logging

It’s not a ‘sustainable’ biofuel

So Europeans are buying Indonesian palm oil as a "sustainable" biofuel, but it isn't sustainable, as we've noted before. The tragedy continues:

Palm oil companies are burning peat forests to clear land for plantations in Indonesia's Riau province, despite government pledges to end forest fires ... Blazes have started flaring again since the end of June with the start of the dry season.

How a big deal is this? As The New York Times put it earlier this year, "Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world's third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming." [Note to NYT: you can drop the "scientists believe" crap. Carbon emissions cause global warming -- deal with it, MSM!]

The emissions from the 1997 fires alone are staggering, as Nature reported in 2002 (sub. req'd):

Making things out of wood sequesters carbon, turns out

One telling point that carbon tax advocates make against cap-and-trade systems is that they create an enormous incentive for rent-seeking. Now it seems the timber industry is getting in on the game. Via Greenwire (sub rqd), this has my BS alarm all a-ringin’: [Timber] Industry groups are lobbying Congress and making a public relations push […]

Park Service hacks down some trees in Pa.

This is sorta effed. The National Park Service is cutting down hundreds of acres of trees on the Gettysburg Battlefield to restore historical accuracy. From NBC News in Pennsylvania: The National Park Service is starting another phase of its efforts to return Gettysburg Battlefield to how it looked in 1863, during the Civil War. The […]

Gathering data in the U.S.’ largest temperate rainforest a heroic and necessary task

Hiking part of the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska a few summers ago, I was utterly wowed, but knowing that it accounts for nearly one-third of the old-growth temperate rain forest left in the world seemed incredibly incongruent with the fact that my government was working so hard to wreck it (thanks to some truly absurd subsidies).

An excellent story in the new National Geographic retells the tale and shines light on new efforts aimed at allowing the Tongass to continue its majestic reign, including a heroic grassroots effort of the Sitka Conservation Society to "ground-truth" those parts of the nearly impenetrable Tongass scheduled for the saw. Without SCS and others, this jewel would look mightily different, and they deserve our support and our thanks.

Indigenous leader Julio Cusurichi Palacios battles for an intact Amazon

Julio Cusurichi Palacios. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. The Peruvian Amazon is one of the most remote places in the world. In its wildest corners, in the Madre de Dios region along the Brazilian border, some indigenous communities continue to live far from modern society. But their solitude is eroding: Loggers are pushing deeper into the […]

Going to jail for the environment

Today I received an email from my friend Kate, with whom I studied environmental politics and geology in college, and who now works for the Cascadia Wildlands Project in Eugene, Oregon. On Monday, she was arrested in Medford, Oregon, during a protest against the roadless-area logging recently approved by the Bush Administration. Below the fold is her letter describing her experience and explaining why she chose to participate in an act of civil disobedience. I've added links to relevant bits of background.

Biscuits ‘n’ Crazy

Forest Service will auction off Oregon timber burned by Biscuit fire Enviros have lost a four-year legal battle to keep logging out of Oregon’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, burned four years ago by the massive Biscuit fire. A federal appeals court has cleared the U.S. Forest Service to auction off rights today to about 400 […]

Tarcísio Feitosa da Silva fights illegal logging in the Amazon

In the northern Brazilian state of Pará, where the mouth of the Amazon cuts into the continent, illegal logging, industrial farming, and a human-driven cycle of massive wildfires are destroying the tropical forests. Since he was a teenager, Tarcísio Feitosa da Silva has considered it his mission to help protect these forests, and the isolated […]

Anne Kajir combats the greed of Papua New Guinea’s timber barons

The highlands of Papua New Guinea cradle some of the most remote places in the world, and are home to an astounding diversity of languages, cultures, and plant and animal life — including the Asian Pacific’s largest intact stand of tropical forest. Anne Kajir. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Since the 1980s, industrial logging has torn […]