Logging Effects
From WikiDemocracy
HAS BIG TIMBER FINALLY BROUGHT USGBC TO HEEL?
Environmental groups, forward-thinking companies, and social interest groups concerned about the destruction of the world’s forests come together to form the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). FSC’s goal was and is to promote environmentally and socially responsible forest management practices globally. FSC’s governance system is organized into three chambers with equal power—an environmental chamber concerned with protecting forest ecosystems, an economic chamber concerned with making a profit from forest products, and a social chamber concerned with human and worker rights.
Beyond the Timber Wars
by Lisa Bramen 31/7/15 The Nature Conservancy
It's a rare mild February morning in southwestern Washington, a place so famous for winter squalls that beachfront hotels here offer storm-watching packages. A few miles inland, project manager Tom Kollasch is following faint elk trails through a stand of coastal rain-forest on The Nature Conservancy’s Ellsworth Creek Preserve.
Tree Keepers: Where Sustaining the Forest Is a Tribal Tradition
by FRED PEARCE 24/7/23 YaleEnvironment360
Mike Lohrengel looks up in awe at trees he has known for 30 years. “This is one of the most beautiful places I know. This forest has it all: the most species, the most diversity. Many trees I know individually. Look at this one behind us. It’s got a split way up there. I’ll never forget that tree till I die.”
Timber Wars
In the 1980s and ’90s, loggers and environmental activists faced off over the future of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. In this episode, Reveal partners with the podcast series Timber Wars from Oregon Public Broadcasting. Reporter Aaron Scott explores that definitive moment in the history of the land – and the consequences that reverberate today.
The ‘timber detectives’ on the front lines of illegal wood trade
by Peter Yeung 9/3/22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Hamburg, Germany — Under tungsten light on a bleak winter day, Gerald Koch gazes up from a black microscope, adjusts his rimless glasses, and gestures at a monitor displaying a slice, thinner than a hair, of suspected illegal timber.
Corruption, Forestry Workers, and Siberian Tigers: the Story of Illegal Logging in the Developing World
There’s a dark past behind the pieces of paper sitting right in your printer, right in your notebook— may be right beneath your pencil. Potentially dark, that is. According to the EIA (Environmental Investigation Agency), up to 90% of timber logged in some developing countries is done so illegally. Therefore—assuming you didn’t buy some specialty paper from a country without rainforests and a fragile government— there is a strong likelihood that the wood products you’ve purchased in America are more tainted with corruption than you’d like to believe.
Illegal Logging
Illegal logging is an immense, multi-billion dollar industry threatening forests worldwide.
Illegal logging is the catalyst to deforestation around the globe, threatening some of the world’s most important forests in terms of conservation value. Predatory logging brings roads deeper into the forest, which in turn fuels more logging, impacts Indigenous Peoples and traditional local communities, as well as harming wildlife. Illegal logging is a global-multi-country issue Greenpeace offices around the world have worked to investigate, document, and stop.
To Save the Redwoods, Scientists Debate Burning and Logging
by Becki Robins 16/12/19 UNDARK
Redwoods draw crowds, but they are also ecologically important. They act as natural water filters, processing trillions of gallons of clean, drinkable water every year. Redwood forests store at least three times as much carbon as any other kind of forest, and because the individual trees live for thousands of years, the carbon storage is long-term. That makes them important actors in the story of California’s changing climate.
Saving the Trees for the Forest
On a crisp, sunny morning in early March, Tonya Enger scampered through a clearing near Washington’s Yacolt Burn State Forest. The soil was so soft that it sank as she walked through the lush understory. Enger, the founder of a local civic engagement group called Vancouver Forestkeeper, frequently leads tours here. “It’s beautiful in the fall,” she said. “And in the summer, the huckleberry bushes are full and bright red.” She pointed out thriving mushrooms, moss, and lichen as she made her way. Tree snags, still charred black from one of the largest recorded wildfires in Washington history, tower over the landscape.
Why deforestation matters—and what we can do to stop it
by Christina Nunez 7/12/22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
As the world seeks to slow the pace of climate change, preserve wildlife, and support more than eight billion people, trees inevitably hold a major part of the answer. Yet the mass destruction of trees—deforestation—continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain of fuel, and materials for manufacturing and construction.
