Deforestation

Featured image from the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page. On August 9th, exactly one year after the first Fairy Creek blockades began, the RCMP went on a rampage that appeared to be a tyrannical temper tantrum. They bulldozed down the kitchens at HQ, destroyed the pedal bikes, stole our medical supplies, fire-fighting equipment and communications devices, slashed car tires, towed away cars and tore down all the other buildings and toilets. The current RCMP operation includes the use of three helicopters, a surveillance van with satellite, about 100 officers from a special tactical team, police dogs, about 70 vehicles, arrest wagons, extraction equipment, gates and gate-builders, as well as team overtime and accommodation for nearly three months. The cost for this overwrought response to peaceful protestors is now undoubtedly in the millions. ...

Hurricane Sandy didn’t kill East River Park, but New York City is planning to. Featured image: New Yorkers protest plan to bulldoze a thousand climate-saving trees. This article originally appeared in Climate&Capitalism. by Elliot Sperber If you live in North America, chances are you haven’t just seen the hazy skies blanketing much of the continent this week, but have been breathing the toxic air, too. Blowing in from the monstrous wild fires devouring the forests out west, it’s more than just a reminder that our planet can’t continue to swallow the pollution we’re pumping into it; more than a reminder, it’s a presence that’s killing us. ...

Editor’s note: Since when do “Top brands” care about human (or anyone’s) rights? This article originally appeared in Mongabay. Featured image: Dayak Culture Parade to commemorate Youth Pledge Day in Anjungan village, West Kalimantan, Borneo. Image courtesy of Antonsurya12/ Wikimedia Commons. A new report highlights systemic social and environmental problems that continue to plague the Indonesian palm oil industry and ripple far up the global palm oil supply chain. The report looked at local and Indigenous communities living within and around 10 plantations and found that their human rights continued to be violated by the operation of these plantations. The documented violations included seizure of community lands without consent; involuntary displacement; denial of fundamental environmental rights; violence against displaced Indigenous peoples and communities; harassment; criminalization; and even killings of those trying to defend their lands and forests. The problems have persisted for decades due to ineffective, and sometimes lack of, due diligence by buyers and financiers along the global supply chain, the report says. By Hans Nicholas Jong ...

This article originally appeared in Counterpunch. By Cal Winslow Logging has begun in Jackson State Demonstration Forest, 48,000 acres of state owned redwood forestland in Mendocino County in Northern California. The forest consists mostly of heavily cut over land – probably logged several times since logging in the County began in the 1860s. This continued when the state acquired the land in 1947 – the hypothesis then was to acquire forestland to apply science to commerce with goal of demonstrating best practices. Today, seventy five years later, it’s not easy to find much that’s “best” in this highly disturbed forest land. Still there are numerous groves of second-growth redwood to be found – remnants of what was once one of the wonders of the natural world. ...

This article originally appeared in Mongabay. Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests, which support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. A new study reveals that mountain forest loss in Southeast Asia is accelerating at an unprecedented rate throughout the region: approximately 189,000 square kilometers (73,000 square miles) of highland forest was converted to cropland during the first two decades of this century. Mountain forest loss has far-reaching implications for people who depend directly on forest resources and downstream communities. Since higher-elevation forests also store comparatively more carbon than lowland forests, their loss will make it much harder to meet international climate objectives. by Carolyn Cowan ...

This article originally appeared in The Conversation. By David Tindall, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia The RCMP has recently been arresting protesters who had set up blockades to prevent the logging of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. Environmentalists say the Fairy Creek watershed, near Port Renfrew, is the last old-growth area left on southern Vancouver Island, outside of protected areas. The contested forested areas lie close to the internationally known West Coast Trail, and within the unceded traditional territory of several First Nations, including Pacheedaht and Ditidaht. ...

This article originally appeared on Counterpunch. BY GEORGE WUERTHNER In a recent May 29 Bend Bulletin article, Senator Merkley asserted he “wants to boost spending on forest management by $1 billion annually through work, such as thinning and prescribed burning, to reduce the prospects of catastrophic wildfires.” An unexamined assumption is that thinning/logging work significantly reduces the pejoratively named “catastrophic” fires. Despite assertions from the Forest Service and others who will gain financially from inflated budgets to log our forests, one needs to ask if “fuel reductions” work to halt wildfires when burning under extreme fire weather conditions. That qualifier is important. All large blazes, like those that charred the western Cascades last Labor Day, burn swiftly through logged sites and other “fuel reductions.” ...

Proposal called for 4,600 acres of clearcuts, bulldozing up to 56 miles of roads on public lands just outside of Yellowstone This article originally appeared on Counterpunch. WEST YELLOWSTONE , MONTANA— Following a challenge by multiple conservation groups, the U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that it was halting a plan to clearcut more than 4,600 acres of native forests, log across an additional 9,000 acres and bulldoze up to 56 miles of road on lands just outside Yellowstone National Park in the Custer Gallatin National Forest. ...

Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples. ...

DGR stands in fierce solidarity with all people who resist logging. Let’s not forget that the legal system is set up by the rich and powerful to serve them, which is why it has proven ineffective in resisting the destruction by large companies in most cases. This article was originally published on Mongabay on 31 March 2021. by Benjamin Evine-Binet Transport Bois Négoce International (TBNI), a Chinese forestry company, has built new roads in preparation to cut timber in a concession which includes a previously unlogged forest in northeastern Gabon. Residents of the village of Massaha, on the northern edge of this forest, have been managing hunting and other use of this forest since 2019; they formally requested reclassification of the forest as a protected area in August 2020. Gabon’s forest code makes explicit provision for local communities to initiate reclassification of sensitive forest as a protected area, and villagers are anxious for the government to respond before TBNI advances any further. A forestry company in Gabon has built new roads to log a forest in the northeastern province of Ogooué-Ivindo. Villagers had applied to the government last August to reclassify this valuable forest as a protected area, and say they are alarmed by the company’s rapid advance while they wait for a formal response. ...