Outrage Growing over Chilean Forest Mega-Project

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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6/26/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Following are two updates relating to the rising outrage in regard to

plans by Boise Cascade to make wood chip from Chilean native forests.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Forest Mega-Project Sows Discord

Source: InterPress Service, via econet ips.english conference

Date: June 10, 1999

Byline: Natalia Pinilla

PUERTO MONTT, Chile, Jun 10 (IPS) - A chipboard factory that would

process around one million cubic metres of wood annually from native

forests, to be built in Ilque - 20 kms south of this southern Chilean

city - has environmentalists up in arms, both at home and abroad.

Residents of the small town of Ilque, population 700, as well as the

city of Puerto Montt - located 1,044 kms south of Santiago - are

divided over the Cascada Chile factory, to be built by a local

subsidiary of the U.S. Boise Cascade Corporation.

The conflict over the projected factory has had repercussions both

within and outside Chile, mobilising environmentalists to speak out in

defence of forests of native species of trees jeopardised by the

activities of large logging companies.

In the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, second-grade teacher Maria

Gilfillan was accused by Boise Cascade of teaching her students ''bad

things'' when she encouraged them to write to the company to protest

its plans in Chile.

But ''it's not enough to teach about the importance of rainforests,''

responded Gilfillan. ''We have to do something to help protect them.

The letters were very polite. The children expressed their concern

about the forest and asked Boise Cascade to find a way to make their

chipboard without destroying Chile's forests.''

Plans for the project began in May 1997 when the Chilean company

Maderas Condor and Boise Cascade set up an association to create the

Puerto Montt Industrial Company. But a series of lawsuits has brought

the project to a standstill.

Cascada Chile's detractors - including environmental and civil society

groups, small business owners, and parliamentarians - charge that

influence-peddling ensured approval of the project by the

Environmental Commission (COREMA).

The Puerto Montt Industrial Company is being sued for 800,000 US

dollars by the State Defence Council for the destruction of Conchales

de Ilque, an archaeological monument, caused by the company's heavy

machinery during road construction.

The initiative has the backing, however, of local and regional

authorities, business groups and residents of Ilque and Puerto Montt,

who see the project as a source of jobs and progress for one of

Chile's poorest areas.

The Puerto Montt Industrial Company says the project - in which some

180 million dollars are to be invested - will directly create 200

jobs, plus another 1,500 indirectly, not to mention the 700 workers

needed to build the factory, which according to company

representatives will operate ''using clean technology, without harmful

environmental effects.''

According to the original project, the factory was to be completely

supplied by wood acquired from third parties. But in February, Italo

Zunino, one of the owners of Maderas Condor, indicated that 50 percent

of the supply would come from native forests owned by the company.

Ilque is a town of traditional fisherfolk, small-scale farmers and

salmon fishery and shellfish farm workers.

Cascada Chile ''is a terribly harmful project that calls for the

construction of a port on one of Puerto Montt's cleanest bays,'' high

school teacher Carmen Cortes, owner of the local shellfish farm and

president of the Ilque Defence Committee, told IPS.

Nor is the company offering any guarantees for the recovery of native

forests, she argued. ''I don't think farmers are going to re-plant

their land with native forest so their grandchildren can turn around

and sell it. They'll undoubtedly re-plant with exotic (faster-growing)

species such as pine and eucalyptus.''

Hans Kossman, executive of the Patagonia Salmon Farming Company in

Ilque, maintained that the logging project was incompatible with

salmon farming, ''a business that is already employing 140 people from

this town.''

Cascada Chile will be the ''largest factory of its type in the region,

and will absorb a quantity of trees equivalent to the total now being

processed by all similar companies from Puerto Montt to Valdivia (200

kms to the north),'' warned Ricardo Caceres, a lawyer.

But Rene Barriga, president of the Cascada Chile Project Coastal

Support Committee, which claims 530 members, told IPS that

construction of the plant would provide Ilque with telephones, jobs

and better roads.

And Alejandro Larenas, co-ordinator of the Cascada Chile project,

asserted that ''this is an historic opportunity to really educate the

public and to do something that benefits small-scale forest owners.''

Larenas dismissed the idea of developing tourism in the native

forests, as proposed by Caceres and Horts George, president of the

Ottwei-Chile Foundation, on the argument that ''the country can't

afford to have a forest and not touch it in order to just look at

it.''

Rabindranath Quinteros, governor of the region and president of

COREMA, stated that he was in favour of the project because it would

create new sources of employment and add value to native forests, and

gave his assurances that ''an investment project that damages the

environment would never be allowed.''

But representatives of the international environmental watchdog

Greenpeace warn that Cascada Chile ''represents a serious risk to the

native forest and its biodiversity,'' and that the project's approval

revealed ''a legal vacuum for the assessment of projects that utilise

native forests.'' (END/IPS/tra-so/np/ag/ld/sw/99)

Origin: Montevideo/ENVIRONMENT-CHILE/

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[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)

ITEM #2

Title: BC's Chile Project Faces New Obstacles

Environmental Agency Puts Restrictions on Cascada Chile

Source: BOISE WEEKLY

Date: June 17, 1999

Byline: Jimmie Langman

The obstacles in the path of the Boise Cascade Company's Cascada Chile

project are increasing, even as Chileans opposed to the project are

banding together with U.S. environmental groups and bringing their

message to this country (see "Boise Cascade's Big Plans for Chile," BW

Mar. 11-17).

