HomeBase Latest to Phase Out Old-Growth--

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Momentum Builds Against Old-Growth Logging

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

11/8/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Wow! We appear to be witnessing the fundamental realignment of the

U.S. hope improvement market. HomeBase, the sixth largest home

improvement retailer in the United States, announced today that the

company plans to stop selling wood from endangered old growth

forests. This is the 3rd company to do so recently. Old-Growth

logging no longer produces an acceptable product. Companies that

fail to heed the message will be clearcut, right out of the market.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: HOMEBASE LATEST TO ANNOUNCES PLAN

TO PHASE OUT OF OLD GROWTH WOOD PRODUCTS

WITH HOME DEPOT, WICKES AND NOW HOMEBASE, MOMENTUM BUILDS

AGAINST OLD GROWTH LOGGING

Source: Rainforest Action Network

221 Pine Street #500

San Francisco, CA 94014

Telephone: 415/398-4404; fax: 415/398-2732 Website:

http://www.ran.org

Press contacts:

Mark Westlund, ranmedia@ran.org

Michael Brune, mbrune@ran.org

Date: November 8, 1999

"Now that three of the top ten U.S. home improvement chains are

making plans to stop selling old growth wood, we are closer than ever

to seeing the market for old growth dry up for lack of demand. When

less than twenty percent of the world's original forests are still

standing, it's simply unconscionable to make these forests into

decking material and 2x4's."

-- Michael Brune, Old Growth Campaign Director

Irvine, CA-based HomeBase, the sixth largest home improvement

retailer in the United States, announced today that the company plans

to stop selling wood from endangered old growth forests. Rainforest

Action Network has kept unrelenting pressure on HomeBase and other

top-ten DIY chains to stop selling old growth wood since Home Depot's

August 26 announcement that the retail behemoth would phase out of

all wood products derived from endangered old growth forests.

"It's no longer a question of whether home improvement stores will

stop selling old growth wood, but when they will stop," asserted RAN

old growth campaign director Michael Brune. "From where we stand, I

wonder why it's taken them so long - and I wonder what has to

transpire for stores sitting on the fence to follow suit."

HomeBase's announcement came just twelve days after the company had

been targeted as part of a nationally coordinated day of protest.

Other old growth-selling chains targeted were 84 Lumber, Menard's,

Payless Cashways and Wickes Lumber, which announced last Wednesday

that it, too, would stop selling old growth wood.

Old growth forests are forests that have never been logged

commercially, and are the most endangered forest areas on the planet.

The giant trees in some old growth forests are over 2,000 years old.

The Amazon rainforest is tens of thousands of years old, large

portions of which have never been touched by commercial logging.

Around the world less than twenty percent of these original forests

survive, and less than four percent in the United States.

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