U.S. Environmentalists Swing Axe at Canadian Forest Industry

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

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

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

1/24/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

The forest product industry is undergoing fundamental and wholesale

change. Old growth forest products are no longer socially or

ecologically acceptable. The writing is on the wall for the U.S.

construction industry, as well as their timber suppliers in Canada

and elsewhere--find ways to build old growth free homes or lose

business. Following is in-depth coverage of the escalating campaign

to stop homebuilders--and consumers of old-growth timbers in general-

-from devastating the World's remaining ancient forests.

g.b.

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Title: U.S. environmentalists swing axe at Canadian forest industry

In an escalating publicity campaign, American groups opposed

to old-growth logging have made Canada their No. 1 target.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Date: January 22, 2000

Byline: Barrie McKenna

Mesquite, Tex. -- There's little about Cedarbrook Estates -- beyond

the name -- that evokes trees or water. Under an unusually hot mid-

January sun, tradespeople are hard at work on the first of 123 new

homes planned for this middle-class development in Mesquite, Tex.,

outside Dallas. Dried clay mud covers the treeless yards, vacant lots

and newly paved streets. The clatter of pneumatic nailers occasionally

pierces the air.

This flat and arid patch of East Texas is half a continent and several

ecosystems away from the rich forests of British Columbia. But the

fate of Canada's entire forestry industry is inexorably linked to

housing developments like this across the United States.

Welcome to the new battleground in an escalating U.S. environmental

campaign to stop the logging of the world's remaining old-growth and

endangered forests -- including a large chunk of British Columbia's

central coast known as the Great Bear Rainforest. The area is

associated with the rare, white Spirit Bear, which has become the

threatened poster child of the rain forest campaign across the United

States.

More than half of the lumber consumed in the United States comes from

Canada, helping to sustain an $18-billion-a-year export industry.

Throw in paper products, and the U.S. market sucks up $42-billion a

year worth of exports.

The trouble is that the vast majority of Canadian trees are harvested

from old-growth and previously uncut forests, including vast swaths of

what environmentalists regard as some of the most pristine regions on

the planet. That has made Canada the No. 1 target of several U.S.

environmental groups.

Emboldened by recent successes getting retailers such as Home Depot

Inc. and Kinko's Inc. to phase out sales of wood and paper products

from endangered forests, environmentalists have shifted their

attention to the home building industry. They plan to use familiar

tactics -- including demonstrations, boycotts, celebrity endorsements

and hard-hitting ads -- to extract similar pledges this year from

building-component manufacturers and builders.

"We are not going to be able to eliminate every customer for coastal

wood, but we think we can take out a few of the major ones, so that

the whole industry changes its ways," said Michael Brune, campaign

director for the Rainforest Action Network, a militant San Francisco-

based group that spearheaded a wave of anti-Home Depot protests.

Now, the 20,000-member RAN, working closely with London-based

Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, is

taking aim at what it considers "the last frontier" of the U.S. wood

market. Among its new targets are the country's largest home builders,

including Los Angeles-based Kaufman & Broad Home Corp. -- developer of

Cedarbrook Estates -- Centex Corp. of Dallas, Tex., and other publicly

traded building companies.

RAN launched its campaign in typically brash fashion at the National

Association of Home Builders convention in Dallas last weekend. A

handful of activists scaled the city's convention centre and draped a

huge banner over the building that read: "There's no place like home

to stop rain forest destruction." Police arrested five suspects and

charged them with various trespassing offences.

Home builders attending the show seemed caught off guard by the

campaign directed at them.

"I would be concerned if they were organizing a boycott," said Centex

spokesman Neil Devroy, unaware that RAN had already drafted ads and

leaflets targeting his company. He added that Centex, which builds

homes in 19 states and posted sales of more than $5-billion (U.S.)

last year, buys wood from a variety of sources and has no policy about

the source of the wood.

A quick "rain forest tour" of Cedarbrook's model home reveals roof

beams made of B.C. Douglas fir, and Southeast Asian Lauan veneer in a

kitchen cabinet.

Standing outside the sales office, RAN's Mr. Brune relishes the

prospect of going after home builders like Centex. He said companies

will take more notice when "we picket on a Saturday and send away one

or two $100,000 sales."

The real enemy, of course, is not here. It is lumber companies,

particularly those operating in the most sensitive coastal areas of

British Columbia -- International Forest Products of Vancouver, Doman

Industries Ltd. subsidiary Western Forest Products and West Fraser

Timber Co. Ltd.

Attacking the market, rather than loggers directly, is proving to be a

devastatingly effective tactic. Environmental groups have struggled to

sustain momentum on the ground in British Columbia since their

successful battle with MacMillan Bloedel to limit logging in the old-

growth forests of Clayoquot Sound, which had become one of Canada's

most famous environmental battlegrounds, pitting natives and

environmental groups against the lumber interests.

"Just because Canada has a lot of wood supply doesn't mean it should

be the world's park," said Ric Slaco, Interfor's chief forester.

The Canadian forest industry is increasingly vulnerable outside the

country. U.S. home buyers and builders don't want to be tarred in

public as environmentally irresponsible. Mr. Brune predicts the

campaign will trigger "major contract cancellations" over the next few

months.