On Wednesday, June 9, Mauricio Fierro, a tourism consultant from

Puerto Montt, Chile, near the site of the huge project, kicked off a

month-long U.S. tour with a talk at Boise State University entitled

"Boise Cascade: Get Out of Chile's Rainforests."

Meanwhile, Chile's environmental agency, the Chilean National

Environmental Commission (CONAMA), has imposed new restrictions on the

proposed $180 million wood-chip and oriented-strand-board export

project planned for the tiny southern Chile bayside community of

Ilque.

CONAMA has issued three main directives; although they do not stop the

project, they may slow down and change the company's plans.

Foremost, CONAMA has ruled that Cascada Chile, a joint endeavor of

Boise Cascade (60 percent) and the Chilean firm Maderas Condor (40

percent), must finance a detailed study by an independent auditor

showing how the project will guarantee that all the wood it uses will

come out of sustainably managed forests.

CONAMA also said that the study, to be completed within one year, must

take into account all ecosystem functions of the forests, such as

biodiversity protection, water resources protection and soil quality.

The results of this study must be incorporated into any future forest

management plans of the Cascada Chile suppliers in order for them to

be approved by Chile's forest service (CONAF).

Second, CONAMA ruled that Cascada Chile must construct a barrier to

prevent hydrocarbon contamination of the adjacent salmon farm in the

Ilque bay owned by the Patagonia Salmon Farming Company. Cascada Chile

plans call for construction of a deep-water port adjacent to the

fishing company's salmon farm.

Third, CONAMA rejected a Cascada Chile request to increase the amount

of wood chips it may process each year at the plant. The company had

requested an increase from 925,000 cubic meters of wood annually 1.23

million cubic meters.

For its part, Cascada Chile is putting a happy face on the CONAMA

rulings.

"The decision of CONAMA is good news," said Fernando Encinar of the

Burston-Marstellar public relations agency, the spokeperson for the

Cascada Chile project in Chile. "We need to study the decisions some

more, but we think it upholds the January decision by the regional

environmental commission approving the project."

The opponents of Cascada Chile, which include workers, environmental

groups and the nation's tourism and salmon industries, believe however

that the new CONAMA restrictions at minimum validate their long-stated

concerns. They also see the decision as the beginning of the end of

Cascada Chile.

"This is a step forward for our efforts to halt this terrible,

disastrous project," said Adriana Hoffmann, national coordinator of

the environmental group Defenders of the Chilean Forests. Her agency

is part of an international coalition of environmental groups,

including Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, the Native Forest

Network, American Lands and the Public Information Network, opposed to

Cascada Chile.

Hoffmann said that Cascada Chile's request to increase its annual

consumption of wood clearly revealed to CONAMA the company's

irresponsible attitude toward the fate of Chile's forests. "The

sustainability of this project is already questionable due to its

giant size and they request an increase in their consumption of our

forests.

This company [Cascada Chile] has no respect or concern for our

nation's cultural or natural patrimony."

Hoffmann says that environmental groups will continue to try to halt

the project in Chile's courts.

Salmon farmers are not happy with the decision, however. "Even though

CONAMA is asking to install some type of barrier against pollution

from the port to the farms, there hasn't been any discussion if such

barriers really work," insisted Hans Kossman, owner of Patagonia

Salmon Farming SA, a major employer in Ilque. "I don't think they are

suited for permanent protection. This is a very technical question,

and we will have to see what type of barrier is going to be proposed

by Cascada."

Salmon fishing is a huge industry in the region. Investments total

about $1 billion, and salmon fishing and processing employ some 20,000

people. However, there are no laws protecting salmon habitat.

Supporters of Cascada Chile argue that it will create many much-needed

jobs in the region and boost the local economy. In Boise, however,

Fierro charged that "This project only benefits Boise Cascade and

their Chilean partner Maderas Condor but costs all Chileans,

destroying thousands of current and future jobs [in salmon fishing and

tourism] for a few jobs in their plant."

The latest environmnetal requirements for Cascada Chile come on the

heels of an announcement by Chile's State Defense Council, the

equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General's Office, that it is suing the

company for approximately $823,000 as compensation for damaging a

culturally significant archaeological site at Ilque bay.

Last year, the company allegedly bulldozed a strip of land 10 feet

deep and 360 feet long by five feet wide that was filled with human

artifacts at least 6,000 years old.

Angel Cabeza, executive secretary of Chile's National Monuments

Council, reports that this archaeological site could contain artifacts

even older than 6,000 years. "We don't know yet, as an excavation

still has not been done," he said.

Many archaeologists also say that the Ilque site may be related to the

very significant archaeological site found at Monte Verde, located

just a few miles away. The ancient human artifacts discovered at Monte

Verde are confirmed by the world's scientific community as being

12,500 years old, the oldest in the entire Western hemisphere.

Jimmy Langman is a free-lance writer based in Santiago, Chile.

Additional reporting for this story was provided by BW intern Jesselin

Anthony.

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