National News/Nouvelles nationales

Recently, I submined the following comments on the Coastal Rainforest Coalition's web page "The Paper Industry = Global Forest Destruction" to the FOR-EST Listserve.To date I have received no comments from any of the environmental groups who belong to the CRC.Therefore, I am writing directly to members of the Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, and Natural Resources Defence Council, with copies to other interested parties.For your reference the URL of the web page I am referring to is: http://www.coastalrainforest.org/staples-tothrowthemaway.htmlCRC is the leading group supporting a market boycott of forest products from various Canadian and other sources.They are making some rather outrageous claims about the paper industry.I believe the claims made on this web page amount to the underlying assumptions that lead to the CRC's anti-forestry and anti-paper policies.If the underlying assumptions of a policy are incorrect, then the policies flowing from those assumptions will be incorrect.Here are the points made by the CRC and my responses to them.CRC: Over 78% of the world's original native forests have been logged or severely degraded.Response: This is apparently a reference to the World Resource Institute's oftrepeated statement that "80% of the world's forests have been lost or degraded."I assume this refers to the approximately 40% of the world's forest that has been converted to agriculture to grow our food and the 40% that is now managed for timber, recreation, wildlife, etc.Under this definition "degraded" is used synonymously with "managed," a rather deceptive use of the language, although it probably makes sense to people who believe that all human intervention in nature is negative.The CRC's statement refers to "original native forest," a somewhat confusing term.Is there actually any "original" forest anywhere?Surely all forests are the result of countless disturbances and evolutions through the ages.CRC uses the term "logged" to include all the forest that has been cleared for deforestation for food production, which of course is not the case.I assume that "severely degraded" means "managed," again a dubious assertion as many managed forests are very high in biodiversity and cannot be called "severely degraded."CRC: Habitat destruction from industrial logging is the leading cause of our current mass species extinction.Response: This may be based on the Worldwide Fund for Nature's media conference held in Geneva on March 1 1,1996 in conjunction with the first meeting of the UN Forum on Forests.They declared that 50000 species are now going extinct each year due to human activity and the main cause is "commercial logging."This story was canied to 100s of millions of people on AP and other international media networks.I have challenged WWF on many occasions to provide a list of some species made extinct by commercial logging or forestry.They have failed to do so.There is no doubt that the main cause of species extinction by human activity are 1) extermination due to over-hunting or eradication, 2) clearance of native ecosystems, often forests, for agriculture, and 3) introduction of exotic predators, in particular rats, cats and foxes introduced to Australia, New Zealand and the other Pacific islands including Hawaii.There is no evidence of significant species extinction caused by forestry.The source of the 50 000 extinctions per year is a computer model created by Ed Wilson at Harvard University.It assumes that there are 50 million species (about 1.6 million are actually identified) and that island biogeogmphy theory applies equally to islands in the sea and islands of forest surrounded by managed landscapes, an incorrect assumption.There is, in fact, no visible evidence of a "mass extinction"; it is a speculation based on bad logic and little science.CRC: At current rates, and [sic] estimated two-thirds of the world's plant and animal species will become extinct by the year 2100.Response: If one accepts that 50 000 species are going extinct each year, then a simple extrapolation would predict that 5 000 000 species will go extinct in the next 100 years.This is about three times the total number of species that are known to exist on Earth.If one assumes that there are actually 50 million species, then 5 million would only be 10% of the total, not twc-thirds.I would be most interested in the arithmetic used by CRC in making this claim.As a point of information, about 50% of the known species are insects and about 50% of those are beetles (Coleoptera).If there are 50 million species (which I thoroughly doubt), it is likely that nearly all the ones we haven't found are small insects.It is unlikely that there are many mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, crustaceans, mollusks, or plants that we have not identified. CRC:The pulp and paper industry is the largest single industrial wood consumer in the US and in the world.Response: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations statistics indicate that about 55% of global wood consumption is for energy production, 15% for solid wood, and 30% for pulp and paper.Pulp and paper consumption is roughly evenly divided among printing, packaging and sanitary products.In order to improve living standards in developing countries for literacy, protection of goods during transport, and sanitation it will be necessary to increase paper production. CRC:Almost half of all trees logged are turned into paper.Response: I assume CRC is refening to volume of wood rather than a count of individual trees.It is a fact that only about 50% of a sawlog on average can be converted into solid wood products.The other 50%, formerly known of as "sawmill waste," is usually chipped for pulp or burned for energy, both being beneficial uses of a former waste product.FA0 indicates that about 50% of global pulp and paper is from sawmill waste and The Forestry Chronicle Downloaded from pubs.cif-ifc.orgby 34.228.38.

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