flow by 60 per cent while clear-cut salvage logging of beetle-infested trees could result in as much as a 92 per cent increase in stream flow. According to projections, flood events that used to occur at 20-year intervals could in the future take place every three to five years. “This clearly indicates that watersheds are better off with just pine beetle than both logging and pine beetle,” says Walsh.
"Alberta’s plan of logging to stop or slow this natural insect infestation, which failed in BC, will do far more damage to Alberta’s watersheds than the pine beetle could ever do alone," says Eric Lloyd of the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition. Lloyd suggests that this planned logging be cancelled and that nature be left to manage the pine beetle, as has been done successfully for over 10,000 years.
Dr. Ralph Cartar, an ecologist at the University of Calgary says, "To date, the media have largely lacked any critical analysis of the threat of pine beetles to Alberta’s pine forests, and if anything have exaggerated the threat. It seems likely that pine trees in Alberta are generally smaller and of lower quality to beetles than those in BC and also our climate is colder, so beetles are unlikely to have the same impacts on Alberta forests as in BC. Past experience with mountain pine beetles in Banff National Park in the 1940s and Waterton National Park in the 1980s provide us with helpful insight into these reduced impacts. The critical data that are lacking to the public in this debate are of tree sizes and weather in Alberta."
"Pine beetles are a native species to Alberta and are a natural and important part of Alberta's forests in that they create diversity in forest structure. In addition to the impacts of clear-cut logging on watersheds we need to be aware that if we log now we are simply continuing to manage the forest in a way that has gotten us into this trouble in the first place; mainly, generating large swaths of forest of the same age which are susceptible to a pine beetle outbreak," says Dr. Mark Boyce, Alberta Conservation Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife at the University of Alberta.
In spite of letters and phone calls to Morton's department the misinterpretation of the report has not been corrected. "Investing in watershed protection by providing much needed financial support to Alberta's Water for Life Strategy should be the priority for the Alberta Government, not clear-cut logging, which will damage our Eastern Slope watersheds," says Eric Lloyd.
Helene Walsh, 780 922 0908
Eric Lloyd, 403 949 2696
Ralph Cartar, 403 949 3307
Mark Boyce, 780 492 008
4b. Mountain-pine-beetle invasion retreats in Alberta, experts say
Canadian Press, August 10, 2007 Bob Weber
EDMONTON — Some experts are suggesting that the relentless tarnish of Alberta's green forests by the mountain pine beetle may be slowing. "We might be on the cusp of a negative growth, a collapse [in beetle numbers]," said Allan Carroll, one of Canada's leading pine-beetle experts. "It's all good news for the Alberta population."
And while fingers remain crossed that the province will escape last summer's massive invasion of the destructive bugs, recent research has prominent scientists also asking whether clear-cutting infected trees is a cure worse than the disease. "They'd be better off just to leave the standing trees," said David Schindler, an ecologist at the University of Alberta.
Mountain pine beetles have infected millions of hectares of forests in British Columbia, severely damaging the forestry industry, and seemed poised to inflict the same devastation in Alberta. Last summer, the number of beetle-infected trees, with their sickly reddish hue, jumped to about three million from about 19,000, said Duncan MacDonnell, spokesman for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.
But scientists have found last winter was a lot harder on the bark-boring bugs than they thought because of a timely cold snap. Previously, it was thought thermometers had to drop to -40 C to kill off the beetles. But a spell of -20 weather in November, before the beetles had a chance to produce the antifreeze-like substance that keeps them alive, may have done the trick. Very few beetles higher than a metre or so up the tree trunk survived, said Mr. Carroll, who works with the Canadian Forest Service.
Alberta so far has escaped freak winds that brought millions of bugs over the mountains from B.C. last year. The few weeks when the critters are migrating are half gone, so the chances of another such massive influx are quickly dropping. Foresters - and the towns that depend on the industry - are hoping that westerly winds stay light for the next couple of weeks and the B.C. beetles remain at home. "I'm feeling optimistic, to tell the truth," Mr. Carroll said.
The debate over clear-cutting continues, however.
A B.C. report found the practice could be damaging watersheds by dramatically increasing runoff. It found stands of trees killed by the beetles have 62 per cent more runoff than healthy stands, but areas both infected and clear-cut have 92 per cent more.
Runoff damages the water quality of Alberta rivers and has serious implications for the communities that depend on them, said Mr. Schindler, an internationally respected authority. It also increases flood risks, damages wildlife habitat and nearly doubles nutrient loss in forest soils, he added. Clear-cutting simply isn't worth it, he said.
Others agree. "If we log now, we are simply continuing to manage the forest in a way that has gotten us into this trouble in the first place - mainly, generating large swaths of forest of the same age which are susceptible to a pine-beetle outbreak," said Mark Boyce of the University of Alberta.
Mr. MacDonnell said the province will get a better idea by September of whether the pine beetle crisis has peaked when researchers head to the woods to survey the population.