Timber Issue Offers Gauge of Internet Discourse
5/30/97
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Headline: Timber Issue Offers Gauge of Internet Discourse
Source: Digital Nation
Date: 5/30/97
Authors: Jason Chervokas and Tom Watson
Copyright 1997: The New York Times Company
The Internet is the ultimate renewable resource. The
machines on which we experience e-mail and the Web
will someday clog a landfill or be recycled, but the
information itself hardly leaves a footprint. No wonder
then, that preservationists have seized upon the Net as
the ultimate tool for getting their message to the
masses.
"As someone said, 'It's cheaper to ship electrons than
paper pulp,' " says Paul Hughes, the executive director
of Forests Forever in San Francisco. Cutting back on
the need for paper pulp and other forest products is
Hughes's job. Forests Forever is a nonprofit group
whose current cause is saving Headwaters Forest, the
largest unprotected old-growth redwood grove in the
world. The forest, along California's northern
coastline near Eureka, is slated for clear cutting.
coastline near Eureka, is slated for clear cutting.
"For an organization like ours it is especially
important that we minimize the amount of paper we use
in getting our message out," says Hughes. "Our
canvassers usually ask supporters if they want a mailed
newsletter or if they would prefer to access us online.
Many people want the online alternative to save paper
and our expense."
The organization makes its documents available in Adobe
Acrobat's PDF format, and Hughes says that the Web site
allows it to attract a worldwide audience to its cause.
The Web, says Hughes is "a marvelous tool for educating
and organizing the world to save the last of the
planet's intact forest ecosystems."
But on the egalitarian Web, where having simple access
to a server means having an international soapbox, the
environmentalists know they don't have the stage to
themselves. Companies that harvest wood products,
including giants like Weyerhaeuser and Monsanto,
maintain elaborate Web sites featuring corporate
environmental policy statements.
Likewise, lumber workers, whose jobs often hinge on
logging operations targeted by environmental groups,
get their message of well-managed and productive
forests to the public. The nonpartisan Temperate Forest
Foundation has a huge web site, backed by private
industry and academic institutions. And the U.S.
Forestry Service has a deep public site with
information on everything from federal land policy to
tips for children for preventing forest fires.
In a medium that often makes paper and tree products
seem anachronistic, there are competing messages
galore. In fact, the Web takes away the simplistic
slogans of messages like "Save the Trees" and "Save our
Jobs." Slogans don't work on the Net; depth and
interactivity do. Following links from a hard-core
environmental site can often lead digital travelers
into the opposite camp within a few clicks. And because
each surfer's experience is different, spin-meisters on
both sides put their mass market expertise aside in
favor of information resources.
That's why sites like the Temperate Forest Foundation
and the Pulp and Paperworkers' Resource Council are so
effective. They're not arguing for preserving trees,
but for preserving forests and through that effort,
industries and jobs. It's a tricky sell, but the
pro-logging webmasters prove as effective as any
politician's sarcastic rhetoric about the Northern
Spotted Owl. It's because the Web sites seek to educate
and inform, rather than preach.
"We are people dedicated to preserving the environment
while taking into account the economic stability of the
workforce and surrounding community," says the
Paperworkers Maine chapter on the Web, admitting on its
homepage that forest preservation is a complicated
issue even while cheering a "victory" over a Green
Party referendum to halt logging.
Equally effective are "green" sites like The Dogwood
Alliance, which seeks to halt paper and chip mill growth
in the South, or Tennesseans, Alabamians and Georgians
for Environmental Responsibility, a group that provides
insight into a regional issue that people in other areas
don't know about and add to the growing ring of
environmental sites.
Northern California and the Pacific Northwest is the
land of Microsoft and Silicon Valley, the center of a
multibillion-dollar international computing megalith --
and home to some of the nation's last remaining old
growth forests. Microsoft millionaires and ecologists
are two significant demographic sectors in a region
that fairly boils with environmental battles over the
use of natural resources, particularly the forests.
The Cascadia Times is a regional newspaper of the
northwest founded by Kathie Durbin, a columnist and
author of Tree Huggers: Victory, Death and Renewal in
the Northwest Ancient Forest Campaign and Paul
Koberstein, who, like Durbin, is a former environment
reporter for The Oregonian newspaper of Portland.
Increasingly, the Cascadia Times is reaching audiences
through its web site, which features articles and
discussion groups on environmental issues. The idea is
interaction, to create a place where people --
including environmentalists and loggers, politicians
and business people -- can talk things over.
Sometimes, the Web brings interested parties together.
Dan Smith, vice-president for communications for
American Forests, the oldest national conservation
group in the United States, said: "Our newest business
partner in our Global ReLeaf 2000 Campaign -- Deer Park
Spring Water -- first learned of our work from our Web
site. A representative of theirs went surfing the Net
and found us. The site provided them the info necessary
to make direct contact and voila! -- a partnership
developed. What a good fit, planting trees and spring
water."
Smith predicts that the Internet will be a huge part of
the future for American Forests, which was founded in
1875 and is dedicated to a sustainable forestry policy.
The organization is moving into new Washington, D.C.,
headquarters to take advantage of a T1 connection and
will soon open a massive online database to keep track
of its Plant the Future campaign to plant 20 million
trees for the year 2000.
Meanwhile, a big part of its Global ReLeaf Campaign is
the Plant A Tree Online program. Web visitors can
contribute a dollar per tree, which is "planted" via
the Net (giving a whole new meaning to the term "log
file").