About Clearcutting
Clearcutting is an extreme logging method in which resilient natural forests are harvested and replaced with man-made tree plantations that do not replicate the ecosystem services of a healthy forest.
Inside the faltering fight against illegal Amazon logging
by Scott Wallace 28/8/19 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
On July 4th, along a dusty backroad in the southwest Brazilian state of Rondônia, near the logging hub of Espigão d’Oeste, unknown assailants stopped a tanker truck, yanked the driver from the cab, and set it ablaze. The truck was carrying aviation fuel to resupply government helicopters supporting an operation against illegal loggers. Fearing further attacks, government agents suspended the operation and withdrew from the area.
Burning questions raised over logging
Clearing the remaining trees after a forest fire can increase the chance of further flames.
Environmentalists Battle Loggers to Protect One Last Old-Growth Forest
For weeks, activists in the temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island, near the town of Port Renfrew, have been blockading a logging road. On one day, more than 40 logging trucks were turned back. If and when the police finally free the protesters and clear the blockade, it is likely another will take its place. This is the last card being played in an effort to protect one of the last large swaths of old-growth forest left in a Canadian province that, environmentalists contend, has lost its way.
Timber salvaged from New York City buildings reveals ancient climate
by Nathalie Alonso 22/10/21 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Old-growth forests once covered the eastern United States, but they were almost entirely decimated by the early 1900s after centuries of commercial logging. Yet wood from those forests survives, much of it tucked behind the walls of New York City buildings. The tree rings on these timbers are sources of historical climate data, which is why researchers are working to recover them.
Gem of the North Woods
by The Nature Conservancy 22/11/19
The St. John River Forest is a very special place in Maine, supporting previously unknown populations of rare plants, the elusive Canada lynx, and important native fish that are increasingly under pressure in Maine from non-native species. Among natural discoveries made here are the largest population of the purple false-oats plant in the United States, stands of black spruce over 300 years old and a dozen rare dragonfly species.
How Sweden's Logging Practices Affect the Environment
by Rebecca Clarke 15/8/21 Treehugger
Sweden is known as one of the world’s most environmentally conscious countries. The International Energy Agency (IEA) called the country a global leader in building a low-carbon economy. Sweden's logging practices and policies, on the other hand, require a closer look.
Let’s Fight Fire with Fire
by The Nature Conservancy 15/7/22
Thanks to Smokey Bear, a century of fire exclusion and the forced removal of Indigenous forest stewards, California’s Sierra forests are dangerously overgrown. Now, trees are packed together at up to five times their natural density, and fires that should regenerate our forests explode into infernos that destroy them. These forests help provide 60% of our state’s developed water supply, and losing them would leave millions of people without clean drinking water.
Reducing Logging Impacts in the Congo Basin
by The Nature Conservancy 12/1/23
The tracks were fresh in the mud. A leopard had walked across the logging access road between dusk and dawn. And it wasn’t the first animal sighting of the week—forest elephants and western lowland gorillas carried out their daily routines in the forest just as the loggers carried out theirs. Stingless sweat bees made their presence known, too, congregating by the hundreds on any exposed skin perspiring in the midday sun.
Illegal logging in decline
Preventing illicit cutting is a cheap way to reduce carbon emissions.
Climate Clues from the Past Prompt a New Look at History
by Jacques Leslie 20/12/21 YaleEnvironment360
Relying on new geochemical techniques for analyzing ice core sediment to determine the dates of ancient volcanic activity down to the year or even season, the paper, published in Nature in 2015, showed that major eruptions worldwide caused precipitous, up-to-a-decade-long drops in global temperatures. Later research pegged those drops at as much as 13 degrees F.
Logging in disguise: How forest thinning is making wildfires worse
by Chad T. Hanson 24/8/21 Grist
Fire has always been a concern for communities like Greenville in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. And, for decades, the U.S. Forest Service and the timber industry told the townspeople that logging tens of thousands of acres — under the guise of “thinning” — would create “fuel breaks” to slow or even stop wildfires and prevent flames from reaching Main Street.
