North American Forests in Peril

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

6/6/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

Reuters reports on a recent World Wildlife Fund report which finds

that three-quarters of North America's forests are at risk of becoming

"extinct or so degraded they could not maintain a rich variety of

plant and animal species." Note the article is some 1 month old as I

play catch up on the best of forest conservation news.

LIST NOTE

I thought an explanation for the long absence was in order. I have

just returned from Papua New Guinea where I was a member of the United

Nations Development Program's Environmental Programming mission which

identified 5 year priorities for their biodiversity conservation and

sustainable development efforts (including potential GEF funding). I

was the advocacy/communications/ public relations specialist and

developed an initial project outline for a very large in country

advocacy program. Now I have commenced a 3 1/2 month job with the

World Bank as a consulting forest and natural resource management

specialist. My work will focus exclusively on natural resource

management issues in Papua New Guinea. And of course, I continue to

pursue my phd in Land Resources at the University of Wisconsin.

It can not be stated strongly enough: THIS FOREST CONSERVATION EMAIL

EFFORT IS EXCLUSIVELY MY DOING AND RESPONSIBILITY. These efforts are

in NO way attached to my other affiliations. Thank you for your

continued enrollment and support, as this email list reaches 2000+

individuals as well as over 2 million hits on the archives at

http://forests.org/ Please, continue to submit articles as this is

essential to the list's task and conservation impact.

For the Earth,

Glen Barry

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Conservation group warns N. American forests in peril

5/7/97

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuter) - Only 5 percent of U.S. and Canadian forests

are protected from logging and mining and three-quarters of the

region's forests are threatened with extinction, the World Wildlife

Fund said Wednesday.

Releasing a new study that raised the alarm about North America's

forests, the conservation group urged the U.S. and Canadian

governments to at least double the amount of forest protected by

national parks and wilderness areas by 2000.

"The Earth Summit Two is coming up in June and we are asking both our

governments to make a commitment to the global community in protecting

these areas," Dominick DellaSala, director of forest ecology with the

World Wildlife Fund in the United States, told a news conference.

World leaders are due to meet at the United Nations in New York next

month for a conference marking the fifth anniversary of a landmark Rio

de Janeiro environmental summit.

The World Wildlife Fund said North America's forests were among the

most spectacular on earth but were "disappearing at an alarming rate"

due to logging and other human activities.

The study -- released before the World Wildlife Fund's "Forests for

Life" conference in San Francisco this week -- found that one third of

52 forest regions in the United States and Canada had numbers of

species and habitats that were "globally outstanding."

The outstanding forests ranged from northern California's Klamath-

Siskiyous, which had more conifer species and rare plants and animals

than any similar forest in the world, to southern and central

Appalachia's temperate forests, one of two such regions on Earth with

more than 2,500 plant species.

"You don't need to fly to Amazonia to witness some extraordinary

forests. We've got some right here in our home," DellaSala said.

But the fund said three-quarters of North America's forests were at

risk of becoming extinct or so degraded they could not maintain a rich

variety of plant and animal species.

Arlin Hackman, an official with the World Wildlife Fund in Canada,

said Canada had a big responsibility in managing forests on a global

scale since it had about 10 percent of the earth's forests within its

borders. "We're cutting about one million hectares (2.5 million acres)

a year in our country," he said.

The World Wildlife Fund urged the U.S. and Canadian governments to at

least double the amount of protected forest by 2000 and to make sure

protected forests represented a broad variety of habitat types and

species.

It also encouraged timber companies in the United States and Canada to

have their forests certified as well-managed and environmentally

friendly under the principles of the Forest Stewardship Council, an

independent body founded in 1993.

Some timber companies use certification as a marketing tool to sell to

environmentally-aware consumers.

About 1.6 million acres of forest are currently certified in the

United States but none are certified in Canada, the World Wildlife

Fund said.

"We would like to see a tripling of certification in the United States

and Canada by 1998," DellaSala said.

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