Rainforest Action Network
Old Growth Campaign update

Mon, 23 Oct 2000

Friends,

Here’s a long-overdue RAN update on the Old Growth Campaign. In this you’ll find the latest on our follow up work with Home Depot, Lowe’s and other DIY’s and home builders; what’s happening with the Staples and Tree Free Campus Campaigns, as well as an announcement of the pending launch of our Next Big Thing: the campaign against Boise Cascade, global forest destroyer. It’s difficult to believe that over a year has passed since Home Depot made its announcement to eliminate wood from endangered forests. And what a year it’s been! Thanks to some incredible grassroots organizing and persistence, seven of the top ten home improvement retailers have committed to get out of the trade in wood from endangered forests. Add to that total three of the country’s largest home builders, and more companies joining every other month. Within a little over one year, we have an estimated twenty-five percent of the U.S. lumber market committed to completely overhaul their wood purchases!

The best news is that the standard is still being raised. In August, Lowe’s (#2 wood retailer in the world) announced that it would not only eliminate wood from endangered forests and give preference to alternatives, but that it would also prioritize two critical issues in the U.S.: logging in our National Forests and the problem of conversion of native forests into mono- cultured plantations.

This is an incredible victory but really it’s only a victory in Round One in our fight to change the practices of major wood consumers. RAN has hired a full-time campaigner whom we call The Enforcer, Jessica Lawrence, jlawrence@ran.org, to follow up with each of these companies to ensure that changes are made quickly and also to ensure that these changes translate into protection on the ground. So far, the markets work has had the biggest impact in helping to protect British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. Because of markets pressure from companies like IBM, Home Depot, Lowe’s, IKEA, and dozens of U.S. and European purchasers, four of the largest logging companies in British Columbia have agreed to place a moratorium on logging in pristine valleys on BC’s Coast (an area of more than four million acres). The bad news is that two companies, Interfor and West Fraser, have pulled out of these negotiations and are actively logging and selling wood from the Great Bear Rainforest. So here’s a snapshot of where a few of these companies stand. There are many more details than I could fit into this email, so if you have questions, please contact me or Jessica.

Home Depot- has begun to phase out contracts with Interfor, expect to show significant results by year’s end. More work is needed to ensure that Interfor wood is not being sold through remanufacturers and other suppliers. HD is addressing the use of wood from public lands; a position is expected within the next month or so. HD reports good, but scattered progress on eliminating lauan from stores. Several regions have stopped selling lauan products and have shifted to alternatives. However, mahogany and other tropical products are not only still being sold, but advertised in local markets. Overall, mixed results. Contact RAN for a full scorecard on HD’s progress.

Lowe’s- policy announcement clearly raised the bar for the retail industry. Implementation work is just beginning, with a few key tests of Lowe’s leadership looming. Lowe’s will form an environmental advisory council of outside groups; will address the use of its wood on public lands; will convene a forum to address southern forest issues; and will begin canceling contracts with egregious suppliers in the Great Bear Rainforest and other areas, all within the next few months. Each of these will be important issues, stay tuned for news.

84 Lumber- the last of the DIY’s to meet our demands. 84 Lumber carries wood from both Interfor and West Fraser, and is under intense pressure to discontinue doing business with both of these companies immediately. A decision is expected within the next 30 days.

Wickes Lumber- Company representatives are in Canada this week, meeting with enviros and suppliers. Wickes Lumber is also under pressure to discontinue doing business with Interfor and West Fraser. We expect a decision within the next few weeks. Wickes is in the early stages of its implementation efforts, but has been quite cooperative thus far. They understand that deep changes are needed from the logging industry and are willing to pressure their suppliers to take decisive action.

Look for more news regarding Centex, Menards, Lanoga, and others in the next update.

