Rainforest Protection Group Endorses Primary Forest Devastation-


Despite intense opposition, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) continues to endorse and advocate Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of first time industrial logging of primary forests – large clusters of trees which have reached great age. RAN’s “Rainforest Safe Summer Reading List” and “Gucci Shopping Bag” campaigns fallaciously assert FSC-certified paper products are completely sustainable and environmentally-friendly. In reality, most FSC products are obtained through first time industrial logging of primary forests or from noxious, industrial monoculture plantations which devastate old forests. Nearly all of FSC’s tropical lumber and fibers come from these sources. “The world’s rainforests, biodiversity, ecosystems, climate and biosphere are in a state of severe crisis and are collapsing; and the best Rainforest Action Network can do is continue lying regarding where FSC certified products come from, and shilling for primary forest books and shopping bags? As America’s largest rainforest protection group, RAN raises and expends more monies on behalf of rainforests than any organization, yet continues to insist FSC logging of primary forests ‘protects’ rainforests. This old forest logging appeasement will continue to be challenged by biocentric ecologists. Unless this NGO greenwash ends, and we join forces to end primary forest logging, the future of Earth and all life are at stake,” states Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet President.

Thus far, RAN has been unable to provide answers as to how logging 500 year old trees in millions of year old ecosystems truly safeguard rainforests. According to Ecological Internet, RAN and FSC are unwilling to publicly state even an approximation of FSC-certified products which come from old growth forests loss and ecological impact when selectively logged for the first time. “With FSC having certified over 133 million hectares, Ecological Internet stands by our analysis – using the national certification figures, the only information FSC provides on the matter, and what is known about forestry practices in each country – to estimate 60% of FSC timber comes from first time industrial primary forest logging. This means that FSC and RAN’s past and planned certification is destroying for throw-away consumption an area two times the massive state of Texas,” says Dr. Barry. “This is greenwash of an unmatched immensity, and all RAN (and Greenpeace [3]) supporters are responsible for this destruction of the last primary forests to make Gucci bags, books and toilet paper. Ecological Internet understands this campaign makes some conservationists feel uneasy, yet this is ecological skullduggery of unimagined magnitude. This behavior by any other segment of society would be held to account as well. All environmental groups – and their members and donors – supporting FSC primary forest logging must stop their policy of promoting logging of 500 year old trees for throw away consumer items.” Primary rainforests have remarkable species figures, carbon stores and provide water, nutrient and energy cycling necessary for a habitable Earth. When these old growth rainforests are lost or weakened through first time industrial logging, local ecological and social conditions decline, regional weather and species distributions change, and the global biosphere and its ability to maintain conditions for life are destabilized. Recent ecological science shows old forests continue to sequester new carbon, and that selectively logging primary forests leads to more forest fires.