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- replaces the labor of skilled workers. Overseas exports of unprocessed timber products have cost thousands of workers their jobs. Timber booms have exhausted the forests. In the following busts, companies move on to other forested regions, leaving the workers, their communities, and the environment literally in the dust.
Economic Conflict: These subsidies to large timber companies put the federal government in direct competition with small mill owners and non-industrial woodlot owners. They also prevent the implementation of positive programs to reduce waste and save our resources.
Municipal Waste Problems: Over 40% of our nation's solid waste stream consists of paper and wood products. This huge volume of waste has been used as economic justification for incinerators which pump toxic wastes into the air and our backyards, creating a toxic waste disposal nightmare, and poisoning local communities. By recycling most wood products waste, we will not only save trees, but we will reduce the need to build hundreds of new incinerators and landfills. Waste reduction must be a primary national goal, but subsidies for logging and for using virgin pulp encourage waste, and are at the root of our current waste problems.
Destruction at the Paper Mill: Manufacturing paper from wood requires much more energy and chemicals than the processing of recycled or alternative fiber paper. The process results in toxic discharges, including cancer-causing dioxins, which pollute our rivers, poison fisheries, and make their way into human drinking water supplies. Making paper from alternative fibers like kenaf causes almost no pollution, and helps to boost farm economies.
THE SOLUTIONS:
In order to protect our forest ecosystems, we must create comprehensive solutions that address the problems at all stages of the forest products cycle-from destruction of the living forests to pollution at paper mills and garbage dumps. Save America's Forests proposes the following Comprehensive Platform as steps to resolve the problems that we face.
1. Complete protection for ancient and virgin forest ecosystems, nationwide. No legislation yet.
2. Complete protection for fragile, recovering native forests, nationwide. -preserve our last fragments of biodiversity -help abate the greenhouse effect -protect watersheds, fisheries, soil, and air No legislation yet.
3. Ban c1earcutting and require selection management on all federal lands nationwide where logging is permitted. H.R. 1969, the Forest Biodiversity and Clearcutting Prohibition Act.
4. Convert monoculture tree plantations on federal lands to native diversity in order to: -provide ecological links to existing ancient and native forests to ·reestablish large natural forest ecosystems -eliminate pesticide and chemical fertilizer pollution H.R. 1969, the Forest Biodiversity and Clearcutting Prohibition Act.
5. Implement integrated bioregional proposals to recreate ecosystems, ecological corridors, and evolutionary preserves. E.g. H.R. ---J The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, H.R. 842, the Ancient Forest Protection Act.
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