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Northeast fast losing forest cover
New Delhi, June 23, 2008: India’s Northeast, considered to be one of the richest biodiversity hot spots in the country, is fast losing its forest cover, according to data released Thursday by Aaranyak, an Assam-based NGO.
Even as World Environment Day was observed on Thursday, the data shows that the northeastern states of India have lost almost 20 per cent of their forest cover in the past two decades.
Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, secretary general of Aaranyak that works for biodiversity conservation said that their latest findings on the forest cover of the Northeast, clearly show that 64 per cent of the total geographical area of the Northeast (255,000 sq km) is currently under forest cover. Two decades earlier, it was 84 per cent.
“The rate of loss of forest cover is quite fast and the situation is deteriorating with each passing day. If precautionary measures are not taken immediately, the region would soon lose its valuable flora and fauna biodiversity,” said Talukdar.
Soumyadeep Datta, director of Nature’s Beckon, another Assam-based NGO working on environment and wildlife protection of the region, expressed concern over the alarming loss of forest cover across the Northeast.
“If the situation is not controlled now, it might worsen in the coming days. The Northeast cannot afford to lose its forest cover, its most valued asset,” said Datta.
The seven states of India’s northeast - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland - comprise about eight percent of the total geographical area of the country.
“But the entire northeast consists of 25 per cent of the country’s forest cover, making it one of the richest biodiversity zones of the country. Thus we have to make a concerted effort to save it,” said an official of the Arunachal Pradesh government’s department of environment and forest.
The report of Aaranyak states that the large scale loss of forest cover in the Northeast in recent times is due to de-forestation caused by human encroachment on forestland.
“The entire region is highly populated. The burden of population is causing a lot of damage to the forest cover,” said Talukdar. The Northeast accounts for 3.7 per cent of the country’s population of 1,028,737,436, as per the 2001 census.
“Moreover, almost half of the population of the region still depends on forestland to earn their livelihood,” he added.
The report warns that if the forestland continues to disappear at the present rate, soon the region will witness massive floods, large-scale soil erosion, loss of agricultural land, extinction of animal and plants species and perhaps a drought-like situation.
“The Northeast is the land of myriad range of flora and fauna. We have to save the forestland to save them. We plan to form a united forum consisting of forest departments of all the states and various NGOs working in the field of environment,” said Talukdar.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The $64 million question: destructive and money-losing? Must be the U.S. Forest Service
As taxpayers tighten their belts and join in mutual sacrifice to reduce the federal deficit, the United States Forest Service is writing multimillion-dollar checks to two large pulp mills in Southeast Alaska. Through this and other forms of largesse, taxpayers directly finance the clearcutting of 10,000 to 20,000 acres a year in Tongass National Forest, the largest nearly intact temperate rainforest in North America.
Don't think that destroying an ecosystem comes cheap. Last year, by its own estimate, the Forest Service lost $23 million on the Tongass, and that's only because it considers logging roads to be federal assets. Without such creative accounting, the loss totals $64 million. Either way, it's more money than any forest has ever lost in the agency's money-losing history.
The tax-dollar-denuding Tongass is the country's largest national forest, an area the size of West Virginia spread across a thousand islands and a narrow strip of mainland, together constituting 80 percent of the Alaskan panhandle. It is home to many species otherwise seen mostly in calendars and picture books: grizzly bears, river otters, boreal owls, wolves. An inter-agency committee headed by Forest Service biologist Lowell Suring, convened in hopes of averting a spotted-owl-type crisis, reported last year that logging of old-growth stands in the Tongass must be cut back substantially if these and other key species are to survive.
Tongass National Forest managers, whose budget is directly tied to getting out the cut, did their best to suppress the report, forbidding its release and prohibiting Suring from discujavascript:void(0)
Simpan sebagai Draftssing it at professional gatherings. (As a result, Suring resigned his post and transferred to another forest.) Another biologist called in to review the report foolhardily agreed with it, and for his pains received the worst performance review of his 13-year career. The report's unwelcome news was released to the public only when local newspapers demanded it under the Freedom of Information Act.
Defending the agency in the Anchorage Daily News, Tongass honcho Steve Brink advanced novel "proof" of the theory that wildlife doesn't really need old-growth: "Humans will live in northeast Washington there behind the Capitol and survive and even reproduce, but that isn't their preferred habitat," he said. "They'd much rather live in Georgetown. Wildlife are much the same way."
What makes the Tongass uniquely scandalous among all the beleaguered national forests are the long-term contracts between the government and two giant mills: Ketchikan Pulp, owned by Louisiana-Pacific, and the Japanese-owned Alaska Pulp near Sitka. In a Soviet-style deal cut back in the 1950s, the mills were given 50-year contracts guaranteeing them a profit. When international pulp prices plunged in 1990, the Forest Service, in a thoughtful gesture, cut the price for timber that had already been purchased, and refunded the difference. This resulted last year in cash refunds from the Treasury totaling $9.8 million, in addition to $12.3 million in credits for future timber. Those credits will buy a lot more in the Tongass than they would anywhere else: the Forest Service charges only $2.26 per thousand board feet for timber with an export value of $500 to $2,500 per thousand board feet. It's only because of this bargain-basement price that Alaska's mills can afford to turn the old-growth forest into low-value cellulose stew.
