by Russel Norman
We have carried on with our campaign against illegal logging. We had a small victory when Woolies had to pull a line of paper products that were supposedly from a renewable forest resource but were actually from a paper mill in Sumatra that was being fed by the clearing of rainforest. The govt still won’t stop import of illegal timber or even stop using tropical timber in govt buildings (as Norway has just decided to do).
The maleo bird is endemic to Sulawesi in Indonesia and is highly endangered according to the IUCN Red List, i.e. it is facing very high risk of extinction in the wild. Curiously it uses geothermal heat to warm its eggs (five times as big as a chicken).
The habitat of the maleo bird has been reduced significantly over the last few years by illegal logging and it is on the brink of extinction. This is but one small part of the great global extinction event we are in the middle of, and it is illegal logging that is driving this particular extinction (among other habitat destroying activities).
The tragedy is that the outdoor furniture that turns up in the NZ shops this summer may have once been the forest in which the maleo lived, but then it was illegally logged, shipped to China, turned into outdoor furniture, then shipped to NZ for people to buy cheap furniture for outdoor drinking on a warm summers night. I’m a big fan of having a drink outdoors on a warm summer night but not at the cost of finishing off the last of the great rainforests and birds like the maleo.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Russel Norman on Tue, September 4th, 2007
Tags: environment
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Can you expand upon what you mean by ‘illegal logging’? What laws are violated by the logging? Is the forest private property that’s being logged against the will of the owner(s)?
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does this help Duncan?
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/other11126.html
“indigenous land-owners”
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What proportion of the logging is illegal – i.e., timber is being stolen from land-owners – and what proportion is legal? Would the Greens be happy if only the illegal logging was stopped?
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russel said..
“..We had a small victory when Woolies had to pull a line of paper products that were supposedly from a renewable forest resource but were actually from a paper mill in Sumatra that was being fed by the clearing of rainforest..”
um..!..wasn’t that as a result of actions/activity in australia..?
where this fake green label was outed..?
and that woolies only pulled it here because it was pulled there..?
that’s what the lady from woolies told me back when i checked to see if they had followed australias’ lead..
are you now saying the pulling here was as a result of your efforts..?
as your post seems to claim..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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russel..how about answering this question..?
and the other questions you said you would answer..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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