"[These companies] haven't caught up with modern values. What they do

pay attention to is the pocketbook."

Back in British Columbia, talk like that rattles and infuriates lumber

industry executives.

One B.C. lumber industry source called the market campaign against

rain forest trees a sophisticated "protection and extortion racket."

But he acknowledged the technique works because wood buyers like Home

Depot desperately want to be politically correct and to appease

environmentalists.

"It's very hard to fight it from here when the battle is being waged

in New York, L.A. and Atlanta," the source complained. "It's serious,

and to a large extent, it's out of our control."

That's why Canadian forestry companies are eager to bring the focus of

the debate back home, where they believe science and the facts are on

their side.

"The issue won't be solved by bothering customers in Dallas or

harassing Home Depot in Atlanta," insisted Bill Dumont, chief forester

for Western Forest Products, which manages 700,000 hectares of B.C.

coastal forest, including parts of the Great Bear Rainforest. "It will

be resolved in British Columbia."

That may be wishful thinking. The company has not lost any contracts

yet. But Mr. Dumont acknowledged that U.S. customers are asking lots

of questions and that some may eventually change suppliers as

contracts expire. Many buyers increasingly want to see its logging

operations first-hand.

But trying to reassure customers one at a time is tough slogging. So,

like many companies, Western Forest has been scrambling to get

international certification for its wood -- a badge of credibility

that it's not an environmental bad guy. Several independent

organizations, including the Forest Stewardship Council and the Swiss-

based International Standards Organization, now certify wood, based on

harvesting practices and where wood is cut.

"We think it's a great system because it absolves the customer of

having to deal with these issues," Mr. Dumont said.

But certified wood currently accounts for less than 1 per cent of

global supply, and demand is growing too fast for companies to keep

up. Home Depot, for example, has given its customers, including

Interfor, Canfor and others, until 2002 to make the grade. If major

home builders apply similar conditions, demand will soar.

Nor is certification alone likely to appease environmentalists. Even

conservative environmental groups are rapidly migrating to RAN's view

that all of the world's primary or old-growth forests should be

protected -- not just pristine valleys. That would encompass a wide

swath of boreal forest stretching right across Canada.

That unsettles Mr. Dumont. He said Western Forest and other producers

are willing to address "specific concerns," but not if that means

going out of business. "There's no way that B.C. can deal with the

idea that you can't harvest old trees because that's what we have in

Canada," he said.

Others are even blunter. "There's no doubt the environmentalists have

been successful in getting attention. We're being targeted as a nation

because of old-growth wood," Interfor's Mr. Slaco said.

The immediate target of environmentalists is a collection of 69 B.C.

coastal rain forest valleys that have yet to be logged. Most lie

within what has become known as the Great Bear Rainforest, a 200-

kilometre-wide swath of the B.C. mainland coast that stretches from

opposite the northern end of Vancouver Island to the Alaska Panhandle.

This last temperate rain forest in North America encompasses 3.2

million hectares of forest -- roughly seven times the size of

Clayoquot Sound.

About half the area that can be harvested -- including stands of

towering red cedar, western hemlock, balsam fir and sitka spruce --

has already been logged. What's left is roughly equivalent to a year's

cut across the province, and environmentalists want a logging

moratorium on all of it.

Convinced that facts will prevail over emotion, the industry-funded

Canadian Wood Council has also launched a multimillion-dollar "wood-

is-good" international marketing push to stress the material's

environmental qualities. It has also been pressing Ottawa to put more

money into environmental export promotion.

The industry can clearly use some help. In the looming U.S. public

relations battle, stamping an eco-logo on a two-by-four may be no

match for the Spirit Bear. This rare and photogenic animal, actually a

black bear that carries a recessive gene for whiteness, inhabits much

of B.C.'s central mainland coast, particularly near Princess Royal

Island.

The bear is a fixture of fundraising material and advertising. RAN,

for example, is putting the bear on an upcoming billboard campaign

directed at Centex. "Your new Centex home leaves him homeless: Stop

using old-growth wood," the copy reads.

The 400,000-member Natural Resources Defense Council, whose blue-chip

board includes actor Robert Redford and songwriter James Taylor, uses

the bear extensively in its mailings.

The campaign to secure a moratorium on logging in the Great Bear

Rainforest is the NRDC's top priority right now. But Matt Price, a

resource specialist with the group, warned that NRDC intends to fight

on until "there is a scientific conservation plan in place" for all of

Canada's intact boreal forest. "A moratorium doesn't mean the end of

the campaign," he insisted.

The warning hasn't been lost on Home Depot, the largest lumber

retailer in the world. In the wake of store protests in 1998 and 1999,

the company is now a convert. Suzanne Apple, the company's vice-

president of environmental programs, said Canada has a history of bad

harvesting practices and the company wants to be a role model for its

5,000 suppliers.

"We don't want to do business with people who don't want to move

forward with us," Ms. Apple said firmly.

Even at the home show in Dallas, the landscape is quietly shifting.

Makers of steel, plastic and cement building components tout their

products as "greener" than wood.

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