ACTION ALERT

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Save the Ancient Temperate Rainforests of Chile

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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3/6/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Here is a follow-up action alert to the horrendous plan to greatly increase

industrial logging of Chile's precious and unique temperate rainforests. Please

take the opportunity to continue to ratchet up the pressure on Boise Cascade.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: GR Action #2/99, Save Ancient Temperate Rainforests - Chile

March 1999

Source: Global Response Network, http://www.globalresponse.org

Status: Distribute freely with credit given to soruce

Date: March 1, 1999

"The Cascada Chile project will double the demand for wood chips in Chile and

hence double the rate of forest destruction.... Cascade Chile is the biggest

threat to the native forests of Chile."

-- Adriana Hoffmann, National Coordinator

Defenders of the Chilean Forests

Boise Cascade Corporation, infamous in northwestern U.S. for logging old-growth

forests, is ready to reduce Chile's temperate rainforests to chipboard and

paper. Linked with Maderas Condor S.A. in a joint venture called Cascada Chile,

Boise Cascade plans to build the world's largest chip mill in Southern Chile's

Ilque Bay. All the trees will be logged in native forests.

The 5 million acres slated to be cut belong to landholders who will log the

forest and sell timber to Boise Cascade. Because the company will not do the

cutting, its environmental impact study covered only the chip mill site - not

the forest. But the effects on the forest will be devastating. Boise Cascade

will create the incentive and the means to log the forest, without having any

responsibility for how the work is done.

In fact, logging is very poorly regulated in Chile; studies show that only 20

percent of loggers have management plans. Moreover, Chilean environmentalists

give strong reasons for not logging these forests at all.

Chile is gravely deforested already; soil erosion mars half the landscape and

desertification threatens two-thirds. A 1995 study by Chile's Central Bank

predicts that with current methods of exploitation all of Chile's unprotected

native forests will be gone in 20 years. Of Chile's original temperate

rainforests, less than 40 percent remain - and they are a spectacular treasure

of biodiversity and natural beauty.

Southern Chile's varied landscape, altitude and climate create a wealth of

ecosystems, giving these forests the highest rate of biodiversity in temperate

zones. The World Wildlife Fund lists these forests among the 25 eco-regions

most in need of protection for their remarkable biodiversity.

The forests targeted by Boise Cascade are home to the world's smallest deer, the

pudu, which stands only 15 inches high, and 40 other endangered or vulnerable

mammals. Two of the most threatened tree species are conifers found only in

Chile: the alerce tree that lives up to 4,000 years, and the araucaria, an

"archetypal" tree whose ancestors date back 200 million years. These trees are

appropriately declared "natural monuments."

Within Chile, a strong alliance of environmental groups, tourism operators,

salmon companies, archeologists and civic leaders are using litigation, letters

and demonstrations to stop the Cascada Chile project. Nature tourism is growing

fast in the region, creating a wide variety of jobs for thousands of people

whose livelihoods depend on preserving the forests. The salmon industry has

appealed Boise Cascade's environmental impact study, claiming it ignores

negative effects on salmon production, and archaeologists want construction

stopped until the chip mill site can be thoroughly excavated for ancient

artifacts. A 1996 poll found that for 83% of people in Santiago, the loss of

native forests is their main environmental concern.

Faced with widespread public opposition, Boise Cascade has summoned to its aid

the same public relations firm that tried to patch up Exxon's image after the

Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

REQUESTED ACTION: Chilean organizations ask Global Response members to help

them persuade Boise Cascade and the Chilean government to stay out of Chile's

precious temperate rainforest.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

GONDWANALAND - As much as 90 percent of animal and plant species in Chile's

forests are found nowhere else on Earth! Chilean botanist Adriana Hoffmann

explains this remarkable phenomenon: "The forests of Chile are formed of species

which lived in tropical Gondwanaland, the enormous ancestral continent that

comprised what is now South America, Africa, Australia and Antarctica, in a time

when there were dinosaurs in Central Chile and forests covering the present

northern deserts. After Gondwanaland separated into the continents we know

today, these forests became isolated by impenetrable geographic barriers: the

Andes, the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama Desert. During the last glaciation the

forests were restricted to small coastal areas of favorable climate where today

exists the greatest biodiversity in the temperate world." - from Chile's Native

Forests: A Conservation Legacy, by Ken Wilcox.

