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                   G  R  E  N  P  E  A  C  E

                   P r e s s   R e l e a s e
                                     10.4.94
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Environmentalists correct Forest Alliance Fiction

Vancouver, B.C., 6 April, 1995 (GP) Greenpeace and the Friends of Clayoquot Sound today slammed the B.C. Forest Alliance for misinforming Californians about the status of B.C.'s forests. In ads which ran in the Daily Variety and the west coast edition of the New York Times, the B.C. Forest Alliance make a number of false claims about B.C.'s forests and the Forest Alliance itself. The factual information is listed below:

Myth: 80 per cent of B.C.'s original forests still stand.

Truth: According to the State of Canada's Environment 1991 report published by Environment Canada, even in 1986 only 63 per cent of B.C.'s forests remained intact. In the near decade that has passed since then, logging reached unprecedented historical levels. Last year's report, Biodiversity in B.C., with Environment Canada as the source (page 261) says only a few decades of old-growth cutting remains.

Myth: 60 per cent of the ancient temperate rainforest will never be logged. Truth: A 1992 report compiled by Ecotrust and Conservation International documents that B.C. is on the losing end of protecting our temperate rainforest and shows that as of three years ago, only 43 per cent of the temperate rainforest remained unlogged. Only five per cent of the temperate rainforest that originally existed was protected, and the CORE process increased this by less than one percent.

In comparison, Australia has 60 per cent of its temperate rainforest protected, New Zealand has 28 per cent protected and Alaska has 36 per cent protected. Even Washington State, which had already clearcut most of its temperate rainforest, has managed to protect 21 per cent of the original forest.

The Forest Alliance figure is off by a factor of 10.

Myth: B.C. Forest Alliance is a non-profit citizen's group. Truth: The B.C. Forest Alliance was created by the public relations firm Burson Marstellar with funding by B.C. logging companies. It was set up solely to serve as an industry front group to defend bad logging practices, rather than to promote significant change in forestry. The Forest Alliance itself acknowledges that the majority of its funding continues to come from industry.