Staples: Selling paper from our forests

MEANWHILE, the demand side of the markets campaign is shifting into a new market sector: the retail paper industry. This fall, RAN is teaming up with many other organizations, including the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, American Lands Alliance, Free the Planet!, SEAC, STARC, National Forest Protection Alliance, Rainforest Relief, Dogwood Alliance, and Heartwood, to launch a campaign against the largest retailer of paper products in the U.S.: STAPLES! A national day of action is being planned for November 15, 2000. For more information, check out www.coastalrainforest.org. The same array of groups mentioned above is also revving up this fall’s TREE FREE CAMPUS campaign, for which the first heavy target will be Boise Cascade.

Boise Cascade: GLOBAL FOREST DESTROYER

All of the markets campaign work that has been done for the past several years on Home Depot and others has been for the explicit purpose of ending the logging industry as we know it. We know that if logging companies cannot sell their products because they originate from endangered, old growth forests or from any destructive logging practice, then market and grassroots pressure will catalyze a transition within the industry. For this reason, we will soon be launching a campaign against America’s worst logging company: Boise Cascade.

Boise Cascade is the largest logger of old growth forests in the U.S., logging ancient forest and formerly roadless areas throughout the Pacific Northwest. Over the past five years, Boise Cascade has also been the largest logger on public lands in the U.S., profiting from taxpayer-subsidized forest destruction. Having perfected the practice of old growth forest liquidation in the Pacific Northwest, Boise Cascade is taking its show on the road and is aggressively expanding to exploit some of the world’s rarest and most endangered forests.

Boise Cascade is one of the country’s largest distributors of wood taken from the Great Bear Rainforest, sells lauan and ramin wood from tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia, is actively logging old growth in Central Canada, distributes mahogany from the Amazon and pine from endangered forests in Russia. It makes you wonder: hasn’t this company learned anything from the Home Depot campaign?!? Don’t they know that these practices are intolerable and won’t withstand pressure from the public and in the marketplace?

So we’re going after them. A coalition of student groups, ex-loggers, and enviros from American Lands, National Forest Protection Campaign, RAN, Free the Planet!, the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, STARC, SEAC and Call to Action others will launch a fall campaign to kick Boise Cascade and endangered forest products out of the marketplace, beginning with the Tree Free Campus Campaign.

We need to send Boise a clear message that whether we are printing a term paper, making copies, sitting on a bench or drying our hands we refuse to be complicit in the destruction of our last remaining endangered forests! Students in particular are in an incredible position to stand up to Boise Cascade since Boise relies on hundreds of college campuses as customers for it’s destructive forest practices. We are demanding that our universities make a stronger commitment than Home Depot: to phase out products from endangered forests and phase in 100% recycled and tree free products. Universities will have to cancel their contracts with Boise Cascade and any supplier unless they meet the following principles:

Stewardship Council

We expect to win. Public polling shows overwhelming support for protection of wilderness areas, old growth forests and the development of a sustainable logging industry. Many of Boise Cascade’s largest customers, including Kinko’s, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Pitney Bowes, and dozens of others, have committed to eliminate endangered forest wood and cannot in good conscience continue buying from Boise Cascade until these demands are met. But the real reason why our movement will win this campaign is because of effective grassroots organizing in communities and on campuses around the world.

Boise Cascade is the country’s largest supplier to colleges and universities and small businesses. Once we kick Boise Cascade off campuses, one by one, and after hundreds of businesses cancel their contracts with Boise Cascade Office Products, we will have driven a wedge through the logging industry and it will only be a matter of time before the industry as a whole reorients itself away from destructive, predatory logging.

The past two years has shown that when we unite to confront the big corporate forest destroyers we can have an incredible impact. Incredible victories have been made but the best is still to come. We look forward to working with all of you to keep this movement growing until the world’s forests are no longer under attack.

For the Forests!

Michael Brune mbrune@ran.org

Jen Krill, jkrill@ran.org

Jessica Lawrence, jlawrence@ran.org

Old Growth Forest Campaign
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Michael Brune
Old Growth Forest Campaigner
Rainforest Action Network
221 Pine St., Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94104
415-398-4404

http://www.ran.org/

"There is one thing that is stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come"
- Victor Hugo -