Green Options

Conservation group ForestEthics has released their annual “Naughty or Nice” list of corporations regarding their treatment of our forests. These ten companies continue to fill your mailbox with junk at the expense of the trees.

The list, determined by four separate criteria, includes a “Checking Twice” category for companies in a gray area. JC Penny has decreased their direct mail use but still supports logging companies, so while they stay out the top 10 snail-mail-spammers, but still aren’t free of all charges.

Check out the rest of the list, along with 10 other companies who are being nice to the trees, below:

Since 1993, Wayne Sawchuk, a former logger and grizzly bear hunter, has been working tirelessly to protect “the biggest well-kept secret in North America.”

Wayne Sawchuk recently found some atonement for decades of his life spent logging, partying and grizzly hunting. Funded mostly by private donors, Sawchuck played a major role in the conservation of the MuskwaKechika Management Area in Northern British Columbia.

Taking a month to cross, even with horses, the land has been touted as “the biggest well-kept secret in North America,” and “North America’s Serengeti.”  Teeming with grizzly, black bear, wolf, lynx, caribou, elk, moose, bison and stone sheep, it is the largest intact wildlife habitat in the entire Rocky Mountain chain and only slightly smaller than the state of Maine.

In the early 1990’s, the government of British Columbia came under pressure to make a final decision on how to manage the province’s resources.  Wayne Sawchuk, still a logger at the time, recognized the opportunity of a lifetime and teamed up with other key players to protect the tract of land.

Involved in the efforts were guide outfitters, recreational hunters, the oil and gas industry, snowmobilers, businesspeople, environmentalists, timber industries and government officials.  Sawchuk had a tremendous impact in the conservation efforts, as he led the media, government and scientists through the area on horseback so that they could get a first hand glimpse at what they were talking about.

Peruvian and Brazilian authorities are trading accusations that uncontrolled logging on the Peruvian side of the Amazon Forest is uprooting isolated Indian tribesmen forcing them to flee across the border into Brazil in search of untampered land and food.

Indigenous rights groups and Indian tribes researchers in Brazil now believe the uprooting may be a recipe for renewed inter-tribal conflicts over the resource that may suck governments of both nations into a row over the other’s responsibility in the affair, Reuters reports.

The environment and interior ministries in Peru have announced plans to set up a special task force to safeguard forests and monitor the rivers in the Amazon basin. The special force will be made up of around 3,000 officers to be known as the Environment Police.

With a constant need to look out for the planets ecosystems, it is always saddening to see that some governments simply are not. So when I saw the news that, over the past 12 months, deforestation in the Amazon rain forest had jumped 69%, I was literally shocked.

According to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon, since August 2007 a total of 8,147 square kilometers (3,145 square miles) was destroyed within the Amazon. This is the first such increase in 3 years, and saw a 69% jump over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months.

On June 20, 2008, an unusual, early summer lightning storm sparked over 1400 fires in California.  According to state wildfire maps, currently 489 fires are burning.  The reduction in the number of fires is not because they have been put out, but because these blazes have merged.  For example, the Hell’s Half Complex, which threatens my home and has prompted the sheriff to issue a mandatory evacuation, originated as 17 fires that have now grown together into one fire over 10,000 acres with 35% containment.  11 California counties have received disaster declaration from President Bush, who will be touring Northern California today.

These fires started naturally and are probably the kind of fires that occurred naturally before massive fire suppression efforts began in the west a hundred years ago. After a nice Memorial day soaking, the foliage here was pretty green when the lightning struck.  These fires have been smoldering and cleaning up the forest, except where they are threatening homes. Klamath-Siskiyou Wild explains it best:

Fire has been an integral component to the function of biodiversity for millennia. Fires burn in a diversity of patterns and intensities, and are influenced by numerous factors such as fuels, temperature, terrain and moisture. Many of these fires are close to communities and firefighters are doing their best to protect lives and property. Once the smoke has cleared, we may find that many of these fires in back country forests were ecologically beneficial as fire clears out understory vegetation, burns a natural mosaic pattern and leaves behind a healthier forest.

Growing foreign demand for Canada’s natural resources, as well as ecological pressures from more forest fires and insect infestations, like the pine beetle epidemic are threatening the health and well-being of Canada’s Boreal forests.