Over the years, Ketchikan Pulp and Alaska Pulp have bought out or driven out of business 102 smaller logging enterprises; they now hold exclusive sway over almost all of the Tongass. Together they have chewed through more than 8 billion board feet of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Two-thirds of the cut, most of it in the form of "dissolving pulp," is shipped to Asia, where the old-growth habitat of the goshawk and marten is made into rayon, cellophane, and, more recently, disposable diapers.
In 1990, Congress sought to redress the forest's most notorious abuses through the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA). It removed, for example, the Forest Service's mandate to spend at least $40 million a year to build roads, plan sales, and otherwise subsidize the mills' operations. The Forest Service was told to continue making timber available, but only "to the extent consistent with providing for the multiple use and sustained yield of all renewable forest resources." The TTRA protected a million acres of wilderness and roadless areas, prohibited the practice of "high-grading" (the cutting of "a disproportionate amount of high-volume old-growth timber"), and mandated that 100-foot buffer strips be left around the forest's many prime salmon streams. While the House voted twice to abrogate the ludicrous 50-year contracts, Alaska Senators Ted Stevens (R) and Frank Murkowski (R) got them reinserted in a slightly less indecent form in the Senate. Nevertheless, critics thought victory was at hand. "The era of preferential treatment for a single commodity, timber, is over," proclaimed Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) on the floor of the House.
Don't think that destroying an ecosystem comes cheap. Last year, by its own estimate, the Forest Service lost $23 million on the Tongass, and that's only because it considers logging roads to be federal assets. Without such creative accounting, the loss totals $64 million. Either way, it's more money than any forest has ever lost in the agency's money-losing history.
The tax-dollar-denuding Tongass is the country's largest national forest, an area the size of West Virginia spread across a thousand islands and a narrow strip of mainland, together constituting 80 percent of the Alaskan panhandle. It is home to many species otherwise seen mostly in calendars and picture books: grizzly bears, river otters, boreal owls, wolves. An inter-agency committee headed by Forest Service biologist Lowell Suring, convened in hopes of averting a spotted-owl-type crisis, reported last year that logging of old-growth stands in the Tongass must be cut back substantially if these and other key species are to survive.
Tongass National Forest managers, whose budget is directly tied to getting out the cut, did their best to suppress the report, forbidding its release and prohibiting Suring from discujavascript:void(0)
Simpan sebagai Draftssing it at professional gatherings. (As a result, Suring resigned his post and transferred to another forest.) Another biologist called in to review the report foolhardily agreed with it, and for his pains received the worst performance review of his 13-year career. The report's unwelcome news was released to the public only when local newspapers demanded it under the Freedom of Information Act.
Defending the agency in the Anchorage Daily News, Tongass honcho Steve Brink advanced novel "proof" of the theory that wildlife doesn't really need old-growth: "Humans will live in northeast Washington there behind the Capitol and survive and even reproduce, but that isn't their preferred habitat," he said. "They'd much rather live in Georgetown. Wildlife are much the same way."
What makes the Tongass uniquely scandalous among all the beleaguered national forests are the long-term contracts between the government and two giant mills: Ketchikan Pulp, owned by Louisiana-Pacific, and the Japanese-owned Alaska Pulp near Sitka. In a Soviet-style deal cut back in the 1950s, the mills were given 50-year contracts guaranteeing them a profit. When international pulp prices plunged in 1990, the Forest Service, in a thoughtful gesture, cut the price for timber that had already been purchased, and refunded the difference. This resulted last year in cash refunds from the Treasury totaling $9.8 million, in addition to $12.3 million in credits for future timber. Those credits will buy a lot more in the Tongass than they would anywhere else: the Forest Service charges only $2.26 per thousand board feet for timber with an export value of $500 to $2,500 per thousand board feet. It's only because of this bargain-basement price that Alaska's mills can afford to turn the old-growth forest into low-value cellulose stew.
Over the years, Ketchikan Pulp and Alaska Pulp have bought out or driven out of business 102 smaller logging enterprises; they now hold exclusive sway over almost all of the Tongass. Together they have chewed through more than 8 billion board feet of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Two-thirds of the cut, most of it in the form of "dissolving pulp," is shipped to Asia, where the old-growth habitat of the goshawk and marten is made into rayon, cellophane, and, more recently, disposable diapers.
In 1990, Congress sought to redress the forest's most notorious abuses through the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA). It removed, for example, the Forest Service's mandate to spend at least $40 million a year to build roads, plan sales, and otherwise subsidize the mills' operations. The Forest Service was told to continue making timber available, but only "to the extent consistent with providing for the multiple use and sustained yield of all renewable forest resources." The TTRA protected a million acres of wilderness and roadless areas, prohibited the practice of "high-grading" (the cutting of "a disproportionate amount of high-volume old-growth timber"), and mandated that 100-foot buffer strips be left around the forest's many prime salmon streams. While the House voted twice to abrogate the ludicrous 50-year contracts, Alaska Senators Ted Stevens (R) and Frank Murkowski (R) got them reinserted in a slightly less indecent form in the Senate. Nevertheless, critics thought victory was at hand. "The era of preferential treatment for a single commodity, timber, is over," proclaimed Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) on the floor of the House.
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