Greenpeace Occupies Barge
6/25/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Topic: Greenpeace Occupies Barge, Chretien Spouts Bilge
PORT HARDY, British Columbia, Canada, June 25, 1997 (ENS) - Six Greenpeace
activists are high in the masts of one of the world's largest log barges,
loaded with old-growth logs bound for the pulp and chip mills of
Vancouver. The barge stopped in Port Hardy so that police could attend and
remove the Greenpeacers, said Captain Bart Terwiel of the MV Moby Dick, a
Greenpeace support ship.
"We have occupied this barge to bring the world's attention to the daily
destruction of this irreplaceable rainforest." said Greenpeace campaigner
Matthew Bramley from aboard the barge, the Seaspan Rigger. Activists have
unfurled a huge banner reading "Don't Buy Rainforest Destruction -
Greenpeace. The barge carries the equivalent of 400
truckloads of timber covering an area equal to 56 football fields.
The action aboard the barge follows the breakup by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP) Tuesday of an 19 day logging road blockade at the
Ista Valley on King Island.
Vancouver based International Forest Products's right to log the area was
upheld by a provincial court last week in Vancouver.
Police arrested 24 protesters, and removed a total of 60 people who were
standing on thelogging road. The blockade by the Nuxalk First Nation and
four environmental groups with demonstrators from Canada, the U.S. and
Europe, stopped all clearcut logging by International Forest products on
King Island.
Those arrested include the entire blockade support team. The Greenpeace
vessel the MV Moby Dick which has been providing support to the blockade
was seized and its crew arrested.
Police removed a 16 year old Nuxalk youth, Colette Schooner, and a Belgian
Woman, Marlene Van Poeck, from a large tripod built from logs they erected
at the logging site.
The RCMP cut away a German woman, Patricia Fromm, who had locked herself
to a grapple-yarder, a large piece of logging equipment.
"My mother has been arrested for protecting Ista. My grandfather was
arrested too, said Schooner, who had been sitting in the tripod for 11
days. Now I am here for the youth and future generations to stop the
clearcutting of this sacred rainforest."
"The message that isn't getting out to the world," explained Forest Action
Network spokesperson Gain Edward, "is that this blockade was initiated by
local people from the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola. This is not about
large outside groups dictating local issues. Rather we are answering the
call of local residents to assist them in the protection
of a sacred place."
The blockade site Ista on King Island is the place, according to the
Nuxalk creation story, where the first woman descended to the world. The
Great Bear Rainforest, of which Ista is a part, is of extreme ecological
importance because it contains the world's
largest remaining areas of temperate rainforest.
While the RCMP were arresting blockaders in the forest, Canadian Prime
Minister Jean Chretien was in New York at the United Nations General
Assembly's Special Session on Environment and Development. He told
delegates gathered to assess global environmental progress that the
forests of the world continue to decline at an "alarming"
rate.
The Canadian Prime Minister said sustainable forest management is a "high
Canadian priority." Canada is convinced that the Special Session presents
a unique opportunity to achieve an international forest convention,
through the creation of an intergovernmental negotiation committee,
Chretien said, stressing that his government believes that a
"strong, legally binding agreement is the best way to ensure the
international will needed to reverse the tide of deforestation."
Thilo Bode, executive director of Greenpeace International also addressed
the UN Special Session Tuesday as forest demonstrators were being
arrested. "While the Convention on Biological Diversity is a magnificent
document, animals and plants cannot live in a treaty," Bode said.
"How can the wealthy countries of the world demand the preservation of
rainforests in Amazonia, Congo and Papua New Guinea, when Canada and the
United States are destroying their last remaining rainforests on the
Pacific coast?" Bode asked the General Assembly. Greenpeace is calling for
the full protection of the remaining intact rainforest
valleys on Canada's west coast.
"Canada presents itself as an environmental leader and was the first
country to sign the Biodiversity Convention in 1992," said Patrick
Anderson, Greenpeace campaigner attending the U.N. meeting. "Yet four
years later there are still no laws to protect
endangered species in Canada and the devastation of its rainforests shows
that Canada is an environmental hypocrite."
The Great Bear Rainforest, which stretches along British Columbia's mid-
coast, contains some the world's last large intact areas of temperate
rainforest.
According to a 1997 study by the World Resources Institute, three quarters
of the world's original forest cover has been destroyed. Satellite mapping
shows that half of the world's temperate rainforest has been lost, and
that temperate forests are more endangered than tropical ones.
The majority of what remains is in Alaska, British Columbia and Chile.
British Columbia is clearcutting at a rate of over two hundred hectares a
day, a rate estimated by Greenpeace to be thirty times greater than that
of Alaska."
Currently products made from British Columbia's old growth temperate
rainforest include newsprint, toilet paper, garden furniture and window
frames.
The Environment News Service is exclusively hosted by the EnviroLink
Network. Copyright (c) 1997
ENS, Inc.