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This should be our next campaign:
Lingerie giant Victoria's Secret has become the latest prominent target of a campaign by environmentalists who are trying to protect what they call Canada's endangered old growth forests. Get involved in this exciting campaign!
Kenyan Wangari Maathai has become the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, honored for fighting poverty by trying to save Africa's shrinking forests. The committee recognized deforestation is caused by, and a cause, of poverty and violence. Indeed, increasingly wars are being fought over natural resources. Maathai is a zoology professor who rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearance in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s. Maathai worked to raise awareness of the importance of forests, exposing the graft that causes so much of their destruction. The Green Belt movement that she led is said to have planted some 30 million trees across Africa.
Forests.org and many other international supporters have long followed Maathai's lead, championing the cause of Kenyan forest conservation. We have supported campaigns to highlight the importance of Kenya's forests in absorbing rainfall which nourishes farms that support the bulk of the population. Forests are intimately related to water, climate, and land as well as human health throughout the World.
This prize is a wonderful celebration of the Green Belt movement's work, and catapults forest conservation into the mainstream of international policy as never before. Maathai's work is our work, and I would expect that she will use the excitement surrounding this prize to further protect the World's forests. It is entirely appropriate and long overdue that an environmentalist wins the Nobel Peace Prize. We have long known that Ecology is Peace.
Glimmer of Hope for Indonesia's Rainforests and Orangutans
Forests.org's recent alert on behalf of Indonesia's rainforests, in partnership with Greenpeace, has been successful. World governments have agreed to stricter control of the trade in ramin timber and its products - which provide critical habitat for the orangutan. As demanded in our alert, the U.S. delegation supported the CITES Appendix II listing for ramin, indicating that our campaign had been instrumental in making the decision. This is the third victory this month for Forests.org. It appears we have reached a critical mass whereby when we speak together, we are listened to. Heartfelt congratulations to all that participated in this action. We must follow up to ensure that illegal trade in ramin is cracked down upon -particularly trading by the Malaysian timber mafia. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore must take immediate steps to combat ramin smuggling and work with importing nations to eliminate this forest crime. Note I am now sending notifications of victories to the Forest Conservation Action Alert members, lest you think our efforts are in vain. They are not. We will be successful in our efforts to protect the World's remaining ancient, old-growth forests and their inhabitants, and we will usher in an era of true, ecologically rigorous forest restoration - repairing past damage and allowing natural old forests to expand. Our movement is on the march, and prospects for global forest and ecological sustainability are increasing.
Title: Fate of Orangutan and Sumatran Tiger has glimmer of hope
Source: Greenpeace Press Release
Date: October 7, 2004
Bangkok, 7 October 2004-Greenpeace welcomes the decision of the world's governments to take stricter measures to control the widespread criminal trade in ramin timber from the endangered habitat of the Orang-utan and the Sumatran Tiger. Given the high volume of illegal trade in this species, a great challenge lies ahead for all governments to implement and enforce this decision.
The Parties to the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), being held in Bangkok, voted to list ramin on Appendix II and place restrictions that forbid the export and import of the timber coming from illegal and destructive activities.
"Today's decision provides governments with the necessary legal and enforcement measures to crack down on the smuggling of illegal ramin and those criminal networks who control this trade," said Nathalie Rey of Greenpeace. "To date, neither Malaysia, Singapore nor Indonesia have stopped the regional illegal trade in ramin logs, squared off logs and sawntimber. This decision will inject the necessary legal support to achieve the
protection of the threatened areas where this tree is found."
Despite all previous attempts to block international conservation efforts for ramin, the Malaysian government announced in the meeting that it would support the listing and would make all efforts to enforce regulations. This announcement follows new evidence release by Greenpeace this week of Malaysia's involvement in the illegal imports from Indonesia of this valuable timber species.
The lowland forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, where ramin trees grow, provide the last rainforest habitat for the Orang-utan and the Sumatran Tiger. Although both are protected by CITES, they are facing unprecedented loss of their forest homes throughout the region. These areas have long been targeted by illegal loggers and criminal networks who trade the high value timber onto the international market.
Ramin timber usually ends up in private homes as window blinds and baby cots; and in snooker and pool halls all over the world as cue sticks. The greatest demand comes from countries such as the US, Italy, Japan and the UK.
"The fate of the Orang-utan and the Sumatran Tiger still hangs in the balance. Governments involved in the international trade of ramin timber now need to convert words into urgent action, " continued Rey. "Greenpeace urges the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore to take immediate steps to combat ramin smuggling and work with importing nations to eliminate this forest crime."
For further information, contact:
Gina Sanchez, Greenpeace International, +66 4089 4620
In a stunning victory, the U.S. federal government will no longer consider drilling for natural gas along Montana's Rocky Mountain front. The Front, which stretches about 100 miles along the eastern Rockies, is home to grizzly bears, elk, bighorn sheep and other wildlife. Over 99% of the 50,000 comments submitted by the public were against the drilling, several thousand of which were generated by the Forests.org network. Local organizing was magnificent, and national and international support overwhelming. Of course, it is possible if not likely that the drilling issue could be revisited, and this is why we must continue to work for establishment of long-term protection for the area and others like it. Across the American West, extraction of natural gas and coal is soaring. This development threatens to eliminate many of America's last great wildlands, while prolonging the era of fossil fuel dependence and resultant climate diminishment. Indeed, there must be an ironclad agreement that the Front and other forest wildernesses are off-limits to industrial development forever. Thank you for participating in this and other alerts from Forests.org.
g.b.
The vicious myth of sustainable old-growth forestry is being perpetuated by the WWFs and World Banks of the world. They are the unnamed forces behind the following account of efforts to privatize the Brazilian Amazon. The Brazilian Amazon's very survival as a life-generating force is threatened by the fallacy that primary rainforest wilderness can and should be "sustainably" logged.
Inconveniently for those making the case to log the world's last large wilderness areas is that fact that there is NO scientific evidence to support the idea that old-growth forests can be ecologically sustainably harvested. None whatsoever. In fact, what these groups are claiming is that since all these forests are going to be logged, cleared, and burned anyway, that the best we can hope to do is make them into tree farms. And that is what they will become.
First time logging of old-growth irreparably diminishes its ecological integrity; skewing species assemblages, and making for depauperate, sick and humanized forest landscapes. Follow on harvests further homogenize previously ancient natural forests into plantations. Timber is sustained. Forest ecosystems are not. Indigenous peoples' cultures and their habitats are smashed in the name of feel good conservation blarney.
Perhaps we could cut a few panels from the Mona Lisa to sell as a fund-raiser for its maintenance? The point is that beauty, truth and ecological values lie in the whole, large and intact forest, not in individual trees.
Those that follow the WWF/World Bank's coalition of the ecologically challenged are engaged in crimes against humanity and the Earth. Forests.org demands an internal review of the World Bank/WWF coalition's efforts to promote industrial logging in the World's last old-growth forests, to include a full review of the ecological literature. Community based eco-forestry and protection is the only viable option to maintain large forests required for global and local ecological sustainability. Don't support the coalition's lies.
Agrofuels on Stolen Lands Continue to Threaten Colombian Rainforests and Communities
11/5 - Massachusetts: Ban on ATVs brings quiet to forest, few complaints, Boston Globe
11/5 - Climate change key to future food crisis, Economic Times
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