http://www.canadianborealforestagreement.com/

This is really great..The entire west coast of BC is home to one of the larget rainforests on planet earth and it really really needs to be protected. This agreement is huge, one of the largest in history..I grew up hiking, camping and snowboarding in the temperate rainforest and I would hate to see it destroyed..

The temperate rainforest of the PNW is not only confined to BC..the boreal forest goes all the way into Alaska to the north and the rainforest follows into Washington and Oregon to the south..The planet needs all these areas protected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgu99-lFTIA

Everyone..love our forests..they are the only ones we have.

The Rainforest Action Network campaigns really hard to protect these forests, as well. They have a good track record. http://ran.org

I am in support with this movement.

Makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy to know people are conserving precious woodlands, but said realising such projects are too late for my country: Holland.
What "Civilisation" has done to the European natural landscape. Just look at Europe from Google earth and compaired to vast expanses of nature as seen in africa, asia and south america and you'll see that the European landscape looks like a skin suffering from scurve and terrible acne.

Next to conserving nature we need to strive for restoring destroyed natural landscapes by planting forrests and slowing urban/industrial growth.
I long for the kind of forrests you can just disappear in. In Holland we've very little natural landscape left. Some planted forrests, some very small patches of true forrest and some grassy plains...That's about all we have.

Charrish your Canadian forrests, we have none left to protect.

I wonder if the people cutting down all these forests ever thought whats going to happen once mother nature doesn't clean our air for us anymore?
The whole planet is alive and very aware of the global shift humans are causing.
I don't believe Mother Nature will go down without a fight.

It's nice to see that the Canadians are sticking to the roots, hopefully this example is followed a lot more frequently in the future!

Well..I live 5 minutes away from one of the most bio-diverse rainforest areas in all of North America that expands through surrey and delta in the greater vancouver district..comparable to the amazon rainforest..we even have venus fly traps and many other plants found nowhere else on the planet..it is all rainforest bog for many miles and part of it is protected but most of it is not, and it is getting smaller and smaller...there are some humans here that are soooo stupid and are trying to cut down more of it to build a road for trucks, along a route that will be obsolete in 3 years or so anyway..this area of rainforest is actaully very important to the entire planet and especially to vacouver and the BC lower mainland, since it is peat bog and acts as an aquafer..it is very literally the lungs of vancouver, it absorbs carbon, which will be released into the atmosphere if cut down..there are not many of these types of ecosystems left

http://www.youtube.com/w...rBXQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-XWrzIU2s

http://www.youtube.com/w...Uz9U&feature=related

I used to feel angry about the amazon..now I just feel angry in general and sad that the same thing is actaully happening in my backyard...it is important that we support our local forests and the organizations in place to protect them.

As harsh as it can be, many of us are part of the problem.
How many of us live in houses constructed of timber taken from these logging sites?

Business is all supply and demand, unfortunately with populations as large as today, demand is pretty high!
I just hope in the future people are smart enough to invest much more resources in re-forestation.

^^Actually buying and using wood encourages reforestation. As long as their is demand for wood forests will have value. Many conservationists think that logging is not a growing science. It is. Modern forestry takes conservation into consideration. Clear cutting a forest is the best way to reduce the future value of that land. It will take much longer to grow back. Its much more common to selectively harvest trees to maximize forest production.

Of course not all companies follow such practices and still clear cut for short term profits. But many foresters are biologists and spend a lot of time thinking about how to maximize wood production to ensure long term profits of a valuable renewable resources.

Could reforestation make up for the damage that has been done? That would be nice... Or is it more like 'damage control'?
Too bad the competition is ruthless. I can imagine it is hard to play win-win-win. Also i dont think biologist (i consider myself to be one) can play against the real hard ruthless industry that governs (rapes) the world. To be able one needs to be ruthless also. And such attitude and perspective wont leave much room for treehugging anymore.

The whole market needs to change from the inside out (from the humans that run it). and that would need a big shift in paradigm.
Suddenly perhaps gradually, but eventually
Perhaps a common threat will wake us up.