WOOD CHIPS-- In Chile, 87 percent of native forest exports in 1996 were wood

chips. Most wood chips feed Japan's pulp industry for production of paper and

boards. Wood chip mills don't need the best wood; they buy practically every

species. This is, in effect, an invitation to landowners to clearcut their

forested lands and sell the trees to chip mills for quick profits.

TREE PLANTATIONS - Chile's forestry law allows for the conversion of native

forests to tree plantations. The government even subsidizes it. As many as 90

thousand hectares of native forests are destroyed each year and replanted with

exotic species like Monterey pine and eucalyptus. These tree plantations are

nothing like forests. They are monocultures. Gone forever is the native

forest's biodiversity and wildlife habitat.

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Please send very polite letters to:

Dr. Robert K. Jaedicke

5600 Grouse Ridge Rd.

Gallatin Gateway, MT 59730

Dr. Jaedicke, former dean of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business,

is on Boise Cascade's Board of Directors. The Board meets April 16. With his

academic background, Dr. Jaedicke should be concerned about social,

environmental and ethical issues in international business. Let's persuade him

to take our concerns to the April 16 board meeting.

Tell him Boise Cascade should abandon the Cascada Chile project because:

£ The survival of the planet rests on preserving biodiversity; Chile's unique

temperate forests must not be sacrificed for short-term profits.

£ Chile lacks the technical and legal capacity to guarantee that independent

loggers will use sustainable forestry practices to supply Boise Cascade's chip

mill.

£ There is fierce opposition to this project in Chile and around the world

because it threatens the viability of tourism in this beautiful region, which

promises economic benefits to many thousands of people and businesses.

Sr. John Biehl

Minister Secretary General of the Presidency La Moneda

Santiago, Chile

FAX: Int'l code + 56-2-6904-329

Sr. Biehl is chief of staff for Chile's President Eduardo Frei, and chair of

CONAMA, the national environmental commission.

Urge him to reject the Cascada Chile project for the same reasons.

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This Global Response Action was issued in support of and with information

provided by the Puerto Montt Citizens Committee, Puerto Varas Citizens

Committee, Otway Foundation, the Chilean National Committee for the Defense of

Flora and Fauna (CODEFF), Defenders of the Chilean Forests, Native Forest

Network, Greenpeace, and Ancient Forest International. Thanks to Ken Wilcox for

illustrations from his book, "Chile's Native Forests: A Conservation Legacy."

For more information, see these websites: www.chiper.cl

www.worldwildlife.org/action/lite/frame_g200.htm www.ancientforests.org

Or write to: mafierro@chilesat.net

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Under the volcanoes,

beside the snow-capped mountains,

among the huge lakes,

the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest... My feet sink down into

the dead leaves, a fragile twig crackles, the giant rauli trees rise in all

their bristling height, a bird from the cold jungle passes over, flaps its

wings, and stops in the sunless branches.

And then, from its hideaway, it sings like an oboe...

This is a vertical world: a nation of birds, a plenitude of leaves...

An enormous spider covered with red hair stares up at me, motionless, as huge

as a crab...

A golden carabus beetle blows its mephitic breath at me, as its brilliant

rainbow disappears like lightening... A decaying tree trunk: what a treasure!...

Black and blue mushrooms have given it ears, red parasite plants have covered

it with rubies... other lazy plants have let it borrow their beards, and a

snake springs out of the rotted body like a sudden breath...

A gorge; below, the crystal water slides over granite and jasper...

A fox cuts through the silence like a flash, sending a shiver through the

leaves...

I have come out of that landscape,

that mud, that silence,

to roam, to go singing through the world.

>From Memoirs, by Pablo Neruda, Penguin Books, 1978

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