TL: WHO'S DESTROYING THE RAINFOREST?
SO: GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL, (GP)
DT: MAY, 1997

     "Based on licenses sold decades ago for pennies--a few
large timber corporations are destroying our public forests and
shipping them out for high profits."      
-Tzeporah Berman, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner

Through B.C.'s system of long-term leases for the logging of
public forests, large multinational companies have succeeded in
getting the rights to log one of the world's largest remaining
tracts of temperate rainforest.  

Each of these multinational corporations favours industrial
clearcutting because it's fast, cheap and requires less labour.
Clearcutting involves cutting and removing almost all of the
forests biomass from very large areas, sometimes clearings of
over 100 hectares.

In the temperate rainforest the Canadian based companies,
MacMillan Bloedel, International Forest Products (Interfor) and
Doman's subsidiary, Western Forest Products, cut 50 per cent of
all the rainforests logged in B.C. every year.  

DOMAN INDUSTRIES: 
Doman (Western Forest Products) control two Timber Supply areas
in the Great Bear Rainforest.  A key area under threat from
Doman is Princess Royal Island, home to the world's largest
population of Kermode bears (pure white bears which are a
genetic offshoot of Black bears).  Some other critical areas are
the Ingram/Mooto/Ellerslie/Pollallie watershed complex, located
on the mid-coast near Bella Bella. Doman has been found guilty
of 114 acts of non-compliance with provincial legislation
regarding their forest practices since 1990.

INTERFOR: 
Within the Great Bear Rainforest, Interfor is scheduled to
clearcut the valleys of the Johnstone, Ecstall, Kwalate Creek,
Ahta River and Talleho Hotsprings.  If this happens, prime
grizzly and wolf habitat will be destroyed and already-damaged
salmon runs will be decimated.  Interfor also holds the right to
clearcut Kermode Bear habitat on Princess Royal Island.

Interfor has been guilty of serious forest practices
transgressions:  in 474 separate cases Interforhas been found
guilty of non-compliance with provincial forest legislation.

MACMILLAN BLOEDEL: 
In 1993 MacMillan Bloedel's efforts to log in Clayoquot Sound --
one of the largest remaining intact rainforest areas on
Vancouver Island---prompted the largest incident of civil
disobedience in Canadian History.         In the Great Bear
Rainforest MacMillan Bloedel plans to log the Koeye and Ahta
river valleys.

As of 1996, MacMillan Bloedel has accumulated a record of 83
violations of provincial and federal forestry and fishing
regulations.

Exporting the rainforest

The trees cut by these companies are primarily for export to the
United States, Europe and Japan.  The trees are turned into pulp
for disposable products: toilet paper, diapers, newspapers,
magazines, toothbrush handles, sausage skins, food fillers (esp.
ice cream), Vaseline, explosives, cake mix, dandruff shampoo,
toothpaste, phone books, shoe insoles, cigarette filters and
teddy bears.

Among other things, the timber is used for hot  tubs, garden
furniture, saunas and shakes and shingles.

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