One of my good friends is a forester. He was very clear in how forestry is more about how to maximize yield over long sustained periods of time and less about clear cutting these days.. Clear cutting means the forest takes longer to grow back and thus is less productive. A well managed forest is far more profitable, sustainable, and high yielding then a clear cut. But then again he was trained in one of the best forestry schools out there so he may have a different and optimistic perspective.

I'd be more concerned about Urban sprawl and need for agricultural land then demand for wood. This causes land to be converted permanently from forest to farm / town.

The solutions to those problems are perhaps more relevant rather then attempting to reduce the demand for wood. More demand for wood = forests are worth more then other types of land. There is a reason countries like the US still have so much forest because people use wood for lots of things so it pays a land owner to keep a free standing forest instead of lopping it all down for real estate.

He will come to senses when he has to choose between the company/himself and the forest.

Not that companies are always 'bad', it is just that a company/industry is always aimed at making profit and maintaining itself, directly or indirectly (corruption). And all such profit/maintenance comes at the cost of something else. Dog eat dog you know. In the end it is the great rainforest and the great ocean that pay the kill bill. The bill that kills the spirit bear. As long as money is the profit, the planet will suffer. I guess it is just human nature/ignorance. Is it the will to power? And is it accountable?



Urban sprawl, having babies....
What gives meaning to our life is killing us. What a bitch.
It is time we evolve from the body.



Perhaps the solution lies in cybernetica? I can imagine when certain people can grow really old and wise because of artificial body and mind, these cybernetic humans will reconise the underlying harmony that rules all. These wiser or elder can then adjust society so that it matches and synergizes with the rest of the cosmos. The quest for harmony wont end. Not as long as we are humans, not as long as we are not god.

yea just 2 cents.

We have less than 5% of the original forest in the US. We have less than 20% of the original forest world wide.
2000 trees a minute are lost in the Amazon alone.

We are running out of resources. 1/3rd of the planets resources has been consumed in the last 3 decades.
The U.S. has 5% of the world population, yet we consume 30% of the world's resources.


Thanks for sharing fractal.

Just to show that the misinformation goes both ways, the belief that we are running out out of resources is completely misplaced, at least as far as mineral sources are concerned. There exists a notable difference between reserves and resources.

A reserve is that which is economically viable for extraction. There are vast pockets of resources scattered throughout the crust that simply cannot be accessed with current technology. They are not yet reserves and are not considered in the stats typically published. For example, the deepest coal mine is roughly only 600 meters deep and most abandoned oil fields have only been half drained. The more they are depleted, the less cost effective pumping becomes, so the company moves on. As the prices of resources increase, the number of reserves will also increase.

But still, this is of course a dead end street. Just because we are not running out does not mean we shouldn't radically rethink our archaic energy model. Current life will be eradicated long before natural resources are depleted...we are killing ourselves through pollution and disease and destroying the processes which created us and continue to sustain us. And regardless of what side of human-induced global warming one sympathizes with, rising ocean levels will begin to threaten the coasts and displace a huge portion of the population. Earth may be responding as an attempt to counteract our own ignorance, destroying the cancer we have been tending to.

I'm talking about the forest we have left. If people didn't use wood I bet a lot of that land we be turned into agriculture or real estate because it would have no value. No value in the economic sense I mean.



hehe. A bit far fetched at this point.

Short term its better to begin getting people to value sustainability. If one good thing comes out of this crisis it might teach people that mass consumerism isn't good. But I suspect we need another round of recession and another generation to get that picture. Education is key, innovative business and technology is key, and a cultural shift in attitudes and values is key.

a lot of the mountains (Talking west coast BC)are not so well suited for real estate. the only real estate there seems to be rich peoplel wanting summer getaways, these peopel tend to leave trees in place more or less.

And the BC rainforest is clearcut. i saw mention above thta logging is taking conservation seriously. Not so much in BC. I'm like the OP and grew up in the forests of coastal BC and i can tell you they clear cut, a lot. I am filled with joy seeing the mills closing because they have done nothing be irresponsible and rape the land while getting rich. Never mind the disease that is thought to be linked to mills.

I hope that link is truly hoping to conserve, not just another scheme to allow logging companies into where they want and save the scraps. I want to hope, but i lost all hope in BC's moral code a long time ago